Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

I somehow always thought that Primal Scream was a heavy metal band - something similar to "Slayer" or "Pantera". When I saw this band compared to "The Stone Roses" this morning, it got me quite surprised. So I decided to give a try to the band`s most famous album - "Screamadelica". The first song seemed to introduce me to a Britpop band that I had somehow never heard. "Movin` on up" may not be the most catchy song I`ve ever heard and it sounds as it was taken from the B side of a "Rolling Stones" record. As a matter of fact, I would have nothing against it. But when I came to the second song on the album - "Slip Inside This House" it made me regret deciding to listen to this band. What is this shit supposed to mean? Is this some of the stuff you listen to at the Hacienda while consuming purple pills? I definetely think so - this is the case of britpop meeting house music. And you know what? I don`t like house music at all! "Don`t Fight it, feel it" as you can probably guess from the title, is worse. The Beatles influence isn`t there anymore and all there is is some ugly synth patterns - a mix of house and trance I presume (for I don`t know much about either). Most of the following tracks aren`t decent rock music either - it`s just some crap for potheads of the 90s. When I hear songs like "Come Together" on the radio I usually change channels. Although "Screamadelica" is considered to be one of the most important records of 1991 (alongside "Nevermind") in its unique mix rock and dance, I can only find something for me in songs like "Damaged" or the already mentioned "Movin` on Up" where the dance influence can`t be felt at all. On other songs, for example "Higher than the sun (A dub Symphony in two parts)" I feel that I`m listening to an ugly version of "Depeche Mode" and not being a fan of the real DM I have nothing to find in a band like this one. Especially when it is performing "dub symphonies". I guess it could have been better had I listened to the metal outfit that I had mixed up with this band - "Primal Fear".

Them French never change. It`s been 50 years since "400 blows" came out but they still do films about the cruelty of school. Of course, this film has nothing to do with "400 blows", but I still thought it a good situation for me to shine with my exceptional high IQ level. A middle aged unsuccessful composer ends up being a prefect in a school for children with problems - not mental or physical, but in terms of behaviour. Being a good fellow he doesn`t try to help them by hitting them with a big mallot on the head but making them sing in a choir. And there`s one child who`s exceptionally hard to handle but who happens to have a voice an angel. But the director of the school doesn`t support anything like this, because he`s an old fox and an old fart. This film doesn`t try to go particulary deep, there even ain`t no sexual abuse of the angelic singer in the film, which seemed to be a coming up thing. But someone this director ain`t no Pedro Almadovar (I don`t really know what`s the name of the director). It`s a nice French film, with some good choir singing, if you want to go psychological you`re knocking at the wrong door, but it doesn`t mean that the film is half bad.

I`m the kind of person that`s perfectly capable of falling in love with something just because of the name. For instance, if I`d ever meet a girl named Fedora Redhat I wouldn`t be likely to lose my mind because of her, but were she named Penny Lane - who knows.

The thing I love about read is that you never know when you are going to discover a hidden gem you somehow never heard about. Take this Per Ulov Enquist for instance - I had never heard much about him and now I`ve totally fallen in love. So, maybe I don`t fall in love with 70 year old Swedes in the carnal meaning of the word but this story about the magnetist clearly ranks among the best I`ve read in quite a long time. It is a partly true story about a man travelling around and practicing so called "magnetism medicine" - a somewhat mystical treatment of patients that sometimes tends to work miracuosly. What is good about the book is that despite the reader being aware the this Meissner is not a good man and that he is partly a fraud one can not wish him not to succeed - for after all his treatment is usually much more humane (and reasonable for that matter) than that used by the so called professional doctors. In terms of style it reminds me of Patrick Sueskinds "Perfume" - it takes part in the 18th century, it has its share of mysticism and unexplainable content, and the hero himself is also similar to the perfumer (he is also a bit crazy for sex, just like that other fellow). What surprises me the most is how could this book be published in the Soviet Latvia in 1980 - it`s a bit dirty, it doesn`t have no social moralizing whatsoever, it`s mystical and it does`t mention Carl Marx even once. Strange, isn`t it? Now the only thing I know is that I`m going to be looking for other books by Enquist in order to be dissapointed most likely. Yet "The Magnetist`s fifth winter" will surely find its place among my all time favourite books.

The first few stories had a really good impression on me - a fresh language and quite interesting characters can be a sign of interesting things to come. However every next story tends to repeat the previous ones and pretty soon the book gets overwhelmingly boring. As a mater of fact, I didn`t make it past one third of the book. It seems that Mr. Maurois was an author for wide masses that wrote about the dull and boring problems in the love life of the bourgeoisie. I admit that having not read the complete book I am not able to judge it in an adequate way but I don`t care about that because more of the same bore cannot change the impression in the positive direction. It`s just no good literature by any means.

Igor Guberman is a Russian-Jewish writer of something that you would call poems if you had a higher respect for the guy. This book here at least doesn`t consist only of poetry since I`m no fan of any form of poetry I don`t really like this kind of stuff. But what this book provides is funny stories from Gubermans own life. Some of them may not be true, but the author in the preface mentions that while other people drink to forget he drinks to remember something that he never knew. The first part of the book about Gubermans life is really entertaining, if I don`t count that he sometimes tries to show how much he knows about sex. But the second part where he starts quite seriously discussing the problems of this world that seem to bother him, starts praising people he likes and putting down the ones he dislikes, the whole moralising thing goes down the drain. I don`t need a comedian to tell me serious stuff, he`s not that good at that, apart from spoiling the experience of this book it does nothing anyway.

If I believed what some people say, this band`s got lots of potential. It`s considered to be an English reply to Franz Ferdinand. I`m not sure whether it really is or not, but it`s still not even half-bad. Probably this sort of Brit-Pop isn`t particulary entertaining but at least a big part of thos songs is memorable if not great, and they have nice melodies. Lyrically this band doesn`t go particulary far, but it`s still a pretty decent effort. I personally found "Oh my god" with its a bit funky groove to be the best track on the album. Most people still say that "I predict a riot" is the best one. I also liked the opening track with its not particulary romantic lyrics - "Everyday I love you less and less." Probably this record isn`t the best I`ve heard in ages, but it`s good enough to be considered good.

I guess it wasn`t such a great idea to watch this film again after I`d done it something like two and a half years ago. In my mind "High fidelity" had stayed as a very sincere film about love and music, a film for sheding tears if you`re a romantic person and thinking about life if you`re not. Rob Gordon has just parted with Laura, his girlfriend, and he needs to find something in his life that would keep him going. He owns a record store where he has two freaky employees and what they all enjoy in their lives the most is making top 5 lists. Like - top five songs you`d love to hear at your funeral, or - top five breakups. In some sort this film is similar to "Broken Flowers", only Frears isn`t such a great master like Jarmusch who`s able to - I can`t complain that "HiFi" is a bad film and for a music maniac like me it couldn`t be anyway but I just don`t feel the magic anymore. All the endless Cusack monologues, and the crappy "I`ll rather keep it all to myself and later everyone fill find out and hate me for the rest of my days" attitude doesn`t come over to me particulary well. Were it not for the music I`d probably have no interest in this film whatsoever. It`s sad that dreams sometimes tend to collapse like buildings in NYC.

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.