Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

I`m not sure whether I expected this film to good or bad. As a rule I`m not too fond of movies about Victorian or Georgian England - I`m not really the most sentimental fellow in the world and I didn`t like the first 50 pages of "Sense&Sensibility" that I managed to read (yeah, I know that it`s a different book). But on the other hand I tend to enjoy non-Hollywod movies better than those coming from the factory of dreams. This film proved to be neither exceptionally bad nor exceptionally good. There`s this family of quite good but not great origin that has five daughters in the right age to get married and everything seems to be going perfect when a very rich fellow comes to their village from London, yet his prejudiced friend named Darcy (and recycled for "Bridget Jones`s diary") forces him not to marry the oldest of daughters but to return to London. Meanwhile Darcy himself falls secretly in love with Elizabeth, the second daughter and the hero of this film (and most likely - also of the novel behind it).

This is the rare case when I`m going to rate a book mostly basing upon political attitude and not its actual quality. You see, The Cell is the only book by a German author conserning the GULAG. Still in the content you don`t really get that its about the G. but its mentioned in the notes. The biography of the writer is probably more interesting than the book itself. Why? Because Bienek was arrested as a student in 1951 in Eastern Berlin (at the same age I`m in right now) for telling an Anti-Soviet anecdote. After spending quite a lot of time in a cell for one man he was sent to Vorkuta in Syberia and remained there for 4 years. In the book though all we get is sitting alone in a cell and going nuts from that. The hero has an imaginary inmate in his cell named Alban. He truly believes that Alban really exists until he notices an ant on the floor and then he understands that in fact as he had created Alban not to be lonely, so has Alban imagined this ant on the floor. And then comes the most significant part - he ain`t sure anymore that he himself isn`t an imagination of the ant.

Most critics call this the hightest point of CS&N careers, and not absolutely without a reason - the album contains such classy and classical compositions like "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" and... maybe some others. I still think that "Marrakesh Express" is the best song on the record - mostly because it`s much more energic than the rest of the LP. It`s no heavy metal of course, but at least it doesn`t put me to sleep like most of the songs on here do. I have little doubt about how moody all the songs on this record are and I`m aware that some of them have truly brilliant melodies but it`s not a secret fom me that it`s far from the kind of music I like it - it`s too rootsy and folky to be memorable. CS&N do a fine job for making background music but this would never become a part of the soundtrack of my life.

Since I did not get the meaning of this film at all I`ll just shit on my rules of fair-play and copy/paste here the plot summary for this film from the IMDb: "One of the greatest masterpieces of the 20th century, Sergei Parajanov`s "Color of the Pomegranate", a biography of the Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova (King of Song) reveals the poet`s life more through his poetry than a conventional narration of important events in Sayat Nova`s life. We see the poet grow up, fall in love, enter a monastery and die, but these incidents are depicted in the context of what are images from Sergei Parajanov`s imagination and Sayat Nova`s poems, poems that are seen and rarely heard. Sofiko Chiaureli plays 6 roles, both male and female, and Sergei Parajanov writes, directs, edits, choreographs, works on costumes, design and decor and virtually every aspect of this revolutionary work void of any dialog or camera movement."

Do you know why I like modern literature? Because starting to read a book you can never know what to expect. This book, for example. It`s written by Iris Murdoch - the same Iris Murdoch that wrote "The Black prince" - a truly outstanding novel about a mentally sick guy. And what is this novel? It`s the story of love polygons. The main hero is happy with his wife and his lover Georgie until his wife Antonia informs that she`s gonna leave him because of his shrink Palmer. But it`s only the beginning of the love problems. There`s also the heroes` brother Alexander who takes every woman away from him, including his wife. But Palmer has incest with his own sister Gonoria. And the hero also has lust for that sister. Not to use too many words - everybody screws everybody else (except that there are no homosexuals, if we count out the heroes two secretaries). In the form the novel is interesting, it`s easy to read, but talking about the essence - there hardly is any.

