Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

It`s really a shame for me to say this but I`ve lost something in my heart that I guess will never return - it`s the passionate and ever understanding love for everything each and every single member (or former member) of Pink Floyd has done in his life. Take this new David Gilmour LP for instance. Most of the experts say it`s nice but I can`t really enjoy it for I can`t find anything at least remotely fresh in it. If a musician has used the same musical ideas over and over again (and his name isn`t Angus Young) you have very little need to listen to his latest work if there`s plenty of better music in his back catalogue.

The first part of the famous trilogy by Krzystof Kyslovsky. Juliette Binoche who also played in `The Unbearable Lightness of Being` plays a woman who loses her husband and child in a car accident (just like in 21 Grams). After that she doesn`t spend much time around other people (just like in 21 Grams) and has her freedom. Of course, the similarities with the 21G movie end pretty fast for in a European movie it is not a strange thing by any means that she has sex with her husbands best friend just to tell him that he doesn`t need her. The husband was a composer although it seems that his wife was the author of most of his works. There`s also a strip dancer who lives in the same house as the central widow and gets scared when she notices her father among the spectators of the show. The deceased husband turns out to have cheated on his wife for a few years and his girlfriend is pregnant but the reaction of the Binoche character is nothing like what you could expect from a Hollywood movie (for it ain`t no Hollywood movie). The images are very interesting, mainly there`s focus on the blue colour for it`s what the title says. Another thing to mention - the ending is quite similar to that of Donnie Darko (as camera passes from one person to another). And it`s the blue of loneliness and only partly the blue of hope we`re talking about.

A film made by Tom Green can not be good. It is an axiom. And it proves to be just right. I didn`t manage to watch the film entirely for it is dumber than anything I`ve ever encountered before. A wannabe comic drawer works at a cheese cafeteria, spanks his crippled girlfriend and pretends that his father fingers his little brother. I guess even `Ali G in Da House` could be better than that.

Good ol` Stanley Kubrick is good at creating main characters that the viewer should dislike but sometimes likes him as well. And this is one of those movies. There might be a little bit too much nudity but on the other hand it`s completely in place therefore it`s no big problem. Yeah, and this movie has "Singin` in the Rain" in it.

Where can a modern love story take place? Of course, on the internet. And it`s the place where Beverly and Maximilian meet one another. The book consists of chat messages and e-mails - it`s just like a traditional epistholar novel with the slight change that each letter has a recepients address having the @ simbol in it and a subject. Otherwise it`s quite trivial - she`s married, he isn`t. She`s happy in her marriage, until she accidentally has a one night stand with him without knowing that it was the person she had been sending emails for quite some time. They try to overcome this misunderstanding, and the more they get to know each other the more they love one another. They meet one more time and later decide to stay together, but on his way to meeting her Max`s plain crashes and he dies. Romantic, isn`t it? In the first few chapters the form of the book seems quite fresh but while I continued reading after the novelty factor had worn off it turned out that there wasn`t that much in this book. Even if you write a trivial story in the binary form it still remains banal, no matter how artsy you try to be.

Hilarious, man! Ok, probably this isn`t the intellectual kind of comedy you would predict I would enjoy, but it`s just so goddamn funny! Shaun is the average man in town - he has a lousy job, a best pal who lives with him and pays no rent, and has no life of his own. Shauns girlfriend ain`t happy with him for he`s too boring and useless, so she dumps him. And Shaun doesn`t even notice that at the same time dead people have arisen from their graves and started eating the living. But when he finally realizes that he picks up Ed (his pal), Liz (his former girl), two of her friends and his own mom. So they start their own campaign against the zombies. Basically this film is about the little details - LPs you can throw at a zombie that`s going to kill you and LPs you would never throw at anyone, a zombie doing the refrain to "White lines", etc. I liked it - a very good quality truly British comedy.

