Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

I have this project, you see - there`s a list of German-writing authors who`s work I want to become familiar with. And among those 78 persons there`s this Mr. Schnurre here. This work is called "a novel of stories" or something similar to that. And this is exactly what it is - we get short (mostly) stories from a boy`s childhood that aren`t really connected one to another apart from the fact that it`s the same boy`s life we read about in all those stories. It`s the 20`s-30`s Germany where he grows up - in the poverty with the nazis rising. But these stories are mostly positive, although not too happy. His dad has no work most of the time, so he spends it with his son, trying to make a jolly good childhood for the boy, and he succeeds at that. Among the stories the standouts are "The Gift" about the boy`s first love (at the age of something like 5) who dies from a disease but since she had assured him that death is not bad he doesn`t get sad about that and people surrounding him think he has no heart. It`s not the only great story, of course, the book is very humane, and it`s easy to read, although it describes no beautiful fantasy world. And what it reminds me of is "Bille" - a novel of stories by Vizma Belsevica - a Latvian writer - that was in the same stylistics only in a much more minor key. Not that I think that there`s any connection between these two books.

Smash Mouth is a fine fun band from the States, and this is the bands most popular album. It`s not particulary new, of course, since 5 years have already passed since it first came out, but I hadn`t listened to it before today. What it represents is a somewhat optimistic brand of pop music without very much substance. What it doesn`t represent is very good quality of the songs. While "All Star" which I extremely popular mainly because it was featured in "Shrek" is a really catchy tune, nothing apart from this song stands out from the context of the album. It has its share of funk and reaggae elements but this is certainly not more than simple background music. Well, "Can`t get enough of you baby" is good, I gotta admit that, and "Come on, come on" is also fun. But now that`s it. Of course, nothing on here is offensive, disastrous or anything like that but this is just your average band - having a few highlights, a few lower points but not being able to make a whole album without filler ("Fallen horses" and "Stoned", for example, has no purpose apart from being the longest songs on the record).

I really saw Jim Jarmush standing somewhere in the shadows of this film. And I`m not a fan of his. Not that I`ve seen more than 25 minutes from his entire filmmakers career, but I still don`t like Jim Jarmush. He`s boring as a lecture of economy. But this film has in fact very little to do with Jarmush. Except for the fact that it`s atmosphere is somewhat similar to that part of Jarmush`s film I once saw. Anyway, you see, Dante Hicks is this white guy working at a local convenience store, and everything goes wrong for him on this one day where he in some way goes through the nine rings of hell. He goes to work on his free day for a few hours, but nobody comes to replace him, his pal from the video store next door scares all the customers away, he finds out that his girlfriend has suck 36 other man`s members, while his ex-girlfriend whom he still loves has sex with a dead pervert in the toilet thinking that she`s making love to him, hell, that`s one tough day. Whom do we get to see in this movie? First, there`s Jay and Silent Bob - those two funny drugdealing weirdos who also took part in `Dogma`, then there`s this chick Marilyn Ghigliotti also from `School of Rock`. That`s probably it. The film isn`t particulary fast paced, but it`s comic moments stand out tall, and it`s sad moments fall down low, and it reminds of the positive aspects of the French new-wave. A conclusion in 3 words: I liked it.

That red cat is driving me mad - how cool he is. Sadly Garfield isn`t as cool in the movie as he`s in the cartoons. He`s simply not lazy enough. Sure, he talks most of the time how lazy he is but he runs around like he was Hicham El Guerrouj. Of course, he has a reason for that - his master John Arbuckle (who by the way is too cool to be himself) takes a stupid puppy to impress his beloved female. First Garfield does everything to get rid of the annoying Odie but after he`s the one responsible for the dogs dissapearance he goes to rescue him (hey, this movie is just like "Labyrinth" only there`s no David Bowie in here). But a moneysucking no-good villain has already taken the dog away. I don`t really want to say anything about the ending - it`s even more predictable than what`s gonna come after this word "than". Judging the animation - I don`t really like the 3D Garfield in comparison to the 2D one - he looks to computerised to me. But what stood out and earned at least a whole extra point for the film was a thing that had absolutely nothing to do with the filmmakers - I watched it in some weird Russian translation - and it rocked! A wacky weirdo spoke in this translation using a whole lot of Russian words none of us watching had ever heard. Man, was that cool

Having already read the novel behind the theatre performance, my expectations to it were quite high. Will the cast of my favourite Latvian theatre be able to recapture the spirit of Chesterton`s most ambitious work? Since the novel is already on this factoid, I`m not gonna go into details about the story. Let`s better discuss the performance as such. Decorations: close to none, since it`s quite complicated to recapture all the different locations and different objects on the stage there was an absolute minimum of everything - a few chairs, some piece of cloth on the floor that was sometimes elevated to be the sea or something like that, a table without legs that must be held by actors - and an image projector: that`s it. The acting was superb. No major changes were made in the plot (unlike what you usually see on Latvian stages). But one flaw was there - the performance went on for almost four hours and it was a bit too much, I guess cutting a few chase scenes would have been a good idea, thus the performance isn`t rated as high as it might have been.

