Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

I guess I can say that I read this book in attempt to find a better understanding of Japanese culture. So far I`ve been rather far from getting a clear idea what`s so cool about it. I mean - several horror movies and lots of books by Haruki Murakami (who`s very much west influenced, as you probably know) don`t actually do the trick. The essence of Japanese literature lies, of course, in books about samuraii and geishas. This novel by Nagai Kafu doesn`t speak much of the former but has the latter in the title. Actually, there`s not that much of geisha rivalry in this book - I guess it could be better described as series of events that were important in the life of a geisha. Komae is a 25 year old geisha (which is considered pretty old, by the way) who wants to find a good patron, or - that would be better - get married to a rich patron. She was married already once but her husband died and she had no other option but to return to her former profession. She finds such a patron she wants in her former lover Esigawa (I`m sure that`s not the correct name, I`m not very good remembering how everyone is called in Eastern works of art), but she doesn`t really want him, instead she also has an affair with a rather popular actor who likes her but doesn`t want to marry her, and marries a woman with a big wallet instead. The book is full of parallel stories that aren`t too close to the one of Komae, but I guess that`s no surprise in a book like this one. It`s pretty, but it`s pointless, perfectly flowing with my understanding of the beauty of Eastern art.

This book is supposed to be if not an equivalent to "100 years of solitude", then pretty close to that. In fact, it`s not bad but I didn`t like it at all. The book is a story of a German nobleman going to find the House of the Sun (also known as Eden and Eldorado). He is a man of a pure heart and of rather tolerable morals, yet in early 16th century such people weren`t really demanded. Oh, no, it was the time of Cortes and Lope de Aguirre (who I am familiar with from the Werner Herzog movie) who went to America in order to kill the natives and get lots of gold from them. In the spare time from killing and spreading the word of God there was always some time for raping the women and killing the hostages. Those were the days, my friend. Yeah, there are rapes, there are witch burnings, there are murders of whole tribes and extermination of villages in this book - you name it. Therefore I can`t really say that it was a pretty book. I have no doubt that it was rather realistic yet I`d be quite happy without reading it. Most of the characters are too creepy and too disgusting for me to be able to enjoy a book like this. On another note - this is surely the first time I`ve read a venezuelan book. For memory: the book is titled "The Moon of Faustus" for the following reason: Philipp von Hutten, the main character is warned by a seer named doctor Faust (the same character Marlowe, Goethe and others used and who was at least partly a historical person) not to go to America for he will find his death her on a night of full moon. This Faust is quite a fellow - he has sold his soul to the devil who now resides within his dog and he enjoys doing sodomic tricks with young boys. This doesn`t mean though that his vision is wrong. By the way most of the events in this book are historically accurate, which is no surprise for nasty things are usually true.

Now there`s one thing I can`t deny even if I want to - it`s that Duerrenmatt is one of my favourite writers of all times. He`s funny and he`s smart, he`s witty and his joke is never a fart. "Der Meteor" is an absurd story about a nobel prize winning writer who rises from the dead. The only problem for him is that he doesn`t believe in that. He only thinks that he`s gonna die very soon and comes back to the place where he once lived when he was young, thinking that it would make a good place to die. Yet he not only doesn`t die but drives many other people into graves - by scaring them for him being alive, by doing what they don`t want him to. He`s a real asshole so to say. "Dichterdammerung" is a really twisted play - it`s basically a play where we see a play being played on a stage in some low quality theatre. It`s a play about a nobel prize winning writer who is visited by a great admirer of his who has found out that in all the authors book he writes about killings he performs himself. This admirer of his doesn`t want no money he just wants to be able to follow the master and look at his work. Yet since the writer is famous only because everyone knows that he does murder people the admirer can`t succeed at his wish. I don`t even want to comment the high rating, for Duerrenmatt it usually goes without saying.

There`s this pattern that`s usually true for me: if a book in German is boring, it`s written by a real German. If it isn`t boring it`s either written by a Swiss writer or the writer has some Jewish blood. And if it is more than simply boring - the writer must come for Austria. Thomas Bernhard is considered a genius. Still I think that this book is unreadable. Apparantely the story goes like this - a fellow goes together with his father to visit some of the fathers patients (the father is a doctor) and stories about those patients are told. Still everything doesn`t flow at all but it just rots. The only part of the story I can remember from this book at the moment is the one about a man who had a huge collection of living birds and then he died and his brothers killed all the birds so they can stuff them. It took me several weeks to read these less than 200 pages and I fell asleep many times in the process.

