Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Jack Black of the White Stripes joined up with a couple of friends and founded a new band that was supposed to be the greatest band in the history of rock bands. So the band recorded an album of merry songs, out of which I liked only the first ("Steady as she goes") and the last ("Blue Veins"). The rest is ok but not outstanding.

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.

Probably this wasn`t the concert of my live, but like that guy in "Life of Brian" said about crucifixion: "It could be worse. You could be stabbed." Emir Kusturica ain`t no virtuoso and Dr. Nelle sings about as good as I do, but that doesn`t make such a big difference. Like you know "Truth doesn`t make a noise". The selection of songs was pretty good, but the crowd was pretty bad because the show was marketed as a treat for the "intellectuals" but gypsy music with a rock`n`roll flavour and silly jokes isn`t exactly what you`d consider to be intellectual. The sound was awful as well. But who cares about that (except for my ears, but ears don`t fall into the "who" category). "It`s only rock`n`roll but I like it". That could be the message of the concert. Or it could be "Baba O`Riley" although I don`t know why.

I never thought this could happen to me. Come on baby, let me see. I`ve seen films by Woody Allen before but today he just knocked at my door. Everybody`s got something to hide except for me and my monkey. L-O-L-(a).

You probably know that a sequel rarely can challenge the original, it just can`t but "Ice Age 2" comes pretty darn close to the first part. The story is a bit of an incoherent mess, of course, with lots of things going on at the same time, yet I didn`t mind that - basically it`s just very much fun, perfect animation, funny characters and little time of "for your consideration" moments. Thumbs up, man! Yeah, Scrat rules mercilesly! I hope next time they pull of a cartoon entirely about that creature for he`s the god of all squirrels.

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.

This is surely the most controversial album Chumbawamba ever recorded. As a matter of fact it is that controversial that it wasn`t even officially released and ended up as "Sssh" with all samples cut out. The genre of the music can`t be described precisely - the content is punk without a doubt but the form has nothing to do with that. It`s pop and it`s rock, it`s dance music and it`s a bit of hiphop. It`s spoken word and it`s a capella. You name it, it is it. I like everything on this record but I can`t deny that some songs really do shine above the rest. "Look - no Strings" is nice, but the best of all is "Bigmouth Strikes Again" - partly a cover of a The Smiths song but in fact it has very little to do with the original. "Stitch it" is just magnificient.

This is a B cartoon, according to the budget, according to the participants and according to the animation. To be honest, during the first minutes of the cartoons they eyes just cringe - there`s very little polygons involved, models move in strange ways and the face of Little red riding hood is just awful. But when one starts to accept the visual style as "an artistic decision" the cartoon starts to improve. It has a rather interesting story about who and why crashed Granny`s house and who and why made all the candy makers leave the market. It involves Little red riding hood, Wolf the reporter, a x-sports performing Grandmother, an Austrian woodsman who drives "The schnitzel truck" and a group of detectives, one of whom is played by Xzibit. In the end it`s funny, if not particulary stunning to the eye. I`ve seen far worse cartoons with far bigger bucks involved, and I have no reason to dislike Hoodwinked just because "Shrek" had better animators.

This is a band that (as far as I know) hasn`t sold a single record, hasn`t recorded a single album in a major (even by Latvian standarts) studio, a band that`s only popular in very special circles. I personally found it in a web site where bands could upload some of their songs, so the world would have a chance to know them. The song that I listened to first happened to be "Pavasaris" and it totally stood out among all the crap that was on that site. Music was rather silly and vocals were sung/spoken in a particulary goofy manner. In short it`s quite similar to the legendary NSRD. The band itself claims that the kind of music it performs is called "depressive synth-pop", and it may be quite true. Some of the songs despite the low individual levels of musicianship rule totally. For example, the sad "About a crow" is both funny and catchy. "The Moonlight Sonata" has a good refrain. The opening "About a bear" is a bit dadaistic. I probably won`t be listening to this record for years and years and it won`t last as long as Depeche Mode in the field of synth pop, yet among most garbage Latvian musicians tend to offer to the listeners this is so untamed that I can`t just classify it as shit and forget about PK-25. I would really like to see them perform life, yet I doubt that it would be possible.

I`m not really sure whether I can call myself a particulary big fan of sitcoms, but I`m completely sure that I can call myself a big fan of John Cleese. Therefore a sitcom staring John Cleese is a must for me. In `Fawlty Towers` he plays a gotel owner who doesn`t have particulary strong nerves and who doesn`t have a particulary good relation with his wife. In episode one - "A touch of class" he has placed an advertisement in a newspaper for snobs hoping that some high class people will arrive to the hotel. He`s proven wrong when the only lord turns out to be a fraud. In "The Builders" Basil Fawlty doesn`t want to spend money for high quality workers and lets dumbasses ruin his hotel. "The wedding party" is probably the best episode. It has a young couple arriving at the hotel for their wedding but Basil with his stupid morality and suspicions ruins everything for himself, as he sees sex,sex, sex everythere (that`s all kids talk about nowadays). "The hotel inspectors" goes basically in a similar way to episode one - once again Basil mistakes a person for what it`s not. "Gourmet night" has the chef too drunk and no food for anyone. And "The germans" has germans arriving at the hotel and Fawlty speaking about the war, making them feel miserable. Cleese did this series with Conny Booth - his wife at the time - but the weird thing is that it isn`t Booth playing his wife, she plays Polly, the waitress/maid. There`s also a Spanish guy working at the hotel who speaks nearly no English, while Fawlty thinks of himself as Spanish speaking. I don`t mean to say that this ranks as high as the Flying Circus, but this TV series surely did have it`s charm, although particulary inventive it wasn`t.