Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Johnny Depp and Leo di Caprio in the same film! One of them is crazy, the other is not! Their mother is as big as a whale! A good alternative film! A very lazy me!

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".

This is not the most famous band around, and I rarely listen to live records by unknown bands, but today it is just the case. But it seems out that this band is a good one. There are quite a few strong and catchy tracks on this disc - for example "Working Girls" is a nicely crafted upbeat song with a good singalong chorus. Apart from it the album doesn`t have any really outstanding songs but it`s pretty solid as a whole, rocking in a nice manner. I`m not sure that the Pernice Brothers might ever become bigger than giants (I mean bigger than "Bigger than giants") but they have the possibility to be better than the average pop band (or what was the title of that band?).

I didn`t really know that this fellow already existed back in 1965 but it seems that Donovan may be older than I thought him to be. This album has only one song that I knew previously - a cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie`s "Universal Soldier" which is one of the best folk songs I`ve heard in my life and certainly among the most impressive anti-war messages of the 1960s. Other songs include the moody "Colours" which sounds as if Donovan was at least 50 when he sung it. The lyrics to it are kind of dumb "Blue is the color of the sky when we rise. That`s the time I like best." yet it`s still a damn good song. Overall this is a nice little album that sure had no chance to change the world for it doesn`t strike the listener momentarily but is a record of well recorded and well produced hippy/folk music. Of course, in terms of lyrics he`s no Dylan or Cohen, but at least his voice is more likeable than that of Dylan and he`s guitar playing is more advanced than that on Cohen`s records.

Films rarely get sillier than this one - the story that the film tries to tell is at least as senseless as that of "Scary Movie 4", yet this film supposedly is a serious horror movie and not a parody. It`s directed by Edward Wood who`s mostly famous as the hero in Tim Burton`s "Ed Wood". Mr. Wood is considered by many people the worse filmmaker of all times. And he truly tris to convince everybody that he deserves his status. The story goes something like this - aliens want to inform the Earth that if people don`t change they will annihilate the universe (a bit similar to "The day the earth stood still"). But since nobody listens to them, they decide that the best strategy to convince people of their seriousity is raising the dead and thus prooving their power. So they make three zombies that start killing people. In the end the aliens have to flee, of course. Actually I can`t really imagine that this film was meant to be serious. It`s such an incoherent mess with zillions of goofs, mistakes, cheap props etc. that it seems impossible that Mr. Wood didn`t do this film as some sort of a parody. Yet everyone claims that he wasn`t. This film truly is a must-see for it`s badness. Actually, the rating doesn`t mean that it`s good - for it`s worse than you can imagine, but it reflects the fact that I quite liked it, nevermind how godawful it was.

Talkin` about - pop music. Talkin` about - pop music. Can pop music have real artistic value, provide you with wide emotional experiences and even change your life? Unfortunately this album doesn`t fall into the long lasting category. On the contrary it`s primitive pop that every Mariah Carrey or Celine Dion could do with her tongue tied to the chair and her eyeballs covered in ice cream. Why do I say that? Because after listening to this album for like two and a half hours there just ain`t anything to tell about it. There are probably a few decent songs on this record, but more than that you can`t ask from it. It just has no reason to exist.

This is the first record of the legendary "Move" - a band so legendary, that it`s almost impossible to find its albums anywhere somewhere these days. Like almost every record of its era it`s full of hippy weirdness, flowers, love and rainbows (not gay rainbows though). From the opening track "Yellow Rainbow" there`s no doubt that this is sixties music indeed. But the next track "Kilroy Was Here" which reminds me of Styx isn`t trippy at all - it`s much more similar to the Kinks than to Donovan. "(Here We Go Round) The Lemon Tree" is a pop song that Manfred Mann could never record due to his lack of pop sensibility. "Flowers In The Rain" is once again a merry hippy song. Overall it`s really a very good album with very nice songs.

Actually I can`t really say that I`m much of a fan of Remarque`s work, although he`s a very strong novelist indeed. His writing manner in "Heaven has no Favorites" hasn`t changed much from his first novels - it`s clear and quite simple (which by the way isn`t typical for German literature), and in his essence Remarque isn`t much of a German really, relying much more on the French heritage than that of a German. I have no problems with that, of course, for I`d choose frog legs over sauerkraut any day you choose (well, I may be lying but who gives a damn). As for the story: Lilian stays at a sanatorium somewhere in Switzerland where she is slowly dying of tuberculosis but when she meets a car racer who`s come to meet his sick friend, she decides to spend the last months of her life living and not dying. So she does.

An action movie - at least it`s what it seems to be. What can I say? Most of it was nothing special, actually I didn`t find it that entertaining but towards the end it changed in the positive way. It sure ain`t that simple although characters are divided into black and white which doesn`t really appeal to me but that`s the case for most of the movies. Note on the overall rating: till something like 15 minutes before the end I was thinking to give it a 4 but at the end I found that it was not so bad after all.

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).