Now this is what I call a strange film. Probably not as strange as "Mulholland Dr" but at least as strange as "Being John Malkovich". Albert Markowski is a nature supporter who fights for saving a marsh from it being destroyed by a big company. Still he can`t succeed by himself so he joins forces with Brad Stand of the Huckabees company which becomes the main force in saving the marsh. Albert isn`t sattisfied with his life so he hires a couple of existential detectives who would help him find the meaning of his life. He`s introduced to Tommy Corn - his "other" - together with whom he tries to learn how everything is connected. The male detective (played by Dustin Hofman) says that the universe is like a blanket where everything is different and still is the same. A strange film.

Jean-Luc Godard once again. This time it`s a crime movie about a man who kills a cop and wants to flee with his girlfriend from Parice to Rome. Most of the time he does very little for succeeding in his task though. The girl is a young American who works selling `New York Harald Tribune` on the streets of Paris and doesn`t really know if she loves Michael. Neither does she know who her boyfriend really is. Not that she cares when she finds out. The film may seem a bit odd and it`s just what it should be like. At least it`s much more entertaining than `My life to live` and a bit tighter structured. Although I don`t know yet why Godard is so obsessed with that Tribune newspaper which seems to appearing in most films of his. Yeah, Jean Paul Belmondo is the star of the film though I must admit that I don`t really like his fat lips. I know that it`s good for an Italian mafia person but does this look unpretty indeed.

Until the day I found this book on a library shelf I didn`t even know that there existed other works by Spoerl than `Die Feuerzangenbowle` which I had read in Latvian. It turned out that Mr. Spoerl was not only an author of comedies but also wrote something that could be described as essays but should be described as boring. Also there was a novel called `If all of us were angels` which is about some man who finds himself in trouble after he unexpectedly spent a night with a prostitute in Cologne. What stands out in the whole book is another novel I was unfamiliar with before - `The muzzle` is its title and it`s about an attorney who has to find the villain who put a muzzle on the emperors statue. What`s good about it - it`s that the attorney himself is the commiter of the crime but because of being completely drunk at the time he doesn`t recall nothing like that. Another novel `The gasman` tells about a Eastgerman dude who suddenly becomes rich after selling his suit to a stranger on a train. A last but not least there`s a honeymoon which actually is opposite to its title. Not a great book but not a disaster as well.

A few questions on the film remain unanswered, for example - why did I get an Italian of the film if it`s supposed to be in English? On the content of the film itself - it shows a few days in the lives of several people among whom is a revolutionalist named Mark and a secretary of a big company who runs away for no apparent reason named Daria. The plot is more than loose and pretty much nothing goes on most of the time, not even dialogue. Highlights include the scene where Mark gets arrested for talking too much and after being asked of his name replies "Carl Marx" and the police officer asks him about the way his name should be spelled; and the last few minutes of the film. I also liked the psychedelic plane. But overall `Zabriskie point` (btw. Zabriskie point is an existing location which I would love to visit at some time in my life) is not the most entertaining piece of filmmaking I`ve ever encountered.

I read it because of Donnie Darko. Nothing special to my humble oppinion. I found it rahter dull - except for the quote which certainly goes well with the movie:

Can a teen comedy be really silly? Sillier than simply silly? For example, is it possible that a film of more than 90 minutes which is supposed to be a comedy won`t make you laugh even once, and if a grin appears on your face it`s only to showcase how lame the film is? I guess it`s most certainly possible. And it`s even a thing likely to happen if the words "National Lampoon" appear somewhere near the title. The plot is of course really twisted - there are two girls named Dominique, one of them a French exchange student, another one a hooker, who get mixed up. There`s an undercover I don`t know who who`s mixed up with a girl from the dorm. There`s this black guy whos girlfriend comes to think that he`s cheating on her. To be frank - there is nothing but misunderstandings. And there are no funny jokes. At least there`s not even a single mutual joke - and that shows something. What else? The actors suck, and it`s no wonder since they aren`t particulary famous. The music? Was there any? I`m not really sure, but it wasn`t good at all. I don`t usually rate films like this particulary high, but in the high seas of lameness this film deserves being called an ocean. Even Jim Jarmush would make me laugh louder than this.