Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

I don`t know whether the White Stripes will last as an important act of alternative music or they will fade into background like you name who, but right now it seems to me that they can`t just go wrong. Before watching and listening and enjoying this DVD I thought the Stripes had only a few really good songs under their belt. But now I`m sure that it`s not the case - "Apple Blossom", "You`re Pretty Good Lookin` (for a girl)", "Hotel Yorba" are probably the best performances of the night, but the band is impressive in deed. They even don`t do some of their most popular numbers - there`s no sign of "Fell in love with a girl" or "We`re going to be friends" or "Sugar never tasted so good". But we still get the mad Jack White slashing the guitar like he was some sort of Slash, and we get Meg White playing the drums with bare feet, and sometimes even with one hand. And if you say that a really great concert can`t happen if the band has only two members for they won`t be able to make music intense enough, you`re goddamn wrong. There`s no limits for this band, or at least it`s what it seems. Now I`m sure that one day I`ll see them live, because it would be a sin not to.

Once I used to think that Kraftwerk was a strange phenomena in the world of popular music that had close to no analogues. I used to think that "Radioactivity" was probably the best album ever made. Later on I discovered that Kraftwerk wasn`t the only band experimenting with different sounds in the 1970s and I somehow lost interest in the bands work. So today I decided - why not listen to "The Man Machine" (the German version)? So I did. And I found out that this album not only contains some of the most famous compositions Kraftwerk ever wrote but that it`s maybe the most flawless electronic album I`ve heard in my life. It opens with "Die Roboter" - a true classic despite the wrong intonation in the Russian verse. Then we switch to "Spacelab" - a simplistic song that`s perfect as a soundtrack for driving at night. "Metropolis" is surprsingly good for a song that I didn`t know from a greatest hits compilation. And then comes "Das Model" - although I still prefer the English vocals for it, it`s even better than the Robots in its electronic coolness. The long and complex "Neonlicht" is probably the best long suite in Kraftwerk`s catalogue - it way better than the boring "Tour de France". And the closing "Die Mensch -Maschine" reminds me of the opening of the Kraftwerk concert in Riga with all the "Maschine Maschine Maschine" stuff. I may not be a great fan of electronic music but I certainly know good electronic music when I see it.

After the first few minutes I put a question to the host of the even whether this was going to be a psychologically heavy movie (known as "gruzila" among our company). He stated that it was absolutely not a "gruzila". I still had my doubts about it because a film featuring some rich Jew travelling to Ukraine in order to see the village where all his relatives were executed rarely is a funny piece. Yet at least the first third of it wasn`t heavy. Later on when we switch a bit more to the Holocaust thematics it does get a bit more expected though. I may have stated this on my factoid more than once already but I`ll repeat it once again: I`ve had enough of the Holocaust already! I just don`t care for this subject anymore. I am aware that people are still researching everything about it but I am not interested. Not that I don`t care for different kinds of hate, discrimination etc, but I just think that there`s enough of films and books about the Holocaust already. This film was still a very good one, despite my attitude towards the subject. The closest parallel that comes to my mind is Emir Kusturica`s "Underground" - a supposedly comical tale that`s full of sadness and pain. And it`s even close in terms of musical content - only "E.i.I." doesn`t have Goran Bregovic or Kusturica doing the music, but chooses relying on the punky "Leningrad" and "Gogol Bordello". The weirdest thing about the film is the fact that it`s narrated partly in English (from the Jewish fellow who`s played by Elijah Wood), in broken English (a Ukrainian-Gypsy actor) and in Russian/Ukrainian - by the rest of the actors. That`s surely a rare case for an American film and I can be only very happy that I know both Russian and English for otherwise I`d miss a lot of it`s charme. By the way the fellow who plays the "cool" Ukrainian Alex is also the lead singer of the band "Gogol Bordello" which sounds very much like "The No-Smoking Orchestra" in deed, and since he`s a Gypsy himself - there`s no wonder about it. So, a very good film that`s bound to stay in my memory for a long time but I would watch it again only if I was forced by a gun.

I don`t usually like reading essays. I`m not an intellectual person to that level, but for Milan Kundera I can make an exception. In this work he discusses the problems of misunderstanding that various geniuses have faced. The central person among those geniuses is Franz Kafka, who asked his best friend to burn his all works after his death but not only Kafkas unfinished novels were published, which is a good thing, but also every word he had ever written without even thinking that it could be of some value as a finished piece. But Kafka isn`t the only hero of this essay, there`s a Czech composes Janachek who wrote operas in prose and whos works were usually edited at the perfrormances, there`s Hemminguay who is put into cliches by various critiques, there`s Stravinsky who recorded most of his works himself being the conductor fearing that otherwise his legacy would have been made fun of. It`s a subject that Kundera has already discussed in his literary works - for example in the novel "Immortality" and in the story "Old decedents must give their place to new decedents". What I got from the book was the interest for Kafkas other two novels apart from "The process" which are discussed quite throughout in this essay, and for the already mentioned Janachek. And if anybody shall say that it means nothing he doesn`t know what he`s saying.

