Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Since USSR collapsed the Latvian cinematography has been struggling - there`s not enough money, there`s not enough ideas, there`s not enough anything. The expectations before watching the film weren`t especially high but the first minutes sent them below the ice mark. First, there was some shaky camera work, even if it was on purpose, it still looked like shit. Then, the actors - the leading male actor Regnars Vaivars who appearantly is a scandalous theatre actor and director wasn`t impressive at all, and his female counter part didn`t seem to be much of an actress either. Then there was Uldis Dumpis - quite a famous Latvian actor whom I never liked, and my attitude didn`t change during this film. What about the story - a poor guy from the country marries a rich girl but the day of their wedding turns into a nightmare for he employed an undertakers agency for the job. And in the end he sued the agency for not doing their work right. This is a comedy, so they say. To be honest - the jokes are there, and if at least 10% of them were funny it wouldn`t be such a disaster. But they are not, most of them are flatter than the Earth in the minds of medieval people, and much flatter than the singer of "No Doubt". Throughout the film only one idea constantly arose - how much longer is this nonsense gonna last. 80 minutes, if you want to know. But it`s very much.

Here we are on our trip with the Beatles. This time we`re located in a bizarre cartoon. A strange place called Pepperland is invaded by the evil blue Meanies who happen to hate music. An old guy named captain Fred escapes in a yellow submarine on a mission to bring help. He travels to London and asks the fab four to save Pepperland. They endure a strange journey which seems to be more important than saving the Pepperland itself to be able to impersonate the legendary Sergeant Pepper`s lonely hearts club band. And it`s just what they do. On their way the Beatles travel through the sea of time, the sea of science, encounter strange creatures ("Hey there`s a cyclops!" - "He`s got two eyes!" - "Then it must be a bicyclops!"). And by music they beat the meanies. The song selection is pretty powerful - there`s "Yellow Submarine", "Nowhere man" (btw, they take the nowhere man together with themselves), "Eleanor Rigby", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "Hey Bulldog" and more. The animation itself is very weird, like nothing I`ve ever seen before. And as for the plot - it`s so far in the background that you don`t really care for that.

I went there on a mission to write about this exhibition. Here you can see the original artefacts from an era in which most of us (the post-Soviet people) were living quite a long time. Pictures of Lenin on the wall, posters instructing people what to do and what not to do, red banners, and that kind of stuff can be found here. What I liked was that such an exhibition was made and that it didn`t only provide information on the KGB, concentration camps, etc, but also showed some moments from the everyday life of a typical soviet person. But it still seemed a bit tendentious - you could feel that the people who created this exhibition weren`t really neutral when choosing the objects - they wanted to show how grey and uninteresting life was in the Soviet Union, despite the fact that being in danger is a great adrenalyniser, that there`s no way the government can make people to have no fun at all (if it is not a concentration camp, a gheto or a prison we`re talking about, and despite what nationalists say nowadays - people didn`t live in a prison in the soviet times).

It was the first commercial flop for the Beatles. And I don`t wonder why. While "A Hard Day`s Night" was a funny and not too typical comedy, while "Help!" was a silly B level comedy, those films still at least made some sense. This film on the contrary was directed by the Beatles themselves, and great filmmakers they were not. Especially it goes for the storyline - there isn`t a one. Ok, if you call "people get on a bus and they go for a magical mystery tour by bus where nothing really ever happens" a story line, then it is what you just read. Otherwise it`s just some crappy bus images mixed with some silly sequences without the bus. The only part of the film which I liked was the performance of "I am the Walrus" which despite being a bit strange was good. And the "Bonzo Dog Band" playing some Elvis imitation was also at least decent, although the strippers breasts were censored. But everything else is just a sloppy mess - there`s close no humour involved, it`s just psychedelic, and that doesn`t work for me at all. As for the music - now that is the biggest disaster - only the title song and "I`m the Walrus" from the great Beatles songs are present in this film, while everything else is either film muzak or simply not worth mentioning. Still I don`t rate this film particulary low since this film at least doesn`t seem very pretentious, it isn`t long, and I like them Beatles quite much.

If I should believe what They say it`s the last hand-drawn Disney cartoon ever. Not that there`s no computer animation in this cartoon. The plot goes around three cows trying to catch a villain in order to get the reward money for the saving of their farm. On their quest they team up with a silly horse named Buck and an unlucky one footed rabbit. You don`t need to be a rocket scientist to guess, if the ending was happy. Therefore let`s conentrate on everything else. The plot is ok for a wide audience cartoom, I would probably prefer a bit of adult humor, but if there`s none I don`t mind it that much. The voices are also in order, although the cast is nowhere as spectacular as in Shrek, but it`s not a big problem. What I didn`t like was the animation - I`m not a huge expert of Disney cartoons but this is certainly far from the best level of animation I`ve ever seen. The cows themselves are ok, but not more than that, pigs are absolutely silly, the background images aren`t too impressive as well. I guess it`s a good thing they gonna move completely to CGI, of course, if it`s gonna be inspired CGI.