I`m not sure whether this was recorded before or after the bands leader Robert Wyatt fell out of a window and got paralyzed from the waist southwards but he still doesn`t need much of his drumming skills on this album. The record is very quiet and absolutely uncommercial (which is no wonder knowing that Wyatt rarely has tried to become a charts favourite on the course of his quite long career). The album opens with my favourite Matching Mole song ever (which isn`t that much of an achievement though for the band with two albums) - "O Caroline" is a very heartfelt and beautifully arranged ballad. The following "Instant Pussy" is much more daring with quite a few mood changes and weird laughing sounds (a bit similar to that on Wyatt`s solo "The end of an ear"). The third song - "Signed Curtains" - has some of the greatest lyrics captured on a record ever, mostly it`s just a piano with Wyatt singing the number of the verse, including the following lines: "And this is a chorus / or perhaps it`s a bridge / or just another part of the song / that i`m singing". On "Part of the dance" the band suddenly learns to rock out and does that pretty well. After that follows another song with the word "instant" in the title, this time it`s "Instant Kitten" - quite a good instrumental. That is followded by "Dedicated to Hugh..." - now that`s a song I don`t like, for it`s somewhat head-ache inducing. And the following "Beer as a braindeer" isn`t very apalling either. And in the end we are treated with another "Curtain" song - "Immediate Curtain". What`s with the song titles anyway? Perhaps there`s some sort of a story behind the album although that would be strange considering that most of the pieces are instrumental. Anyhow, I really enjoy the first side but the second side is too untrivial for my dumb taste.

The first season of Black Adder wasn`t particulary good although it did have some moments of brilliance. Atkinson plays too much of his ugly Mr Bean character here, he`s not witty enough for my taste I gotta say. He is the prince of the UK yet he doesn`t have any power and he is sly but he isn`t really clever, and mostly what he does is attaching penis-shaped armour and talking like his balls were cut off. I guess the series would be quite good, were it not for Atkinson himself - the other characters are no worse than in the other parts of the series. Every episode has some good gags but it doesn`t save the series as a whole from being unsatisfying.

There is this kind of cow - the Latvian blue, and that is the blue in this play. Actually I`ve never seen a blue cow, only on a picture but some people tell me that they do in fact exist. Anyhow, there`s this fellow George who had a terrible accident on a road when he was driving a car when his dad and grandma were killed. Now he`s with his mom Rasma in Georgia, having a long time vacation and curing. Before the accident he had stopped the car to look at a blue cow, and now he`s searching in Latvian folklore for those cows. He is visited by a female friend of his, Linda, and her new twice-her-age lover Vidvuds. But his mom has problems with Linda. Anyhow, the main idea of the play probably is that children who don`t need anything are too spoiled and usually don`t know what they want. So, for a Latvian play it was quite good, I watched it in a very small place - something like 40 people were there, acting was good from 3 of 4 actors but Rasma was a bit over-the-top in my opinion. But it was still pretty good, and at least I didn`t get bored at all.

Hurrah! This is lord Blackadder the way I like him. Gone are the days of foolishly done hair and silly looks on the face. This Blackadder of new, living in the reigh of Elizabeth I is a much trickier fellow than his predecessor. In episode one we are treated through a tribute to Shakespeare`s "The 12th night" where Kate - a young woman - goes to become Blackadder`s servant after her father wanted her to be a prostitute, so she "could work without leaving the house", and after Blackadder realises that she`s a woman he wants to marry Kate, but he fails at that. In episode Two Edmund is made responsible as the planner of executions in England, and he has some trouble after having thought about work optimisation he has executed a fellow earlier than planned. In "Potate", episode 3, Edmund wants to impress the Queen by travelling around the Cape of good hope (in fact: going to France), only because of some accident he does go to the Cape indeed. In episode four Edmund is in debt to an organization of black monks. "Beer" is a jolly good drinking episode, probably the best of the series. The final "Chains", where Blackadder dies again is a bit of a letdown though. In short: this time around everything is very solid and there`s enough laughs in each and every episode, although it is really a sitcom in comparison with the first season that contained some outdoor scenes, yet since the comic level is much higher I can`t not appreciate that.