When I was little kid, tinier than you, I used to like those Louis de Funes films where he made the funny faces and behaved as an idiot. So I think to myself - why not watch a film of his. Fantomas was one cult villain in Europe and USSR. I don`t really know why he was considered to be so cool, but he was. In this film he kills a Scottish rich man, takes up his place and offers the worlds richest men a bargain - to pay each a massive amount of their money (yearly) as the price to live. Not a bad offer, you say? Well, so do I. And a party for those rich man is organised at his place - Mr. Juve (de Funes) is also invited, and so is Fantomas` classic opponent journalist Fandore (Jean Marais) and his lovely chick. And the hunt for the red october begins. This film is probably considered to be a comedy with elements of action, but basically it`s just an action film that`s not funny at all. Probably, back in the 60s what you see here wasn`t considered to be cliches but I doubt that very much. De Funes`s manner of acting isn`t impressive, the plot is stupid as stupid it gets, and Marais looks like a James Bond. Damn, is this stupid!

How can this be true that women fall like crazy over Bill Murray? Is it just me or doesn`t this guy look particulary young or sexy? But no: first he had Scarlett Johansson in "Lost in Translation" and this time lots of hot chicks - including a minor aged one - fall to his grace. Don Johnston (B.M.) is an untypical macho figure that`s left by his latest flame and soon afterwards receives an unanymous letter that he has a 19 year old somewhere, so he goes on a search for the mystical son. Not that he wants to go on such a mystery quest but a neighbour of his - a devoted fan of crime/mystery solving - is able to persuade him to do so. So Don goes to meet some of his loves in order to find the one that has a son. We learn to know that the lives for his former girlfriends have played quite a lot of twists. One of them now works as a wardrobe organizer - she organizes the contents of people`s wardrobes and shelves. Another one has become an animal communicator - by that we understand that she`s able to talk to dogs, beavers and other furry creatures (there are two more women whom he visits but they aren`t that eccentric). Their attitudes towards Don differ from being willing to go to bed with him like in the good old days to starting to cry thus inducing Don being hit in a face by a rocker`s fist. The film is typical Jarmusch stuff, off course, - long pauses between sentences, beautiful imagery and not much going on. Jarmusch is certainly one of the directors who`s able to show that cinema is an art form not worse than any other, but what he lacks sometimes is "viewability" - although it`s not bad in "Broken Flowers" but it`s still far from the most amusing film I`ve seen in my entire life.

Wizzard was a band which was lead by Roy Wood - the leader of "Move" and the founder of "Electric Light Orchestra". Until today when I first listened to this record, I knew absolutely nothing about it and even now I don`t know much which is no wonder, since the sound of the band has failed to impress me much. The band`s style is a synthesis of pop/rock and jazz that sounds like it came from the era of Louis Armstrong. The opening "Main Street" has a nice little melody going on and it can be described as fresh and pleasant. The next song entitled "Saxmaniax" (not "Sex maniacs" although that`s also a good title, especially for a jazz-old time music piece) is an instrumental with a strong groove. "The Fire in His Guitar" switches away from jazz influences and sounds like it was recorded by some hard rock/prog rock performer - ranging everywhere between "King Crimson", "Led Zeppelin" and "Dream Theater". "French Perfume" is once again jazzy but it`s a bit too avantegardish for my ears (if I write avantegardish I mean that it induces pain in my ears). As a whole it is quite a solid effort, which can sound almost like everything (for example, the bonus "Ball Park Incident" sound exactly like "Slade" while the other bonus - "Carslberg Special" could have be recorded by "Renaissance").

You know what the worst thing in life is? It`s spoilers. For example, you want to see the horror film/thriller "The Village". But one day a pal of your says: "Oh, that`s one cool film - especially when it turns out that those you don`t speak of don`t exist and are created by the govermnent!" (I hope you still plan to watch this film! mu ha ha ha haaaaa!) So, you decide nevertheless to watch it. And what does this flick prove to be? It has some quite horrifying images of the village. But to me every village is full of horror. And so is every creepy wood, even if there are no huge hedgehog-like creatures fiddling about. Ok, they don`t fiddle about, just wander, but who cares `bout. What are the disadvantages of the film? The fact, that the screenwriters didn`t add a second twist at the very end - it would be much more powerful had the creatures existed after all. But they don`t as a matter of fact. This film had James Newton-Howard doing the soundtrack. Not that it`s that important. Oh, to note the story - there`s a village of 19th century people that`s surrounded by a wood where those they don`t speak of live inside. But when a dude named Lucius is almost killed by a crazy fellow his blind girlfriend Ivy goes on through the woods to the towns for some medicine.

I would like to compare this book to Jack Kerouac`s "On The Road". With the precision that it`s written in German and therefore contains several typical German elements. It`s also quite in the same writing style as "The Goalie`s fear before the penalty shot" (which I read some months ago) - Handke offers the reader a journey with the hero through America of the 1960`s. It`s the age of the hippies, of the Stones, of Canned Heat and of looking for love in the strangest places. I would probably still choose Kerouac over Handke`s approach. This is the kind of literature where when you write about sex or something like that, you don`t need eroticism, it`s just written in the way - "so it is and I don`t care".

A bizarre story about a little kid who`s strange behaviour influences serious scientists and other people to do what he does. For instance, to hop around instead of walking. Or use bad grammar forms. The idea was good although I didn`t like how it was written.