The first dissapointment of the year. For the last few months I have been a fan of Duerenmatt`s work - both his short stories and plays have impressed me quite significantly. But now I found out that he was also capable of rewriting classical stuff (although I have no idea whatsoever what the original Wojcziek was about) and make it sound boring. Not that I said that I find "Faust" by Goethe particulary interesting in its original form for the modern audience. But still I expected this to be more fun. Probably my lack of interest has something to do with the fact that I`m not a great expert of "Faust" and that I`m not an expert at all in everything else classical German literature could offer. I`m pretty sure that in "Urfaust" there are some elements from poems not by Goethe, just as there is something from the older version of the same book. But it`s dull (at least my taste found it to be that way). Wojcziek? I never even got what was the plot here. The lead character seems to be some stupid fool, who has some problems with his wife. And he does a job that doesn`t get paid too well. That`s probably all I can tell. Apart from the fact that from now on I won`t believe that Duerenmatt=very good quality brandname.

Man, is my memory twisted like Elvis`s ankles! How on earth could I forget whilst rebuilding my long suffering factoid about the existence of this jolly good book! Apparently this Dahl fellow used to write stories for children. Not to be monotonous he also wrote some short stories for the bigger audience that doesn`t wet it`s pants quite so often (unless being drunk as shit, if you ask me). So, there`s quite a lot of those stories in this book. They are slightly in o`Henri`s manner - having a twisted, quite unexpected ending to something what you`d call quite regular. Or not regular, as a matter of fact. There`s one about a wife who`s husband had cheated on her - she kills him with a frozen lambs leg and feeds the weapon on death to the arrived policemen who are looking for the exact same thing. Then there`s a guy who has a bet on whether he can guess the exact brand of a wine (which he already knows). I personally liked one about some person that has lost his money in a debt and tries jumping of a ship so to be able to win the bet, but he doesn`t succeed at that, as you could probably guess. And last but not least there`s the "Automatic Writer" (or something like that) about a computer whiz who creates a machine that can write short stories and novels. You`re bound to laugh your behind off upon reading this - unless you`re some freak that has no behind at all. By the way, I read somewhere that Dahl was the writer who wrote about the most interesting ways to die. The only problem is - where have I misplaced this book? I absolutely must find it!

It took me some time to get a hold of this book. You see, it never got published in Latvian and it can not be bought in Russian. As far as I`ve understood it`s banned or something like that. Weird things happen in the world. It`s not that scandalous - just a very good book. Anyhow there are three parallel stories taking place on the pages of this book. Or are there just two of them? Or is it four? I`m not so sure. The central line tells us about Saladin Chamcha and Gibreel Farishta - two Indian actors who survive a air-plane explosion and after that they somehow turn into respectively Satan and arch-angel Gabriel (Shaitan and Gibreel for the muslims). But the angel isn`t that good and satan that bad. Probably what bugged the muslims the most is another part of the story which tells us about Mahound (Mohammed) and his revelations from Gibreel (this story comes to Farishta in his sleep). It`s actually a bit similar with what Bulgakov wrote about Jesus. And the third story line is about Ayesha - a young woman that leads her whole village to Mecca on a pilgrimage. What`s weird is the outcome - you can`t really say, whether the ending was or wasn`t a lucky one for the pilgrims. This was certainly not an easy reading task by any means - Rushdie`s writing style, his choice of words, his structure of sentences aren`t easy to handle for a person like me that`s not too strong in English, but it was most certainly worth it. It was worth the time, the effort, for "Everything will be asked from us and everything will be given."

Fritz Lang. Does this name ring a bell for you? This is the director of "Metropolis" - the first feature-length sci-fi movie. He also directed this film that`s according to IMDB is the 49th greatest film ever. If I told you that it was made in 1931 you`d probably undestand that a film like this is quite hard to judge. Do you consider that old films deserve better ratings just because at the time nothing better was made? Or do you expect that a really good film will be able to stand out even 100 years after it was made? The storyline: a child murderer is plaguing the city of Berlin in something like 1930. The police can`t do nothing about him, so the regular criminals - thieves, burglars and other riff-raff - decide to catch him themselves. For the first half of the film Hans Beckert (the murderer) is on a hunt of little girls but after that he himself becomes the hunted. What`s weird is the sound - back in 1931 it was probably a common thing but I have never experienced a film that had only the sounds of people talking but no sounds of them walking or something like. There`s no music, there`s no city sounds, there`s absolutely nothing. Did I like it? Well, it was a bit too long for a film this old. The idea itself was a good one, but you can`t expect the level of suspence to be very high in a film that was made before WW2.

If you wonder why did I watch this film - here comes the answer. There`s this song "1985" by an obscure band named "Bowling for Soup". And what is this song about? The year of 1985, of course. And some films are mentioned. One of them is "The Breakfast Club". So I watch it. Five highschool students spend an entire Saturday at school because of a detention they got. They all come from different backgrounds each representing a certain social group. There`s a rich man`s daughter who`s a prom queen, there`s a sportsman, a math whiz + nerd, a goth chick and a wastebasket. The latter two are the most interesting ones, but the rest is also ok. Since they aren`t allowed to leave their seats (what they still occasionally do). They quarrel, they fight, they disagree, they form groups which fall apart momentarilly. They speak of things they find to be important, they are neither good or bad, but just are. The ending though spoils the impression of the film - two couples are formed, everyone is happy, you know the sugarry crap Hollywood endings that occur in 95% of the films from the gigantic soap factory. But if you watch the first four fifths of this film you`re bound to enjoy it.