There once was a Latvian writer/poet named Edvards Virza. And he wrote a really boring book describing a house in the country. There was no plot, there were no real characters, but there was a lot of nature, poetic descriptions and that kind of stuff. And now we have something lika a cover version of that book. I know, of course, that this German poet MLK didn`t know about the Latvian guy and that he probably stole the idea from someone else anyway, but there still is this resemblance. There`s a difference though - she goes a bit higher and describes a whole village. And as for the form - it`s quite interesting: it`s in the form "if I wrote a story about the village, then in the first chapter I would write about..." - something like that. And each chapter describes an exact element, which is interesting and not too traditional. Then there`s this sentence thing - there are close to no stop signs in the text, making it flow like a river. The language used is very smart and delicate, and hard to read for someone who isn`t a native German. If the amount of the book were bigger I would probably be dissapointed, but so I`m not. Although that`s not my favourite kind of literature for sure.

Can a teen comedy be really silly? Sillier than simply silly? For example, is it possible that a film of more than 90 minutes which is supposed to be a comedy won`t make you laugh even once, and if a grin appears on your face it`s only to showcase how lame the film is? I guess it`s most certainly possible. And it`s even a thing likely to happen if the words "National Lampoon" appear somewhere near the title. The plot is of course really twisted - there are two girls named Dominique, one of them a French exchange student, another one a hooker, who get mixed up. There`s an undercover I don`t know who who`s mixed up with a girl from the dorm. There`s this black guy whos girlfriend comes to think that he`s cheating on her. To be frank - there is nothing but misunderstandings. And there are no funny jokes. At least there`s not even a single mutual joke - and that shows something. What else? The actors suck, and it`s no wonder since they aren`t particulary famous. The music? Was there any? I`m not really sure, but it wasn`t good at all. I don`t usually rate films like this particulary high, but in the high seas of lameness this film deserves being called an ocean. Even Jim Jarmush would make me laugh louder than this.

Sean William Scott is so cute! Don`t you know him? His mom rocks! You still don`t know him? Why, it`s Stiffler from American Pie, of course. At the beginning of this film it seemed somewhat unexpected - mr. Scott doesn`t usually participate in serious action movies, he`s more of a silly character, and my theory wasn`t proved wrong. Of course, Scott`s character acted kinda silly. Beck (played by The Rock) is a cool guy for the most difficult missions, he`s sent by Billy on his last mission to find Billie`s son Travis who keeps looking for some artifact in the jungle of Brazil. To do what he`s supposed to do Beck must overcome a villain named Hatcher who runs a gold mine in Brazil, and Travis himself, who is a real dork most of the time. There`s also a sexy chick, who`s name I`ve already forgotten. Was it Michelle? No, but close to it, I guess. She`s the leader of local guerillas, who fight Hatcher. And there`s also a cool scotsman, who plays bagpipes. There are pretty good action scenes, the humor is mostly silly, but not offensive. Overall this is a nice film for relaxation when you don`t need to follow the plot or anything.

Our excursion in the German literature continues. We enter one of the weird rooms. Its entitled `Thomas Bernhard` - and provides us enough material to break our heads. Four plays can be found in this collection of works. "A party for Boris" is the most unpredictable one - out of the 16 characters 15 have no legs. Most of the time one of them - The Good One talks a strange monologue which is directed towards Boris - her husband and her servant that has legs unlike everybody else. "The ignorant and the lunatic" is the most boring of those plays - there`s absolutely nothing going on but a doctor telling lots of stuff about diseases. "The hunting society" is about a wife of a dying general and a writer playing cards and discussing the life. Last but not least there`s "The power of the habit" is about a circus director named Caribaldi who forces four of his artists to practise a musical quintent for two decades, never achieving a perfect performance, and always complaining. What`s weird about these plays - it`s the language. I`m not really sure even - is it poetry or prose. It`s something in the style of Samuel Beckett, only less intriguing. On the other hand, maybe it`s elss intriguinging because I already have read Beckett - I`m not really sure for how much time absurd plays can attract ones interest.

What do you think of teen comedies? Some of them are quite good, and I`m not sure about this one. Let`s try to determine what my attitude towards it is. First, there`s this guy Scotty whos girlfriend dumps him and he decides that Mike - his female German e-mail friend is the one for him. But he has already screwed up - thinking that her name Mike was a male name when she tried to hit on him, he pushed her away. And now together with three of his friends he goes on a eurotrip to save what can be saved. Unexpectedly there`s not that much cliches in the film as I could have expected - at least all Germans don`t walk around in lederhosen and there aren`t that many french people in striped shirts with a moustache and a piece of long bread walking around. But of course, there is a German kid preparing to be Hitler. In the end Scotty of course gets the girl of his dreams, and so is everybody else happy as well. There are lots of gross jokes in this film, as you could guess, and there are a few good jokes as well. First, the English football hooligans are cool, then I liked the way Bratislava is shown in this film, and, of course, this guy telling that Europe is so small that you could actually walk from London to Berlin - just what you could expect from an American. For a teenage comedy it`s not bad, although the story is an exact copy of "Roadtrip" but who cares?