Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Jan Svankmajer`s latest flick tells me a fairytale about a man who because of not being able to have children of his own gives to his wife a childlike treeroot, she madly starts to love. What makes a problem is the `childs` turning alive and eventually becoming quite a big eater. Other characters in the film are Alzbetka and her parents who live next to Bozenka and Karel (and their Otesanek). Alzbetka wants to protect Otesanek but it ain`t that easy for she is aware of an old woman growing cabbages that according to the fairytale shoud kill Otesanek. Some parts of the film are quite scary although many elements have already appeared in Svankmajer`s previouds works. What`s nice is the scene where Alzbetka is peeking through Karel`s door and the old pedophile of the house comes by and as she sees him Alzbetka says to him: "Stop now or you`ll have another heart attack!" Interesting idea, interesting realisation and what says the most is the fact that I was able to watch it until something like 2AM which I`m rarely capable of.

First thing to mention - it`s one novel and not two novels, although it may seem that they are completely different. Every second chapter in the book comes from the first novel and every other - from the second. Wait, I said that there was only one novel. It`s not that easy to tell not only because of the structure but much more because of the content. On the first glance they seem to have nothing in commong - Wonderland is about a dude who works for the government in the area of untraditional cryptography while the other one tells about a man who arrives in a city that can`t be left. Lots of stuff happens in Wonderland while nothing happens at the end of the world. Unicorns, jazz and rock`n`roll, sex with a librarian and no sex with a granddaughter of a scientist, strange creatures living in the underground, old dreams, a man separated from his shadow, more unicorns, an old colonel who plays chess, crackers and much more can be found in the book. Not to be read by a person that has no interest in music, classics of the cinema and mysterical nonsense. Very good, Simon says. Not for everybody though.

Let`s analyse each story separately (although they are quite close to each other in terms of style). The Sentence - a mystery about a man, who has a friend in Russia, and his half-crazed father. I didn`t really understand what it was supposed to mean. The Transformation - one morning a guy named Gregor awakes as a giant bug. Very dark and depressive. In der Strafkolnie - a devil-posessed officer shows to a traveler the meanest device for death penalty ever seen that is used for no apparent reason. Dreadful images appear in front of my eyes. A Starvation Artist - about man who`s starvation is a form of art. Disgusting at times, thrilling all the time. That Kafka was not a very happy person indeed. All those stories are quite amazing (although I didn`t get the meaning of the first one). An all time classic.

One of the worst if not the worst film in the category "teen movie" or stupid american comedy, as a matter of fact. A film that features BOTH Leslie Nielsen and Pamela Anderson just can be good. And all those stupid tit and butt jokes and being hit by a shovel in the face are not what seems to be total fun to me.

You gotta be crazy even calling this thing to be short stories. These aren`t even stories - simply some works that Kafka had started to write but never managed to complete. Some of them are but a few sentences long, and don`t show no sign of Kafkas genius, just like you could expect such stories to be. One of the longest stories which seems to be at least something has even a fragment that says "a few pages missing" and that isn`t a joke from Kafka, simply the texts are missing. Great! Then why don`t I rate these stories lower than Britney Spears rates Michael Boltons imaginary stepbrother Ricky? Because there`s one story that lives up to Kafkas fame and is interesting to read, partly even hilarious and absolutely unconventional. It`s about some school teacher who claims to have discovered a gigantic mole, and about another guy trying to drag the worlds attention towards the discoverer of this phenomena. Of course, nobody ever cares about this mole thing, but at least those two guys start a conflict because they have different opinions towards the mole that even they themselves don`t try to catch or to prove seriously its existence. You can read this one story but the rest isn`t worth even looking at it. That guy whom Kafka asked to burn his works would have done a good job if he had burned those stupid unfinished stories.

Buttercup is a simple young girl, and her Westley is a simple young man. When he goes on a trip to gain some easy money and never comes back Buttercup agrees to marry the evil prince Humperdink. But Westley isn`t dead and he`s ready to fight the seven nations army with his bare hands in order to regain the Buttercup of his heart. This is a fairy-tale, you can be sure about that. And this is supposed to be a superb fairy-tale - it`s in the IMDB top 250 greatest films of all time and has a perfect 100% freshness in the Rottentomatoes. But somehow I don`t find this film to be that good. Ok, it has some funny moments, but they seem to be known to me. Most likely because I could have already seen this film before, I`m almost sure that it`s true. Still, it`s not more than a family movie, despite the fact that the dialogues are perfectly designed. The special effects are about as cool as they could be in a film that came out in 1987. That`s not too much of a complaint, of course, but I can`t call this film a great masterpiece of any sort. The characters are developed about as good as they can be in a fairy tale. Oh, there`s one more disturbing film - the main story happens actually in a book an old man reads to his grandson who`s sick and has to remain in bed (by the way, the grandson is played by the fellow who later became the leading star in the marvelous TV series "The wonder years"). I don`t mean to say that this film is no good, but I don`t get why it should be as good as some people tend to think. Oh, come to think of it - there`s one really weird thing - Westley turned to be Edgar in "Ella Enchanted" - you see, in just 17 years a perfectly nice young man turns into an evil uncle. God works in mysterious ways, doesn`t he?

