Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

First, let me put it out clear, why I decided to take this book from a public library - the title about escaping into a piano seemed to promise a bizarre tale not making very much sense - and it`s what I like in books. Later it proved though that there`s nothing strange about the book - it`s written by an old Austrian female writer and tells a story of a man who leaves his native Czechoslovakia because of the comming of the communist regime. Is it innovative? You gotta be kidding me - there`s that fictional writer who hears the story of Jirzi`s life and writes it down in the most casual manner one has ever experienced. Does it keep ones attention? At least partly, for the book is certainly good written but there are no big revelations comming up. What about the piano? Jirzi`s family owned a piano fabric once and he himself was keen on playing piano and did it in all his wanderings around the globe - slaughtering rabbits in Australia, cleaning a hospital in the States, living in a monastery in the USA, learning to become a priest in Rome, being a priest in Texas, retiring in Austria and finally visiting his homeland after the fall of the communism. And to give my final word - it`s one of those books that you read and later don`t remember a single thing about them.

Audray Hepburn is what we get here, although all those young thin actresses look pretty similar, but that`s not the worst - I`m absolutely unable to tell different male actors from the fifties-sixties-seventies one from another, especially in American films. Most of the leading actors look like Roger Moore, the Bond man, some of them are older, some of them are younger, but they have the same hair style, they wear the same clothes and quite often are the same character indeed only under different circumstances. But nevermind my attitude towards that kind of films - Breakfast at Tiffany`s is indeed a nice comedy/drama with more of the former to it, that tells about a young woman who wants to marry a rich man but falls in love with a writer with no money who is some sort of a gigolo. "Cabaret" comes to my mind, hell, Paul even looks like that guy from `Cabaret`. Here we go again. There`s a nice cat in this picture, there`s mafia, there`s a ring from a box of cracker-jacks that gets engraved at Tiffany`s, a nice romantic film indeed. What should I say to put it down? Not to be watched in a strictly male company (consisting of more than one person), but it ain`t no bad thing at all.

Oh my God, for the first time I`m rating a piece of Latvian creation. It`s a double LP by my favourite Latvian band. The impression on the record is somewhat divided - while the first disc consisting of self penned material is pretty good - songs like "Don`t Forget", "Disaster" or "Lullaby" could fit on an album by a major band (those wouldn`t be the best songs on such a record but anyhow) but the disc of cover tunes is mostly a dissapointment. For example, why would anyone bother to cover `Hero` by Enrique Iglesias or (sic!) "You`re my heart you`re my soul" by you-know-who. And what is a total disgrace - it`s the cover version of `Cocaine` by J.J.Cale (falsely credited to John Cale in the liner notes) which is turned into a silly disco piece of garbage. "These boots are made for walking" are ok, but not as good as the version by Megadeath. "Don`t worry be happy" is not relaxed at all. The only highlight on the second disc is "Cecilia" by Simon & Garfunkel which sounds really fresh and energic. There are also two songs by Beatles on the covers disc but neither "Rain" nor especially "I`ve Just Seen a face" sound good on here.

Somewhere I found out that this was a film that said the same things that `Beware of a Holy Whore` did but in a better way. Since I didn`t really understand what that Fassbinder movie was about it seemed a natural choice (!) to watch this film here. It`s by Allain Resnais and tells a story of a man who tries to persuade a woman that they`ve met a year ago and that they were something like lovers. What I didn`t get, why is the supposed place of their meeting Fredrichsbad while the title says Marienbad. It`s not very clear which scenes happen in the past, which in the present, and which don`t happen at all. Changes of cameras from one location on to another while the same phrase goes on and the situation is still the same are quite interesting. There`s a third man present (not to be confused with that `The third man` film) who is probably the woman`s husband (by the way, characters don`t have names around here). Though the woman is played by Delphine Seyrig (I know her from `The Discreet charme of... ` by Bunuel where she plays one of the bourgeoise women). Overall the film would get maximum points for the idea, while it was by no means a very entertaining film.

It is very highly praised, not only because it`s directed by Clint Eastwood but mainly because of the leading actors - Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon. To be frank the film is not much more than a Crime movie (a detective so to say) although to some people it seems to be more than just that. As three kids play in the streets one of them gets abducted by pedophiles and his life never becomes the same. As a matter of fact, he`s not the only one affected by that. Many years later one of them who by that time is a retired criminal loses his daughter who`s shot under strange (not really) circumstances. One of the two former boys is a cop who works on the case, while the other one is the prime suspect. I`d lie if I would say that the film was no good, but one thing ruined it from becoming a long-time favourite of mine - and it was the ending which I found to meaningless and a bit dull.

A island somewhere in the ocean gets partly destroyed and some of the celebrities of the music world participate in a benefit concert for the already mentioned island. Featuring are Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Mark Knopfler, Phil Collins, Elton John and Carl Perkins. What is my impression of that? First, the concert is a bit boring - not that it is such a surprise that a benefit concert lacks real energy. About the participators: Clapton is technically advanced as usually but the way he treats `Layla` can not be approved by me. Macca has never been a good live musician and he hasn`t become better while getting old. Mr. Knopfler is just not my kinda of musician, which can be also said about Phil Collins. Elton John does his usual piano stuff and is not too bad with it. Last but not least - Carl Perkins performs - guess what! - `Blue Suede Shoes` and is surely better that I expected him to be.

