Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

I wonder why I read so much Remarque. After all he isn`t one of my favourite writers and I`m not even reading his books in German. But I also have to admit that this book is significantly better than "Himmel kennt keine Guenstlinge". The book is about a German journalist who has escaped from a nazi concentration camp and now is looking for a place for himself in the land of brilliant oportunities - the States. He doesn`t do particulary well, but he doesn`t do bad neither. The same can be sad about the book itself.

Does such a thing as the black sheep of the family exist in real life? I`m not so sure about that, but it surely exists in film and in literature. This film, for example, is about April who has been the black sheep of her family ever since her birth. She bit her mothers nipples when mom was trying to breastfeed her, she humiliated her brother and sister, she used drugs and stole things from home, never ever she did something good, she lived with a drugdealer, and now she invites the family over to thanksgiving. Since her mom has breast cancer, she decides that it may be her last chance to meet her daughter. April prepares to make a perfect thanksgiving meal at a perfect thanksgiving location, but almost everything goes wrong. Most of the time she`s running around looking for a stove, for hers has broken down. Her boyfriend at the same time is driving around doing nothing. The family also has its share of problems on their way to April, especially considering that everyone except for dad believes that the meeting is gonna be a disaster. And it is - when they see the crappy house in the strange neighborhood, and a scary black guy with blood all over his face turns out to be Aprils boyfriend they run away. But in the end contrary to logic, everybody still joins up and have a great time. This film is called a comedy, but some of its scenes remind much more of a drama. I liked Katie Holmes as April, so were Evette and Eugene (the black couple) really good, and the snobbish Wayne was also a character to remember. Most of the comic elements were memorable, but I didn`t finding the puking stuff very comic, especially since it was a cancer sick person who done that. The ending was very formulaic, and as for camera work - you could clearly see that this isn`t a big budget movie, and it isn`t meant to be a compliment.

Jim Carrey used to do mainly butt jokes and silly faces. Nowadays he`s a somewhat respected actor in dramas. Not that this film here was respected. Basically it was a real flop for Mr. Carrey. And I got to admit that among his dramatic works - "Eternal Sunshine", "Man on the Moon", "the Truman Show" this one is certainly the least interesting. On the other hand it ain`t that bad either. Peter Appleton is a script writer for B-movies who suddenly is blamed for being a commie (that happens in the beautiful 1950s era of McCarthyism). He loses his job, his girl, gets drunk and has a car accident after which he loses his memory and settles in a quiet little town named Lawson where the former director of the local cinema mistakes Peter for his son Luke who died in WW2. He becomes the local hero and even has Luke`s former girlfriend Adele back, still his mind is a time-bomb and the government is looking for him supposing that he`s a top level communist. This film really is somewhat similar to "Mr Smith goes to Washington" with the exception that Peter isn`t a real hero, but a man from the middle of the road. The whole flick is a bit too melodramatic and the ending is predictable, still despite this film going on for 2.5 hours I liked it, `cos commie hunt is an interesting subject in deed.

What the hell was that? I read about the half of the book and I couldn`t understand a single thing Grass was writing here. It seemed sick to me. I may be too plain and simple and my German may be terrible but you have to be kidding me if you consider this monstrosity readable.

A truly classy hard rock album. Great organ work and brilliant guitar playing combine to a record that Deep Purple wouldn`t shame to have recorded. Songs like "Death Walks Behind You", "Gershatzer" and "Tomorrow Night" deserve to be remembered for longer than they were remebered.