Boy, do we get a whole lot of templar and mason shit nowadays! Like this film for instance - there are those weirdos the Templars that take hold of a really massive treasure but they don`t spend it on drugs and women, oh, no, they hide it somewhere where noone could find it for the treasure is too huge for any living man. And when the chance comes they (already having become masons after the templars were eliminated) smug the whole thing to the US of A (which weren`t the US of A at the time yet). Since they don`t want the British to take hold of the treasure they hide it and make some weird clues for themselves to remember the place where they hid it (including a secret message on the back of the original Declaration of Independance). And nowadays a guy named Gates (just like good ol` William) who`s family held a part of the key to the secret goes to rescue the treasure before the bad guys get it. He`s accompanied by a weirdo who`s brilliant with computers and a sexy chick. What can you do without a sexy chick? Nothing, absolutely nothing. So, what good is this film? First, if you`re into discussing whether what happens in this film could be real, whether the conspiracy of the masons could still be living - my answer to you, Sire, is: buzz off! This film isn`t about the templars - it`s about action and adventure. If you can`t tolerate something like this - don`t! I found this film as a good piece of entertainment, with pretty solid acting and one lovable character - the computer guy. Oh, by the way, the beginning is extremely American patriotic and the ending is extremely cheesy and over-the-top optimistic... as if you couldn`t guess that without me telling you that.

I`m not quite sure why I never watched this film earlier. Probably it`s because of the title - I`m not a sucker for films with the word "American" in the title. This is certainly a film that doesn`t easily fall into any category. The film starts with Kevin Spacey masturbating in the shower. Mainly the film is about the meaning of peoples lives - what content our lives have, what we leave behind, what do we think we are, what are we in the eyes of the others, what can we do in order to change our lives, etc, etc. It doesn`t provide real answers, it doesn`t try to moralise about things and feelings, its just a very powerful film. Lester doesn`t love his wife anymore, and he falls in love with his daughters she-friend. The daughter meanwhile creeps out of her goth shell into love with a weird guy who lives next door and who`s father happens to be a homophobic army man. The weirdo is a drug dealer whos main hobby is filming things that he finds beautiful - including the legendary dancing bag sequence. It`s surely the first great film I`ve seen this year, but I hope its not gonna be the last.

I certainly had seen this film before, but that was way back when I was a young boy so why can`t I rate it now when years of experience have changed me like Elvis changed when he grew fat. This film, by the way, has nothing to do with Elvis but he just somehow came to my mind. Basically this is the 1st part of a film called "Eurotrip" - although it has no common actors with that film, but the idea is basically the same. The main character does something to a girl he shouldn`t have done - accidentally sends her a video of him screwing another chick. So he goes to get the video before she gets it. Some of his pal join him - so there`s the road trip. Their journey is full of gross stupidities along with some quite interesting humour. But to me this film would have been absolute bullshit if not for the performance by the infamous Tom Green - who amazingly is the most attractive character. He totally rocks in this film, quite unlike his own film "Freddy Got Fingered" which already was on this factoid. Anyhow this is no cinematic delicatess, but who would have expected that anyway? Not me, Sir. I want just some tits and an old weirdo with an erect boner. For I am a perverted pig, my dear Sir.

John Fogerty was the leader of one huge rock`n`roll band - "Creedence Clearwater Revival" - and after that he has recorded quite a lot of solo work. In mid nineties he had one of his comebacks, and this is when this concert was recorded. I must admit that I had never heard before a major part of those songs on the album, but since he does many of the CCR numbers, the concert is interesting enough. His band sounds quite powerful and his vocals haven`t aged that badly. "Bad Moon Rising" is almost as good as it was in the sixties, but "I Put A Spell on You", while being performed quite solidly doesn`t match the performance at Woodstock in 1968, which is no wonder, of course. The newer material is also quite good, although certainly not groundbreaking. John never was a real revolutionary in the music business and he doesn`t become much more radical while getting older. Still this is a very nice concert for people who like that old time R`n`b sound from the days when r`n`b didn`t mean something similar to rap music with some sweet sounding nonsense replacing real music.

Can you make an action film deep and insightful? Never mind the answer, the creators of this film certainly try to achieve that. Tom Cruise who calls himself Vincent is a hitman who must kill five people within a single night. To do that he hires Max (a black taxi driver) to drive him around. As you can guess, Max doesn`t know from the start the mess he`s in. The whole movie leads to Vincent killing a young woman that Max met before Vincent got into his cab, and about Max saving her from the vicious killer. The action part isn`t actually particulary interesting, but the most time Max and Vincent just are driving to a location where someone must be killed and with them talking about moral, the meaning of life etc. Vincent is absolutely cold blooded but he isn`t that simple as you could have probably guessed. Still he uses words to destroy Max`s life thus provoking his own death. As you probably know, I`m not particulary into action films, some moments of this film were certainly predictable, it wasn`t very realistic, but on the other hand - I`ve seen much worse films that this one.