Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Usually I`m not fond of romantic stories about knights and their quests for fame and love. And this is a perfect example of me not being fond. The creator of Mr. Sherlock Holmes could most certainly come up with something a bit more entertaining than a totally bland story about some squire with lots of physical power and very little of a character. The latter is a problem I wouldn`t expect to encounter in a book by Conan Doyle since nobody can deny that his most famous character is even a bit more real than most people are.

Do you know why Kafka is considered to be so cool? Because he never finished a novel. And despite that there are three novels of his that are put on the golden shelf of the 20th century literature. And America is one of those novels. It certainly lacks an ending but it`s not really that clear - did Mr. Kafka indeed plan ever to write one? We get to hear the story of a young boy Carl going to the States after he has impregnated a servant of his parents. Actually I chose the wrong word - she was rather impregnated through him, `cos the boy had no interest in her and she used him as a living dildo or something like that. Anyhow he met his uncle in the States who was a rich and influential fellow (and not an evil uncle, who would have predicted that!) but because of a silly misunderstanding he has to leave his uncle and start a life of his own. He teams up with two tramps - an Irishman and a French guy. He finds a job at the hotel as the elevator boy, but because of his so called friends whom he was trying to escape he has to leave the job and become a servant for a crazy fat singer that earns her money by sex. In the end Carl joins a strange theatre and goes on a train to start his work, but that`s where the story ends. And I don`t mind that, because it`s how life goes - could you really make a complete story about your life that would end with your death?

Trying to be living up-to-date and not in some imaginary world, I`m on my mission watching some of the films that are after this seasons Oscars. And one of them is this film here - "Ray" is a celebration of life of music genius Ray Charles. He was a blind black young man who went from the very bottom to the very top. Women, drugs, money, fame - he had it all. He almost lost his life to cocaine but was able to return back. He combined different styles of music together creating his own mix of r`n`b, gospel, country and jazz. And he died last year, that is probably the main reason for the success of this film. Ok, Jimmy Foxx is a very good actor, and I really believe him, so do all the other actors also seem very real. But the film has nothing more - it`s actually no different from "The Doors" - we get a drug addict who has lots of women, and still is a genius. Oh, no, we got one thing here - you see, all the problems with drugs came to him because when he wasn`t on drugs he had hallucinations because when Ray Charles was still a kid and was still seeing he saw his little brother die in a bowl of water. And this is it - the problem of childhood was the source of all his problems. And then - while the film about his life was made - he died, and - shebang! - a film that would probably never make no noise becomes a massive hit and goes for lots of Oscars! Isn`t that a bit silly, or is it just me?

This is the final novel Chapek wrote in his life short before his protest starvation induced death (he still had little chance to survive the German invasion in Czechoslovakia being the 2nd on their enemy of the state list). The novel contains various people`s memories about some unsuccessful composer. One of them knew him at school, other was his teenage love, some other - a critic to whom he showed his work. From the first part we get a feeling that Foltaine was a talented but a bit disturbed person who could eventually achieve something great. His first girlfriend doesn`t like his bragging for his sexual experience (which doesn`t fit particulary well with his behaviour). But later we find out that Foltaine not only doesn`t become a great composer but that he also doesn`t achieve anything simply because he`s unable to compose a thing. He starts to compose an opera but in fact after he`s married a rich man`s daughter he pays different unsuccessful young musicians to write musical pieces for him and he just somehow binds them together thus achieving a monstrous creating that jumps from one style to another never really going anywhere. In addition to that Foltaine`s passion for a repututation of a bohemian and of a great lover only evolves when he gets older but in deed nobody really wants him, nobody really loves him and he dies after losing his mind completely. The novel itself ends quite abruptly for Chapek didn`t have enough time to finish it and the last chapter was written by a different person. At first I thought it was just a trick done by the author (I didn`t know that it was his last work), but it wasn`t. The novel got published posthumously and I guess it was more than worth being released. A very good book. My impression of Chapek`s work gets better and better once again.

This is going to be an interesting observation. In late January the arrival of "Arctic monkeys" on the scene of popular music is considered to be at least as important as that of "Oasis". I wonder where the Monkeys will be in... say 5 years. Probably they`ll be lost on a dusty shelf next to the last LP "The Monkees" ever recorded. But perhaps they`ll be bigger than U2, bigger than "The Chili Peppers", bigger than the still living "Rolling Stones". Who knows?

Together with the film "Ray" it`s certainly neccessary to listen to the last album by Ray Charles. Ok, probably there will be 20 more last albums by Ray Charles - but this one was the last album he was planning as an album and not just some hogwash collection of songs found in a garbage bin. This, if you can trust the people that give out Grammies is an astonishing album which brought Ray Charles 7 or 8 prizes. Why is that? Because, he`s dead for sure! The man had been around in the music business for more than 50 years and it would be a very bad thing to do not giving him a lot of posthumous awards? And the record? It`s ok. All the songs on here are duets, many of them even I do know already. The partners he chooses are quite good - there`s Diana Krall, Norah Jones, BB King, Van Morisson and some more, but this still is just a good album, that is good enough to be called good but not the album of the year as some people want to tell me. "Here We Go Again" with Norah Jones is surely my favourite song on the disc.