"Once there was a king of Paris, there once was an emperor of Brazil...." This is a song by Roger Waters, and it has absolutely nothing to do with this film. Ok, there once was a high rabbi of Prague but it still has nothing to do with the higher mentioned song. When the king of the land -I guess it must have been the Austrian emperor told that jews needed to leave their gheto in medieval Prague, the rabbi created a monster from clay that became the servant of jews and their protector from the emperor. This golem was running on a chip inserted into his body - that rabbi was one cool dude, if he knew that much about chips in the middle ages! But there was a problem - his daughter`s secret admirer and probably even a stalker didn`t like that she made love to an emperors servant and he unleashed the golem upon him. Everything would be good, except for the servant, if there wasn`t such a thing that after he had completed his work the golem should have been never used for otherwise he could go berserk. And that`s just what he did. But as you could guess in the end it was still possible to turn that damn thing off, and lock it away. Oh, I almost forgot - the film is not only black&white but also silent, and if it was running on the same frame speed like modern movies it would have been one hell of a bore, but for a silent film it`s still fairly consistent.

Under normal conditions I probably wouldn`t watch a film like this one. But being alone in a London hotel room and having very little to do - little choice of TV, little to read and nowhere to go - I said: why not watch "Hollow Man" which was running on TV at the time. First, I must admit that I didn`t see the beginning of the film (it may have been quite a significant part in terms of minutes), but I guess, that I saw enough. Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) is a scientist that becomes invisible, and being invisible he slowly goes mad and starts attacking the people who were responsible for his becoming invisible. The special effects in the film were really good, that`s for sure but everything else didn`t really live up to it (and I didn`t have expectations set low at the beginning because I had no expectations at all). What was wrong? First, I maybe missed it in the beginning but this Caine person somehow had something similar to super powers - he succeeded very vicious attacks (although his male opponent was also made of something similar to steele), he wasn`t even hurt when he had been burning for a few minutes, etc. The reasons for him becoming mad - Linda had a boyfriend but he wanted to be her boyfriend, so he started killing everyone. As you can guess Linda and the other fellow were the only two to live this mayhem. Actually there`s nothing more to add, except that the film was quite boring to watch, very predictable and a bit silly. Although it`s probably just me who doesn`t like this kind of films

By reading this I continued my acquaintance with the genre of memoirs. I gotta admit that reading diaries and letters of a person that you don`t already know by its work seems a bit weird. I haven`t read a single poem by Byron, that`s for sure. On the other hand I`ve read a few books about people interested in Byron ("Arcadia" by Stoppard and "The luxury of exile" by L.Bass are the first two works to come to my mind). As for this book it can probably by described as a novel in letters although it surely ain`t no fiction. Lord Byron himself can be seen this way without all those exterragations historians have put upon him. Basically he was a fine young upper class fellow without much money and with his mind set on women and adventures. In his letters to his friends he`s quite honest and sarcastic, his letters to his lovers don`t come off as particulary honest but probably he meant what he wrote (at least during the writing and probably some ten minutes afterwards). Byron`s travels and the self-chosen exile for the most of his adult life can be understood pretty well. Without a doubt I don`t claim that this book is particulary interesting to read - the witty passages where Byron pokes fun at some of his contemporaries or the times when he tells funny stories in his diaries are a treat but some of the stuff only for biographers isn`t particulary what I want from a book.

Pārēju pie otrā diska jaunajā Veitsa ierakstā, šeit apkopotās dziesmas ir daudz mierīgākas un mazāk dusmīgas nekā pirmā diska saturs un no tām viena ir jau iepriekš bijusi ļoti populāra - "Little Drop of Poison" atrada savu vietu otrajā Šrekā un arī šeit šī dziesma izceļas ar savu pēc Veitsa standartiem "nopulēto" skanējumu. Ja salīdzina ar pirmo disku, tad šis izklausās ievērojami vairāk pēc retro, tā piemēram, "You Can`t Hold Back Spring" lieliski varētu mitināties arī kādā 30-to gadu ierakstā. Izcelšu manā skatījumā skaistākās šī krājuma dziesmas. "Long Way Home". "Little Drop of Poison". "Shiny Things". "Never Let Go". "If I Have To Go". "Goodnight Irene". "Take Care of All of My Children". Arī šajā diskā atradusies vieta vienai Ramones dziesma koverversijai - "Danny Says", tomēr tas man šķiet kaut kā mazliet slimi - koverēt Ramones balādi, tā grupa tomēr ne jau ar balādēm savu reputāciju izpelnījās, bet ar "Now I wanna sniff some glue" stila kompozīcijām. Kopumā šis ieraksts ir tuvāks "klasiskajam" pirmo albūmu Veitsam, nekā trakajam 80. gadu maniakam, dziesmām varbūt nav ne vainas, bet manā skatījumā tomēr te retro ir pārāk daudz, vienkārši prasās pēc kaut kā dzīvāka.