The second part from Chapek`s so called "Trilogy" of novels didn`t impress me as much as the first one. Although I have to admit that it had a much more promising content. While Hordubal was just a variation of a real crime commited somewhere in Czechoslovakia, "The Meteor is a purely philosophical piece. A strange man has survived a plane crash and sent to a hospital without a chance of ever coming out of coma again. Three different observers create their own versions about this man`s life - they have no real facts about him for his face is gone with the fire that happened on the plane, he has no documents and he isn `t concious. First a nurse has a dream where mister X tells her what a sinner he has been in his life. Then we have an oracle who just happens to be lying next door to the Meteor who has some visions about the man yet he can`t give no exact information about the man`s life for as he says himself he cannot look at insignificant details in a life, he observes the life as a whole. And in the end a writer writes a story how Meteor became the right hand of a mafia man somewhere in Cuba and how he lost everything. Whether any of these stories contains any truth about the hero isn`t mentioned. What`s true what`s imagination - that`s left for the reader`s imagination. Why did I like this novel less than the first part? Mainly because there`s too much of theorie and too few of practics in here.

This is where I reach the conclusion of Chapek`s "Trilogy". I still don`t know what all these books have in common. Maybe - that you can look differently at everything and that your conclusions cannot be separated from your person. Maybe - that no man is plain as a plank. In that case "An ordinary life" is the right conclusion to the trilogy. Its main hero is a man who knows that he`s going to die soons and he writes his lifestory so it would be a perfect example of an ordinary life. Only by writing it he finds out that he isn`t as ordinary as it may have seemed to him. He finds out that there are several different personalities within him and that he doesn`t like some of them at all. And without all those different personalities, including a simple man, a distrophic, a poet, a hero, a pervert, an ambitious ladderclimber and others he wouldn`t be what he is. Yet he isn`t really sure whether he likes himself for some of his personalities are quite ugly indeed. It would probably be right for me to give here his biography - he was a son of a carpenter, he was very good at school, yet he had no friends there. The went to some good school and started to study at a university. But when he shared a room with a fat poet he forgot about studies and became a rebel, an alcoholic and a supposedly bad poet. When his father refused to send him more money he left his poetry and took a job on a railroad. There he made some sort of a career, married the daughter of the director of his railway station, did some sabotage during WW1 and got a job at some ministry in the new republic of Czechoslovakia. And then he died. Simple? Isn`t it. But some of the pieces of his life didn`t match the pattern he wanted to find everywhere - for example, his short love with poetry, which was characterised by a young man calling him some 40 years later the Czech Rimbaud. And then there was an episode where he had sex at the age of 8 with a gypsy girl.

Hey, this is a fairy-tale! It is not based on true facts, if you want to know! Like a fellow I know said: "Sweet Mushu the honey baby!" Ok, I don`t know the fellow who said that. But I do know the guy who called this film a remake of Shrek with live actors. There was no donkey, though. And that`s a big minus. Damn, how could anyone forget about the donkey? Still, there`s an elf named Slannen who plays the donkey part. I think, of course, that a donkey would have done a much better job, but it`s not me who`s opinion you`re after. No, sir-ee! Ella has a gift from her fairy godmother - she has the gift of obedience - and if someone tells her to do something she does just that. And I mean literary! Since this is a film for children nobody orders her to perform a fisting or golden rain, but she still does lots of silly stuff. She falls in love with the beautiful prince Charmont but his evil uncle Edgar wants them both to die. Yeah, and that Edgar fellow has a perfectly terrible CGI snake. Man, even I could create a snake like this for a couple of beers and a free edition of 3D Studio Max! Ok, I don`t drink beer, but you get the point. Ella has to stop Edgar from killing her and her pretty boy (who ain`t that pretty at all, if you ask me) and find the fairy to take her marvelous gift back. What`s good about this film is that despite not having a donkey (a very stupid decision) it has a Monty Python member Eric Idle. Whopee! I`d probably prefer this film not having anything but Eric Idle, and a donkey, of course, but a bit of Eric Idle and no donkey is surely better than Richard Gere having sex with Julia Roberts. So, this film is okay, if not better than that. A fairy tale with a silly plot and silly actors, but that`s all right with me.

I don`t know why but I thought myself a fan of European animation. Maybe it had to do with me liking the collection of short European films I watched at the same place something like 9 months ago, maybe I just wanted to prove myself alternative. As for being alternative - the K.Suns cinema in Riga is the perfect place to see "alternative" young people. Most of the spectators at events in there usually look so out of reality that you can`t probably imagine how funny they are. In short - it`s a place where you`d meet a lot of people who look worse than bums and are proud for it. I got tickets for six hours of French animation but neither I nor my girlfriend had enough mental strength to stay until the end of it. Therefore we saw only two out of five programs of animation films.