My attitude towards Chapek and his work has overgone some shifts during the past few months. Until recently I thought him to be one of the greatest Czech writers but after re-reading tales from pockets I found out that my admiration for his humour had faded. And now when I found a book of his works on a shelf at home I wasn`t very keen on reading the book. Yet I know that you can`t judge a cook by his lover (that was shown perfectly in "The cook, the thief, his wife & her lover" so I gave Chapek one more chance to prove himself worthy of my approval (for everyone wants to be loved by my just as everyone loves Raymond). Hordubal started as a take on Homer`s Odyssey (which I haven`t read, as you can probably guess). Hordubal is a Czech farmer who had been working in the United States for eight years and now he returns to his wife and daughter. The problem is that his wife hasn`t kept her bed empty all those years and that only means trouble. Hordubal himself is quite a simpleton and he doesn`t realise anything for quite a long time and when he does he gets murdered. Still it`s absolutely not clear how he was murdered and what was the main reason of his death - was it lust, was it jealousy, was it greed or was it something else? The novel isn`t comic at all, although Hordubals behaviour may seem silly at times, and despite the traditional start by the end of the book there`s no doubt that Chapek is a 20th century writer and not someone from the era of Dickens. And that`s the way I like it.

It may very well be the case that the record that I listened to was just a bootleg and not the official release but since the bandmembers themselves said that only little bits that the average Joe would hardly notice were added after the album got leaked on the Internet I guess the version I got will be good enough for me to cristalize an opinion about the name Def Leppard`s album of covers. The album starts with a cover of Sweet`s "Hellraiser". I`m not familiar with the original for I don`t rank Sweet among my favourite bands but it seems to be a decent AC/DC style song. "No Matter what" was originally performed by Badfinger but the Leppards make it sound like a Bryan Adams composition (and as you know Canada already apologised to America for Bryan once). "Rock on" is a David Essex song (I don`t know more about the fellow than his name) - it`s typical album filler. Next comes "Hangin` on The Telephone" from Blondie which has lost its new-wavish feeling and has become just an average dumb rocker. T-Rex`s "20th Century Boy" is good although I still prefer the cover by "Placebo" from "Velvet Goldmine". David Bowie`s "Drive-in Saturday" sounds good but is too much of a power ballad for me. I won`t go on for I`m too lazy for that but I`ll briefly mention that "Waterloo sunset" - a cover of the Kinks song is the best piece on the album yet it doesn`t come anywhere near the original. In comparison to Ozzy Osborne`s album of covers the Leppards are at least in a good form but they just don`t have the good style - their vision is very limited and most of the songs sound similar despite the diversity of the source material. Maybe it lies in the fact that the Leppards haven`t produced anything impressive since the 80s. Just like Ozzy.

With this we end our introduction into the mysterious world of Franz Kafka. K. is a land surveyor that was asked to work in a castle. Because of some strange reasons he isn`t let into the territory of the castle, for there`s burrecracy surrounding it. And you can`t even be sure that K. really is a surveyor, for there`s no proof in the book that he is indeed planning to get on with his work and his whole purpose seems kinda strange. A woman named Frieda who was the lover of an important clerk changes the clerk for K. But it only leads to bigger problems for K., who doesn`t really know what he wants, if there even is such a thing. He sinks lower and lower in the society around the castle, but it doesn`t really bother him, all he wants is to talk to some highly positioned clerks, but he doesn`t have much success at that. He has a strange friend who`s family is treated like unhuman in the village for the guys sister refused to go and become a fuck buddy for some important guy. And in the end nothing comes out of all K. troubles, everything ends like nothing had ever started. The book is similar to the "Process" and not definetely worse than the most highly acclaimed Kafkas novel.

Am I turning Japanese or is this the second film with Paul Giamati I`ve seen over the last couple of days? I guess the last option could be true. My first experience with this film wasn`t a positive one - upon watching the trailer to this film at a cinema I expected it to be a boring mediocre piece of crap. You know, something like "Road Trip" for middle-aged people. That does seem a bit disturbing, don`t it? There`s those two fellows - one of them is a teacher at school and a wanna-be writer, while the other one is a TV commercials actor, who is going to get married in just one week, and his pal organizes a bachelors party for him. The party isn`t that much of a party - Giamati`s character has planned a week of wine and golf, but it happens that his pal wants some real action, and they hook up with some girls (ok, none of them are boys or girls by my standards - the youngest of chicks is 33 by now, the older one is in her 40s already). But nobody tells the women that one of the party-goers is getting married in just a couple of days. Giamati`s character is quite similar to the one he played in "American Splendor" but the film is much better constructed, and less of a comedy and more of a drama. This ain`t surely a mainstream Hollywood film - it has very few "for your consideration scenes", not too much pretty faces, and a realistic view of life. Probably, there`s a bit too much information about wine for me but this still is the best candidate for Oscar as the film of the year I`ve seen so far (beating out "Neverland" and "Ray").