The gritty axemen of Led Zeppelin are called the greatest rock band of the 70`s, the Beatles of the seventies, whatever you want - you can call them even Al if you like. And they were a pretty strong live outfit - with Jimmy Page flashing and dashing his fingers at the speed of light, with Jack Bonham dashing and smashing his drums like a mad scientist, with Robert Plant screaming the lungs right out of his mouth as if he was grabbed by the balls. Yeah, and they also had John Paul Jones - the base player, I don`t really know that much about him. And on this DVD you can see them still pretty fresh - with the material from their two first album being performed live along with something that could be covers of I don`t what or a live improvisation. Anyhow, the track selection could be better - only something like five of the 13 tracks are from the best the Zepsters ever recorded - I means stuff like "Communication Breakdown" and "Dazed and Confused", while on the unknown (to me) songs they do quite boring jamming, and I also am not particulary fond of "Moby Dick" - the ultralong drum solo. Still, Jimmy Page playing the guitar with a violin bow is totally cool (even if it`s a bit useless).

After the singer of my once favourite band had passed away, the remainings "Queens" organized a huge tribute concert at the late Wembley stadium, at which some of the biggest names of popular music participated - among others Tony Iommi, Metallica, Paul Young, David Bowie, Annie Lennox, George Michael, Roger Daltrey, Elton John, Slash and Axl Rose participated at this massive event. On the DVD we don`t get the whole concert but just the various performers playing together with May, Deacon and Taylor the songs of Queen, and that is a big minus, knowing that there was much more in the concert, while here we have a second disc featuring a reahersal for the concert. Who needs this sort of stuff anyway! As for what we get - the musical performance is always up to notch, except for maybe "We Will Rock You" which sounds much more powerful in the fast paced and more "bouncy" usual live version - and not the traditional "boom - boom - bang" with no guitars until the solo. Concerning the singers - Roger Daltrey is good, so is Hetfield, Lisa Stansfield is ok, David Bowie and Annie Lennox are not bad, Zucchero sings like a half dead man, and Elton John singing together with Axl Rose may have seen good on paper - one being an enemy of homosexuals, the other being gay - but it stills sounds pretty lame what they do on "Bohemian Rhapsody".

The bald gay person named Michael Stipe is the singer of one of the most popular contemporary rock bands. R.E.M. is the title of this band. And they have been around for almost 25 years now. On this DVD a retrospective of their videos is given from the day they joined a major record label. Most of these songs I know by heart without watching the videos - "Everybody Hurts", "Man on the Moon", "Losing my Religion" - and these are just the most popular once. The overall quality of the songs is certainly superb. And some of the videos are also quite intersting - for example the one for "The great beyond". On the negative side - the amount of extras isn`t extremly high - ok, if the so called "Bonus videos" were really something rare I would understand it but "I`ll take the rain" and "Lotus" don`t seem very rare to me. Then there are three songs performed live -they are pretty nice but nothing more. And as for the interviews between the songs - they aren`t particulary intersting, I`d rather hear Stipe and co. talking about the songs, and the videos, and not just talking `bout "things".

This is a film based on the rock opera "Tommy" by the Who. The songs are rerecorded especially for the film with the cast doing the singing in a broadwayish manner. Tommy`s father doesn`t come back from WW2 and his mother finds herself a brand new lover. When dad unexpectedly does come back, the lover kills him with a candlestick (if I remember it correctly that it was a "Cluedo" weapon he used). Anyway, Tommy who`s aged about four or five sees that in the front of his very eyes and after that he becomes deaf, dumb and blind. He grows up like that, nobody being able to cure him, he`s tortured by a cousin of his, a perverted uncle named Ernie (played by Keith Moon - the deceased Who drummer) "fiddles about", but there`s one thing Tommy can do - and that is playing pinball. Which is not the most typical thing for a person that doesn`t really know what pinball is all about. And he also likes starring at his own reflection in the mirror. And then he gets his vision, hearing and talking back, and becomes some sort of a preacher. What`s the film like - it`s basically just a long video for the music, and nothing more. Roger Daltrey - the singer of the band is kinda ok as Tommy, but both his Mom and Dad make 2 are not only lousy actors, but crappy singers as well. Still the music is good, altough it`s a bit musicalised which I don`t really appreciate. By the way, Elton John is the pinball wizard, while Eric Clapton simply does a song.

I have absolutely no idea who the authors of this play are - I was just trying to find the Russian translation for the word "scene" in a play, and I somehow found my self downloading this play where I noticed that Stalin and Lenin where among the characters. It turned out that the play was kind bizarre - there wasn`t even a single real socialist leader in the "cast" but those were supposed to be actors impersonating the dictators. The situation was something like this - in the late eighties there was a demonstration against the Communist party in some little town, and those actors were on their way to buy some alcohol when they were stopped by the local police and sent to spend the night in jail. There were two major things going on - the actors were preparing for some anniversary while the local socialist leader was preparing for the first election where there were choices to be made, and he knew that he stood no chance in a free election. So he decided to cheat. This is not a very spectacular play, but in the context of modern Russian dramaturgy it`s at least normal and not full of perversion.