Is there anybody around not knowing the infamous story of Bonnie and Clyde? The most famous criminals of the Great depression, they still live in the minds of millions of people, symbolising freedom and not caring about whatever. Of course, the story of Bonnie and Clyde is certainly much more of a fairy-tale than true facts, but who cares about that. She`s beatiful (Faye Dunaway) and he`s handsome (Warren Beatty) but not a great lover, only a great bank robber. Gene Hackman is Clyde`s brother, thus completing a cast of great actors. The story and the way of narration is certainly inspired by the French new-wave but it`s still a lot of fun. What this film doesn`t really do is glorifying violence but neither does it put it down, just like some Godard would like it. But in comparison to "A bout de souffle" B&C is quite entertaining, and the characters are much more understandable. The ending is quite brief, but that`s not a problem for me. I wouldn`t call this one of the greatest films ever, that great it most certainly ain`t but it`s a very solid film truly deserving to be remembered.

Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet are no strangers to me - they are the two guys who directed "City of the Lost Children", and even if I hadn`t known that I would have noticed it anyway, for this film is something like the first part for that film. Not that it really is the first part, not that what happens here necessarily should happen before the Lost Children. So, there`s this postapocalypic world we live in - there are no plants, there are close to no animals and there`s a very low level of technic as well - not like it was in "Blade Runner" where people lived in ruins but rode flying cars. But what we have here is this guy Louison (who played the clones in that other film) who is a former clown but now works for a butcher who sells human meat, and is planning to feed Louison to his clients - not that they would be shocked about that - they know it, for they need meat and there`s no other meat available. There are also vegetarians living underground and being at a constant war with the carnivours. And Louison falls in love with Julie, the butchers daughter. There`s too much to tell, actually - weird stylistics, etc. Of course, there`s nothing you hadn`t already seen in the City (although this film came first, it`s by far less popular), but does that really matter. Did we get something unexpected in the second part of Godfather? No, we didn`t but it`s still the second highest rated film at the IMDB.

This is what you call a traditional novel. Not that the author is very traditional, or the period where the action takes place. But it stil is traditional. There`s Hans Baumann - a young lad who goes to the "big" town searching for a job as a journalist, and he finds it working as the press person for the local factory owner Volksmann with who`s daughter he studied together. He doesn`t really love her, but it happens that she gets pregnant from him, and has an abortion. Then we switch to a gynecologist named Benrath who refused to perform the operation, who`s wife commits suicide because he`s cheating on her. Later we meet Alvin, his advocate, who`s one of the leaders of the local christian-socialist-liberal party that also is cheating on his wife, but when he accidentally runs over a drunk in his car, his political career is shaterred. And last but not least there`s Klaff, an unsuccessful writer who wanted to be employed by Hans but had no luck at that, and he commited suicide. There we have 4 dead persons in the book - the unborn child, the drunk, the wife and Klaff. I guess it`s enough for one novel. Overall the book isn`t particulary interesting or uninteresting, it just is.

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.