Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

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.

Another musical has been seen through my eyes. It`s a romantic one, wouldn`t you know. Actually, every musical I`ve seen apart from "Jesus Christ Superstar" has been a love story. And this one is more a musical than most musicals - it`s about making a musical. Some parts of it are pretty cool - for example, when the main character jumps around in puddles or jumps on a lantern, but something like one hundred minutes of it is certainly too much.

If I should believe what They say it`s the last hand-drawn Disney cartoon ever. Not that there`s no computer animation in this cartoon. The plot goes around three cows trying to catch a villain in order to get the reward money for the saving of their farm. On their quest they team up with a silly horse named Buck and an unlucky one footed rabbit. You don`t need to be a rocket scientist to guess, if the ending was happy. Therefore let`s conentrate on everything else. The plot is ok for a wide audience cartoom, I would probably prefer a bit of adult humor, but if there`s none I don`t mind it that much. The voices are also in order, although the cast is nowhere as spectacular as in Shrek, but it`s not a big problem. What I didn`t like was the animation - I`m not a huge expert of Disney cartoons but this is certainly far from the best level of animation I`ve ever seen. The cows themselves are ok, but not more than that, pigs are absolutely silly, the background images aren`t too impressive as well. I guess it`s a good thing they gonna move completely to CGI, of course, if it`s gonna be inspired CGI.

I`m a real sucker for everything each of the MPFC members did. And how could I possibly forget to watch occasionally every of the films they did all together? Especially knowing that "Life of Brian" is my favourite film of theirs. Some people say it mocks Jesus, but actually it only mocks people that say that it mocks Jesus. Brian from Nazareth was born in a cowshed some 10 metres away from the real Messiah and at some stages of his life was mistaken for being one. He was just a normal patriotic Jewish fellow, who didn`t want to be no Messiah but who wanted to free Jerusalem from Romans. Every single scene in this film is a classic, starting with the three wise men and ending with crucified men singing "Always look on the bright side". I can`t even describe how great this film is, because otherwise I would need to quote the whole film. The late Graham Chapman is Brian, every other MPFC member plays a whole carriage of different roles, even Terry Gilliam who ain`t particulary talkative as you know. Anyhow if you haven`t seen this film you haven`t lived and you won`t know where your father put the little things that somehow get lost just the night before.

For most people Paul Simon is still the same Paul Simon that wrote "Bridge over Troubled Water", "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson" and other timeless classics that his old mate Art Garfunkel would perform with his voice of an angel. Still there are some other people who would know that Simon&Garfunkel ceased to be an exceptional musical duo more than 35 years back only to have several reunition concerts but that Simon never had an angelic singer for his songs anymore. That didn`t stop good ol` Paul from hitting it on the spot with his solo album "Graceland" in the 1980s. After that he`s remained in the shade most of the time, releasing world music or no music at all most of the time, and here: "Surprise!" he`s returned with an album of bran new songs and this album is wisely called "Surprise!!!" So, there may be no exclamation marks at the end of the title but who cares about such unsignificant details anyway? The album kicks of "How Can You Live in the Northeast" which has verses that almost make one cry (well, maybe I`m overdramatizing the effect, but as if you would know) and a rather optimistic chorus that could have also been found on a minor track on "Graceland". "Everything about it is a love song" is a song with heavy beats and close to no melody, reminding me of some songs on Sting`s "Brand new day". "Outrageous" is much more energetic, performed in a bit rapping manner and a chorus asking "Who`s gonna love you when your looks have gone?" On "Sure Don`t Feel like prayers" I have nothing to say. "Wartime prayers" is a war ballad. "Beautiful" is simple and beautiful. I believe that "I don`t believe" doesn`t sound much like Paul Simon. Meanwhile "Another Galaxy" would have been a typical song for a Paul Simon from another galaxy. "Once upon a time there was an ocean" is one more "Graceland" kind of song reminding of that hit he had together with that comic fellow. Maybe it has to do with Paul`s very limited singing voice that restrains him to singing about two or three different songs most of his life. On "Father and daughter" I think that I better like Paul when he performs those songs from Graceland, there`s nothing I dislike about that song, but there ain`t much to like about it either. Last but not least "That`s Me" is a song about Paul Simon that sounds like a real Paul Simon song, which it is, of course.

This is a film about a conspiracy theory, therefore I am completely aware that what the film claims to be absolute truth may be based upon misinterpratations of facts so they would comply to the message of the theory. Therefore I can not say that what Loose Change tells is close or any close to truth. What it presumes to be true is that the Attacks of 9/11 were initiated by the United States government in order to start a holy war. They show different videos, people`s quotes and other stuff to support the theory. On one hand I can see that lots of this stuff isn`t really solid, yet neither is the official position of the government. As a person with little belief in the greater good in people I can`t say: "The government would never do that to it`s people!" Yet I also wouldn`t believe entirely to Dylan Avery`s version, for I guess it would be much easier to let a thing like this happen and do nothing about than doing it yourself, including starting major cover-ups in a case when it would cost much less money simply saying to some Bin Laden fellow: "By the way, Os`, you probably know that our defence system against hijacked planes flown into buildings isn`t particulary strong." At least it`s what I`d do, or if were even lazier - I`d wait for Osama to come up with the plan himself and just sit on my lazy butt while everything happens. As a serious statement the film isn`t particulary serious, for there was too little resource involved in that, yet I can`t agree that this was interesting to watch.