Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

I just learned to know that when Derek Jarman died in the mid 1990s Chumbawamba recorded a tribute song for him. That`s just to show how everything`s connected in this world. This film didn`t seem too connected though. It was a series of episodes in the life of a Renaissance/barroque painter Michelangelo Caravaggio (not to be confused with the classic Michelangelo) and a love triangle involving him, his friend and a woman. Actually I wasn`t paying too much attention for the film made little sense and had too much description of cock touching for my humble taste. The film was alternative for sure, but even Wittgenstein by the same director was more interesting.

Americans are fond of movies about the end of the world. I am not. In this film we see how because of the global warming the world could find itself in the middle of another ice age. A scientist unsuccessfuly tries to persuade the American government how grave the perspectives are, and then one day it begins. The temperature starts sinking, giant waves appear in the sea, killing everything encounter. The son of that scientist Sam (also known as Donnie Darko) is trapped in New York in a public library, and his dad comes to rescue him. The journey is long and complicated, but everything ends well for him. I don`t really want to go deep in the plot for it is full of stupid moments, but I guess that goes without saying for a catastrophe movie. What counts is that it is extremely politically correct: a black tramp, a black cop, an asian female scientist, a child with cancer. But talking about the content of the film - there`s only the CGI value, which I must say is good, but nothing else is important in this film. You can easily imagine the director saying "So, we spent all our money on special effects, now lets make some connection between them."

I can leave my signature under the statement in the title. Rubbish! What a British word! Blur! What a British band! The Kinks of the nineties, the Jam of the Ninenies and even XTC of the nineties (although I haven`t listened to the latter at all), Blur have some charm that Oasis couldn`t even hope to have. They are perfectly capable of writing brilliant choruses without any remarkable lyrics - like the "La la la la la" on the opening "For Tomorrow". Overall this is a very listener friendly pop album despite the agressive title, with cool songs like "Star Shaped", "Chemical World" and "Sunday Sunday" rocking my life.

I don`t like modern classical music, even if it is composed and performed by popular musicians. I can`t call this music not because of this thing being unlistenable but because of it being about as interesting and mind expanding as a pair of old socks.

This is a documentary that certainly can challenge Michael Moore`s latest output "Fahrenheit 9/11" in terms of poor quality. Of course, the budget of this film isn`t particulary impressive, but it`s not a problem. The Yes men are people impersonating members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and participating in this way at different conferences. It`s funny to watch how serious people watch the Yes men make fun of them without realizing that what they`re hearing may be true but it most surely isn`t what the WTO would say. For example, when the Yes Men offer to sell in the third world countries at McDonalds recycled products - recycled through the sewage system from the American and European bathrooms, it isn`t just a joke, there`s much truth in it. And so it`s about the words that slavery wasn`t as efficient as keeping the slaves in their native Africa and forcing them work for peanuts there. But a gigantic inflatable phallus attached to a manager suit and equiped with a monitor still is a good laugh. It may not be a film for the big screen (it`s where I saw it) but it`s a film worth watching.

Do you like movies with lots of nudity? I bet you do, who doesn`t. Do you like movies with lots of male nudity? If there are enough naked women, I guess you have nothing against it. Do you like movies with lots of gay nudity? I bet you don`t unless you`re female. And this film falls in to the latter category. Pedro Almadovar has created a partly autobiograpical story about a guy who`s been sexually abused by a teacher in a catholic school in the Franco days. Ignacio has later become a writer. He wants to make a movie after his novel about his childhood, and his former lover Enrique helps him at that. But it turns out that Ignacio isn`t really himself but his brother who killed Ignacio with drugs. Anyway, it`s hard to explain, and it doesn`t make much sense either. What is good about such a film is that it shows to us, heteros, a completely different world from ours. What is bad about this film is that there`s nothing particulary spectacular about it. Well, of course, a film about Spain is never too grey or something like that but it still is nothing I would remember about in 10 years (except for one guy sitting up and down on another ones erected penis while that guy is asleep, and that`s not the best thing to remember from a movie).

The Rutles were the prefab four. They came from Liverpool and recorded some of the best rock`n`roll songs the Beatles never happened to write. And a documentary about this band was made. And who made this documentary? It was Eric Idle of Monty Python. And he was also one of the Rutles - a guy who strangely resembled Paul McCartney. This film should be watched if you`re a specialist of the Beatles, if you`re not - it`s still funny but you won`t get most of the gags. From the beginning until the very end the history of the Rutles is a hilarious piece of comedy. There`s the stage of their career when they are in Hamburg - far from home and far from talented. They atract their future manager because of their pants - how tight they are, and not because of their music. There`s a rumour that one of the members of the band has died, because on the cover of their albums he wears no pants, etc., etc. Yoko Ono in this film a simple German girl whos father had invented World War II. And you can actually see a few celebrities in this film - Mick Jagger, Paul Simon and even George Harrison of the Beatles who plays a reported interviewing Michael Palin - a further guy from the Pythons.

The greatest TV series ever! Or the greatest I`ve seen so far. Me, my wife and all our friends are completely crazy for it. Since it`s a whole season I can`t even go into details of what has happened here but I can say that nothing is clear at the moment yet, and that at the beginning of the season the show seemed to be going downwards and it seemed to me that it had lost direction but the last 10 episodes of so have mostly been stunning. I don`t like Jack though, he`s such a straight guy, so boring, Sawyer is way better, and even Desmond has some charm. I kinda like that this show doesn`t have much love stories in it.

I went to see this exhibition so I would have been in an art gallery in Berlin. I am not a huge fan of paintings, so my hopes weren`t too high before the thing. The biggest problem with paintings lies in the fact that I find them quite boring and the only thing of at least some sort of interest for me is seeing famous paintings so I could later say - I`ve seen them. As for this exhibition, it consists of paintings from the era of 14th century until the 17th century and I can`t say that I noticed a lot of works by famous painters, and I can`t say that I enjoyed this stuff much.

A collection of stories. Some of them seem to be missing the final pointe, while others don`t need to have one. Actually I quite liked it, although now, just a few weeks after having read the book, I remember very little from it. Not memorable but enjoyable.