But we’ll end up with this.
Although no Matterhorn, the rocky crags will be plenty for Berlin’s Alpine enthusiasts to scale.
Category Archives: High Art
Reality Show 2.0
David Lynch (OK, his son) interviewing randomly selected Germans about their randomly selected lives? This ought to make The Blair Witch Project look like Sesame Street.
But I guess that’s the idea behind “Interview Project Germany,” asking real people real questions and then really listening to what they have to say (for real). No bells, no whistles. Just the facts, ma’am. Oh the horror already.
“Viele Leute haben uns ihr Herz ausgeschüttet – manchmal hat es sich so angefühlt, als hätten sie nur auf uns gewartet.”
German Hostages Released in Iran Shortly After Which Iranian Film Takes Top Prize at Berlinale
Two German hostages have suddenly been released after four months of imprisonment in Iran.
Shortly after their release, an Iranian film took the top prize at the Berlinale.
I’m just sayin’, OK?
Jury president Isabella Rossellini said the choice of Farhadi’s film was “pretty unanimous.”
Hot Dog It Another Baader-Meinhof Film!
The Berlinale is always good for a surprize. But it’s always the same one: No surprizes.
How original, sort of. Hopeless romantics that they are, politically correct Germans everywhere will be as enamored as they should be in this latest “political love story” about (with?) the RAF, “If Not Us, Who?”
Specifically, it’s about two fine young terrorists who fell in love, made love and then went on to become key figures in that wacky and fun-loving leftist group that carried out a bloody campaign of kidnappings and murders in the 1970s. You know, kind of like the Manson clan only, this being Germany, their madness was more political?
It’s a film that wants us to truly understand these folks with, I dunno, understanding, understanding how their political consciousness arose, with a special emphasis being placed on the conflict between the Nazi and postwar generations–an aspect that has never ever, ever been addressed here in this country before, ever, not once, honest. In other words, they were the victims (again).
Be sure to see it. It’s so… Political. And Romantic with a big R. If it doesn’t win the Golden Bear than… If not them, who?
Ghost of Madonna Haunts City
Her career having died long ago, residents of Berlin, of all places, have for several nights running found themselves subjected to a series of ghostly encounters with the ethereal non-being of “the Queen of Pop.”
One visitor to the Asphalt Club became terrified when she accidentally captured a ghostly apparition that resembled a woman dressed in black on her phone’s camera. The incident happened while snapping images of herself in a mirror in the lady’s room. When she returned home later that morning, she viewed the pictures and was stunned to see the gruesome phantom in one of the frames, clearly recognizable as Madonna, circa 1993.
Other witnesses saw the spooky specter wandering aimlessly along Potsdamer Platz, accosting bystanders and asking them if anyone had seen her “baby,” twenty four-year-old boy toy Brahim Zaibat.
No one can explain why the brazen banshee is here right now and no one can say for sure just how much longer these hideous visions can last, but one zombie expert here believes that once this year’s Berlinale is finally over, this Spuk, as the Germans say, too shall pass.
“Good European pieties and delirious anti-American phantasms”
It’s all here. Ya gottcha European Film Academy Awards, your European Director, your European Screenwriter, your European Actor, your European Composer, your European Production Designer and even your European Oscar, all right here in Europe. Financed primarily by Germany, of course (where all the shots get called these days), but still. Germany is part of Europe too, you know.
Now all you need is your appropriate inappropriate European Film with your suitably anti-American fantasy exposing that country for the “fundamentalist totalitarian state” it is (as put so diplomatically by European Film Academy Presidente por Life Wim Wenders–he’s a European too, by the way) and the recipe is complete.
So this year’s wiener (or is it weiner or even whiner?) is: Roman Polanski for “Ghost Writer.” It’s the heart-warming story of an Iraq War-related assasination of a CIA-controlled US-Amerikan imperialist Tony Blair robot or puppet dude, take your pick he’s both (I knew I always liked that guy for some reason).
Gee, I wonder who got the Best Foreign Language Film Language European Oscar Award this year? I’m going to go way out on a limb on this one and say German.
German-funded “European” film prize goes to German-funded anti-American film.
Thanks for the link, Joe.
These guys sure can dance
Ugly, I mean.
They have that certain something, or something. Otherwise they wouldn’t have just won the 2nd annual Ugly Dance World Cup in Hamburg.
“Dafür haben wir lange nicht geübt, das sollte reichen.”
Turks beat Germans
In what was sure to have been one turkey of a show, Turkey beat Germany last night on a SAT .1 TV duel game show thingy. Sorry I missed it (not).
Damn. No sooner does German President Christian Wulff assert that Islam “belongs” in Germany than the Turks get all uppity and whoop everybody’s butt.
“Was die Show, außer den Kandidaten, mit den beiden Nationen zu tun hatte, blieb weitgehend schleierhaft.”
Greenpeace stages atomic art happening
Approving stuff in Germany is always problematic. Disapproval is almost always vorprogrammiert (preprogrammed). That’s why when the German government made clear its intention to extend the country’s use of nuclear power, everybody adhering to the ideological requirements of korrekt German Green thinking disapproved–and that’s a whole lot of folks too.
But at least the Greens at Greenpeace got a little creative about it this time (or as usual?). Protesters projected images with the slogan “atomic power damages Germany” onto the side of several of the country’s nuclear reactors. As far as I can tell, their reason for doing this was to explain to everybody that atomic power damages Germany. Not that they didn’t already know this, the main thing was that this was an Aktion. You know, one of those “happening” thingies?
And I don’t do art so I had to look it up: “A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered as an art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere (from basements to studio lofts and even street alleyways), are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience.”
Multi-disciplinary? Does that mean they’re gonna get in trouble for doing dis? Nah.
Die Atomkraftwerke in Deutschland sollen im Schnitt 12 Jahre länger am Netz bleiben als nach dem bisherigen Atomkonsens.
Fake fakes not the original fakes
Konrad Kujau is the only original in this story, folks. Remember him? He’s the forger who authored those hilarious Hitler Diaries way back when. You know, the ones with the wrong initials on the cover?
Anyway, a woman in Dresden claiming to be his great niece has topped him, sort of, by having been given a two-year suspended sentence for forging his (the forger’s) signature on forgeries of masterpieces that weren’t forged by him (they were Asian import forgeries) and then selling them for the genuine amount of €300,000.
Though clearly marked as fakes, Kujau’s newfound fame meant that people were willing to pay up to €3,500 for his work.
Observing Hermann 