Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

It`s nothing but a documentary about the Monty Python comedy group as they do their latest (at that time) film called "Life of Brian". If you don`t know the film in question, you don`t know nothing. But still this documentary is interesting for itself - it has interviews with all 6 members of MPFC - they tell about how they came together, what they did after the end of the circus and what they do about this film. As one can certainly think all six of them (ok, probably five of them, if we count Terry Gilliam out who can only say "a bunch of water" or "it really pisses me off") are very intelligent fellows with a nice taste for satire and comedy (that especially goes for Michael Palin who ain`t the most satirical fellow around). Probably this film ain`t technically perfect but it`s funny, it`s interesting and we get to see a lot of probably the greatest British comedians ever.

I find it quite funny when on the back of this book it`s mentioned that Forster was a coeval of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and other great British writers. From a passage like this the reader might conclude that Forster was a revolutionary in the field of literature who has left a very serious legacy for the generations to come. In fact he seems to be just another leftist realist. Lydia has married into a wealthy high class English family but she doesn`t really belong there, especially after her husband`s death she seems to be misplaced there. The relatives of her deceased husband tell her what to do and how to do, but she isn`t really a smart person or a reasonable person. At one point she decides to go for Italy for a year, and nobody objects to that for in fact most of the nobles want her out of their sight. Yet when they learn to know that the widow of their beloved relative wants to remarry in Italy Philip, her brother in law, is sent to Italy on a rescue mission. Still he arrives late and Lydia has already married Gino - the son of a dentist, a man with no job and no prospects for life. But he doesn`t need a job or a profession - he has got a pretty face and now he`s also got a rich wife. Lydia doesn`t have much fun living with her new husband for it proves that Gino ain`t much better than the high class society, he locks her up in terms that she can`t walk alone, she can`t invite people to tea parties, and so she slowly fades and when she gives birth to a son she dies herself. After that the English family decides to take hold of the child for Lydias daughter from her first husband Charles takes interest in her baby stepbrother. Philip is sent to Italy once again, but this time his religious sister Heriette is taken along as well. They can`t persuade Gino to give the child away for money (nor does Philip really want to succeed) but then Heriette steals the child and accidentally kills it (for she`s about as good at handling children as I am at conducting classical opera).

This is a story you may be already familiar with if you watch Simpsons regularily. You know the episode when the schoolbus crashes and the children are swept to a desert island and have to eat each other in order to survive. Actually I supposed this would be much more gruesome than it was. Basically it`s just a story for the kids where some of the kids are killed by other kids and the lord of the flies (Beelzebub in old Jewish) is just a pigs head on a stick and the Beast is a dead parachutist. The novel mostly revolves around the conflict between the positive hero Ralph and the negative one Jack with the chubby Piggy thrown in the middle of it. The whole thing is full of metaphors of course but I don`t give a damn about that, I only care that this isn`t particulary interesting to read, therefore I can`t say that this is the best shit ever.

It ain`t the classic version of Time Machine from 1960, but this version was directed by a great-great-great-grandson of Herbert Wells. Not that it makes the film better or worse. But there`s certainly one thing about both of those films - filmmakers don`t follow Well`s vision about both Eloi and Morlocks not being particulary good. In this movie, for instance, Eloi allow Morlocks to use themselves as some sort of food only because Morlocks manipulate their minds. Whilst Wells had his vision about the working class living underground and transforming into some wild beings and the upperclass turning into upperclass twats with no brain whatsoever jumping around like bunnies and caring for nothing, those darned makers of film even let Eloi know common English and have the sign of "Tiffany`s". The hero loses his bride who`s killed by a robber and he creates a time machine to go back in time and save her, but she dies anyway and he understands that he can`t change the past but doesn`t understand why. So he goes to the future to have this question answered. Ultimately he ends up 800000 in the future in the world of Morlocks and Eloi (which have separated one from another after the Moon broke). The film has pretty good SFX, but apart from it it`s pretty flat, has quite a lot of plot holes in the size of a manhole, oh, and Morlocks look silly.

Back in the 1980s the Peppers were chilly indeed. They wore nothing but socks on their penises during concerts, they sang about how "Catholic Schoolgirls" ruled and they were the epithomy of being alternative in respect to everything you can imagine. Their decline as an alternative force began with "Under the Bridge" which was a perfect song for young romantic girls. I still believe that "Californication" was a very good record though, although it is a bit too poppy of course. With "Stadium Arcadium" the band tries to become a bit more artsy than it`s ever been. You wouldn`t expect a double album with titles "Mars" and "Jupiter" for each of the records to be a dumb record, or would you? WIth the Peppers you can never know. It doesn`t seem that this is any sort of a conceptual album but that`s not a thing I would expect from the peppers. Basically it`s ballads in the vein of that accoustic song on "Californication" - "Road tripping" and lots of funky beats on other songs. I have no idea whether Kiedis and company have any clues what they are singing about but that`s music for jumping around and not music for writing essays on Gertrud Stein`s influence upon Henry James. And now I would like to jump around the office. Yet since I can`t do that I`ll take my bike and go looking for a brand new cadillac. Not a cadillac maybe, but a used Ford or Opel, but who cares?

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.