This is once again one of the most famous films Martin Scorsese ever did. Basically its a true story about a dude who`s main ambition in life was to become a gangster and he succeeded at that. Robert de Niro is one of the central figures in this film, just like in quite many other films Scorsese did. He`s still not the leading one - it`s Ray Lyota, who plays Danny. Anyhow, the film mostly reminded me of a mix between Coppolas "Godfather" and i-don`t-remember-who`s "Blow". As a matter of fact, most probably "Blow" ripped this film here off, but I don`t care. Visually the film is quite good, acting is top level, the dialogues are also good, but I don`t see how this can be considered a great film, IMDB top 30. A good, solid film but not one that stays in your memory for years and keeps coming up in the most unexpected situations. Oh, I forgot - the music is totally good, there`s even a song by "Cream" in the film.

This film first attracted me because of the casting - the leading roles in it are played by Fanny Ardant and Gerard Deparieu - two of the most prominent French actors. When I read a bit more about this film my attitude became much calmer - I noticed the word "prostitute" in the plot. I guess I`ve seen enough films featuring prostitution already - especially that goes for European films. But since I had very limited other options on my film list today I decided to give it a try. The film started with Catherine (Ardant) and her husband Bernard (Depardieu) who didn`t have a very good stage in their life as a married couple, especially considering that Bernard was cheating his wife now and then. So after receiving and addressed to her husband message from some woman stating "we had a great fuck last night" Catherine goes to a private club. And now I got really worried - will it be something like "Belle de jour" where she - a successful gynaecologist would eventually become a prostitute for no reason. But no - she hires Marlene (Emmanuelle Beart from "Mission Impossible" and "8 femmes" - films that I haven`t seen) to seduce her husband. And when she does and apparantely Marlene (who now calls herself Nathalie) also has some attraction towards Bernard (except for the money Catharine is paying her), the wife becomes jealous and starts terrorizing her husband. Everything would be fine, had the husband fallen for Nathalie - in the end when the story unveils Nathalie admits that she hasn`t done anything with Catharine`s husband for she just proved not to be his type but she wanted to earn some money without the need to be having sex for it. The whole triangle is kinda strange, of course, including Marlene who has quite a decent job as a hairdresser but who just can`t quite her nightlife, Catharine who enjoys suffering and knowing that a moron her husband is, and Bernard - who`s clueless about what`s going on and who in fact only wants to have sex with his wife.

I have a book with some of this writer`s most famous plays (although to be quite honest I haven`t heard anything about this Edlis person), but I found it too troublesome to read all 8 plays included in the book thus I read just the half of it. First, there`s "Where`s your brother, Abel!" - a play for three persons where two of them were in a German concentration camp once, and one of them changed sides while the other one was the only honest person to survive - a typical Soviet piece of propoganda. Numero duo: "Mess for the Virgin" - a strange play where Joan of Arc wasn`t burned by the English but replaced by a different woman and after that got married yet she felt that a part of her was left in the fire and that she wasn`t herself anymore - a very strong play indedd. So is "The game of the shadows" - a dramatic piece about Cleopatra and her lovers. The last play I read was the "Solomennaja storozhka" - a silly Soviet styled comedy which doesn`t get too funny but serves its political goals. Therefore summary there are 2 good plays and 2 bad plays, so as a whole this is pretty average, although I admit that some talent from the author can be clearly felt yet the "obligatory content" doesn`t let him really spread his wings.

Now that`s one thing you`re bound to call a classic. Tennesee Williams is the author of the play of the same name. I really watched it only because it was a central theme in "All about my mother" but who cares about what I do and why? So, there`s Stella who`s quite happy with her husband Stanley Kowalski, despite him being a common person (but he`s Marlon Brando, so she has her reasons for that). But when her neurotic sister Blanche arrives, everything goes a bit bad. Blanche has a very bad relationship with Stanley, and he uses a whole lot of ugly moments from her past in order to show her where her place is. The ending is a very sad one, and a very appropriate one as well. The storyline is actually quite simple, but the film seemed to me being very powerful. I`m probably not such a fan of films made in the 1950s but this one truly was a very good film.

I wonder why is that - most of the writers who`s books I happen to read have Jewish origin? Still this novel hasn`t got much to do with Jews - "Before the mirror" is mostly an epistolary novel in the form of letters that Liza, a student at first and an aspiring painter later is sending to the love of her life - Konstantin, a man who wants to be a very important mathematician one day. At first the book is quite similar to Abbot`s "Daddy Long Legs", later on it covers mostly the subjects of emigration from Soviet Russia and of the hard life of an artist abroad. Sometimes it gets a bit preachy but at least it`s mostly free of patriotic gibberish (although Liza always has the urge to come home, she never does).