Monty Python`s Flying Circus wasn`t really about singing, but about sketches. Still in the fifteen years starting with the TV series until "The Meaning of Life" they created some beautiful music as well. Probably if it weren`t for the lyrics one wouldn`t care about these songs, although some of them are musically interesting as well. Let`s go through the highlights. "Always look on the bright side of life" is without a doubt one of the best optimistic songs about death, with some nice singing done by Eric Idle. "Sit on my face" is a military march with lyrics about oral sex, very patriotic indeed. "Lumberjack song" is cute, altough it starts a bit too slowly (quote: "I cut down trees, I wear high heels, suspendies and a bra, I wish I`d been a girlie just like my dear papa."), the way the choruses go bad when Palin sings about transvestitism is nice. "Penis song" gives different names for a cock, has close to no music accompanying the text. "Money song" is better than "Money makes the world go round" from "Cabaret". "Bruces` philosophers song" provides some unknown facts about philosophers drinking habit. "Medical love songs" is a romantic little piece about sexually transmissive diseases. "Every sperm is sacred" - how can one not laugh about catholics while listening to this great performance? "Brian Song" isn`t sung by one of the Pythons but the great film melody with the utter sillyness of lyrics provides a perfect combination of everything. "Meaning of life" is both deep and funny. "Galaxy song" doesn`t even need any commentaries. There`s only one major letdown in this compilation of 25 songs - it`s "Christmas in Heaven" which is boring and not particulary funny. But since the other 24 songs are in the category between good and superb I can just as well skip this disco crap.

Mūsdienās "Spirit" nevienam nav diez ko labi zināma grupa - un nav jau brīnums - cik daudz gan sešdesmitajos bija hipijiski noskaņotu rokeru. Taču ikviens vismaz 20 sekundes no vienas viņu dziesmas ir dzirdējis. Proti, fragments no šīs grupas dziesmas "Taurus" pārtapa par ievadu mega populārajai "Stairway to Heaven", līdz ar to vismaz kaut kādas zināšanas par šo grupu dažiem cilvēkiem ir arī mūsdienās.

Keith Moon is to rock music is as a a stark raving mad witch is to a medieval village. He`s loud, he`s proud, he`s drunk, he`s one of the greatest drummers of all times and, of course, he`s dead. Over his 15 years long career as a part of the Who Keith had earned himself a reputation of an unpredictable fellow with lots of boose and there`s no wonder that the same thing can be said about him on his sole album as an individual. He himself claims on a radio spot bonus on this record that "it`s one of the the brilliantly constructed album ever to come out of me", and he isn`t exterragating it by a bit. He also mentions that it could be also his first and last album as it also was, which is no surprise for a man of Keith`s lyfestyle. The record is an energetic barroom thing with lots of country music influences and terrible singing by Keith. He was a drummer and not a singer as you know. Out of the songs the real highlights are those that are included here as bonuses - I especially like "Naked Man". Here it`s not a problem that Keith can`t stay on key but there`s enough humour and groove to lift the song up. "I Don`t suppose" is the only emotional song on the record, although I gotta say that Keith isn`t exceptionally good even at reciting lyrics. In that case I`d prefer "Do Me Good" that a bit sounds like an early Ringo Starr song, which is no surprise, since RIngo has a lot of presence on this album and since Ringo and Keith had a lot of common drinking to do. I don`t suppose I`ll listen to this stuff much after this time but it`s bee a fun two hours with it and not every album can say that.

IMDB described it as similar to `Blade Runner`. Being a fan of the mentioned movie I was eagerly awaiting to prove that CofLC is nothing but a fluke. Amazingly it was not. What stood out the most in the film was the imagery - a future looking quite like the 30`s of the 20th century only with unproportinal amounts of pollution and weird places. The plot may seem silly on the paper but for a twisted form of a fairy tale it`s quite normal. A half crazy scientist creates lots of clones of himself (including one who consists only of the brain), one of the clones turns out to be evil (or stark raving mad, if it makes a difference). The crazy dude needs to kidnap children in order to try to suck out their dreams for he himself can`t dream. And the little brother Denree (not a physical brother thou) of the main character cleverly called `One` is among those children. One goes on a quest to rescue his brother. By the way, many sequences in the film look exactly as they were taken out from a quest. And I`m a fan of quests.

Ar šo Maksa Friša romānu pēc idejas man vajadzēja iepazīties skolas laikā, kur tas bija ieteicamajā ārzemju literatūrā. Neiepazinos un tikai vēlāk uzzināju, ka Frišs patiesībā bija patiešām izcils rakstnieks.