D.Moore

Ivan Mládek is also known (unfortunately) for the fact that the longer the lyrics he writes, the worse they are. Imaginative rhymes appear only occasionally in them, most of them have filler like "we have - we give" and the like. And just like with the lyrics, this time it's the same with his script. Seventeen minutes is simply too much for a slapstick in which embittered men, whose wives have been taken over by officials from Prague, sabotage various sports disciplines out of anger. Imaginative? Yes, for example, releasing a pond during an eight-man race or a hot air balloon obstructing ski jumpers are really great moments. And the music is also a pleasure. But a good half of the film is boring.

One star is for Johnny Cash, while the second is for the fact that even though the film has 100 minutes of talking, and you don't get the feeling that it's just idle chatter, but strangely enough, it's about something... And the third star is again for Johnny Cash. Willie Nelson as Doc Holliday? It's not as bad of a ridiculous joke as it may seem (if you don't mind that there's no physical resemblance between Doc and Nelson, you can enjoy his successfully dry lines quite a bit). And given the cast, the film (understandably) has a very decent country soundtrack, for which I'd like to give it a fourth star. However, characters like the prostitute (and the other woman) were so terribly unnecessary that it's not above average. But it is a nice spectacle.

Season 1: It started promisingly, actually more than promisingly... Two sympathetic heroines, one a female version of Bernard Black and the other a more sympathetic version of Paris Hilton. Fresh and novel humor, a large number of allusions, the divine horse Chestnut, the vigorous cashier Earl and the ambiguous chef Oleg. Add to this a goal for the future, i.e., to make money and start a private bakery... Really great. But then came episode fifteen and with it Sophie, a character I would murder someone for. And worst of all, the show probably won't get rid of her and the matron will become more and more "important". I take off the originally intended fourth star for her and for the end of the series, which was not special at all for being spread over two episodes.___Season 2: I’m not adding a fourth star, because the evil named Sophie has intensified and is much more unbearable than in the first season. It’s too bad, because otherwise it's really quite a fresh show.___Season 3: Unfortunately, the third season is even weaker than the previous one. The humor rides on a rather expected, simple and cheap wave, the episodes don't really have any connecting story, like in the first series making money to open a shop, plus the unbearable Sophie and the change in Czech dubbing, which makes both heroines sound like geese. I'd give the first season four stars, the second three, and this one two. So, on average, it amounts to three.

Somewhere in the universe, a huge psychedelic sun is shining with rainbow colors, around which various planets orbit. From one of them surely comes the banana Daniel Nekonečný, from the other the unidentifiable Jana Kratochvílová... And from another Björk. This recording of her Paris performance was my first encounter with the latter. I'm probably closest to the truth if I say that I'm mesmerized by it. The first two songs seemed very strange, the eyes and ears of a completely unprepared person with insomnia experienced a real shock, but they gradually got used to it. I noticed how about a thousand musical styles intermingled with each other, how the little person on the stage was full of energy, how she could win people over. I was also impressed by the colorful show full of lights and costumes, the brass instruments... It was a great spectacle. However, I didn't really find out if Björk can also sing because of the super-sized set, which is a pity.

Quite a useless piece of work, the best moment of which is “Ty české panenky" in a riveting performance by my favorite researcher Miloň Čepelka. I would have expected that the Cimrmanologists would have added at least a few new discoveries for such a festive occasion, that we would get something extra, for example, and that before each aria we would learn who sang it in Cimrman's Prose, how many times, when, why and for how much. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Instead, I saw a strange recyclate of Hospoda na mýtince, in which the music was often downright distracting. And I was also unpleasantly struck by Jan Svěrák's direction, which completely ignored the comings and goings from the stage, reveled in shots from the other end of Smetana Hall, and I always had no choice but to wait for the cut to find out who had just arrived in front of the audience. I would also say that it would be equally appropriate to give the title of each piece and the name of the composer who stole it from the master at the beginning of the piece. I give it two and a half stars.

I was looking forward to Clownwise from the moment I found out it were being made, and I'm so glad it didn't disappoint me in any respect. The story is a beautiful combination of tragedy and comedy, and the actors act masterfully (the masked and venomous Jiří Lábus, the perfect non-acting Oldřich Kaiser, the two French actresses - especially Kati Outinen - and their colleague Didier Flamand). The whole thing is very well filmed not only by the standards of domestic film, but also thanks to Ostrouchov, with the help of long shots and all sorts of camera angles, and the script shows the great and difficult life experience of Boris Hybner... Clownwise is literally like life, I guess. For a while it moves you, for a while it entertains, for a while it slows down and makes you think. In short, this a beautifully sad and balanced film that can also warm you up. However, I can't believe it last two hours.

If The Red Balloon was filmed today, we'd probably see a giant scene at the end quoting any action blockbuster, with dozens of balloons taking subtle revenge on a bunch of insidious guys... And you know what? I might have liked that ending better. The original ending was pretty boring. Just like the good ten minutes that preceded it. However, for a quarter of an hour after the opening credits, I was amazed and tried to discover what special effects the filmmakers had actually used to achieve all this. I haven't figured it out.

With the passage of time, the very American and completely unnecessary introduction "I'll pack my photo, talk to my wife about the kids, and we'll say goodbye" started to bother me more and more, and so I'm removing one star from the original five. However, it's still true that Hanks' performance (yes, especially the ending in the care of the doctors) makes Captain Phillips into a near flawless spectacle. Almost. The tension could be cut, the pirates are deliciously unpredictable characters, Paul Greengrass draws you into the plot like few others... It doesn't matter at all that (except in the older Greengrass films, for example, as in Singer's Valkyrie) you know how it turns out. And I like Henry Jackman's soundtrack even after listening to it on its own, but it’s just unfortunate that it’s so Zimmer-esque, especially at the end.

Pacific Rim got a second chance from me and turned out much better. First of all, it was funnier, which is what I missed so desperately the first time. So why is that? Perhaps due to the original sound with Czech subtitles, without dubbing that seems to be from a deadly serious B-movie? Perhaps because I already knew what to expect? It's hard to say. Anyway, this time I enjoyed the big metal monsters hitting other big monsters, the action seemed bombastic and lightened in the right moments (Newton's swing), the main characters were likable, the toy atmosphere was palpable. I'm looking forward to the second film (and just yesterday I wouldn't have expected to write something like this about this particular film).

By the end, I was fidgeting a bit, but that was due to the movie theatre seat - otherwise I can say almost without exaggeration that I watched the film version of Burning Bush without moving for almost three and a quarter hours. That's how haunting I found this extraordinary work, and still do a day later. Of course, seeing the series version, pretty much one episode at a time, maybe (and that’s a big maybe) some of the flaws would show up, because perhaps I would have time to notice them. But this way the film didn't give me a single pretext. The actors, the script, direction, set design... Everything at a very high level. The first third was the best, but the rest was definitely not a disgrace to the film. I give it five of the purest stars.