Lots Of Serious Crappy Films To Premiere At This Year’s Berlin Film Festival Starting Tomorrow

Or seriously crappy films, if you prefer.

Film snobs

The subjects will range from serious themes like obesity to the lack of health insurance, with a few gay priests and a little nuclear contamination thrown in here and there just to spice things down.

And in case you didn’t know, the Berlinale is known to be the most political (and therefore the most serious) of the three biggest European film festivals (Cannes, Venice and Berlin) and is also famous for including the sort of movies that aren’t necessarily considered, well, mainstream or easy to market.

You know, self-indulgent and arrogant cinematic art snob crap and art for art’s sake rubbish like that. So there we have it. Lights, camera… What’s the opposite of action again?

Wie schwer ist ein Goldener Bär? Wer ist der wahre Held der Berlinale? Wo steigt die beste Party? Alles, was Besucher des Filmfestivals wissen müssen – von A wie Ankunft bis Z wie Zoo-Palast.

Heino Schlägt Zurück!

Heino (himself), the avenging angel of German Volksmusik, retaliates.

Avenging Engel

Tired of being verarscht (spoofed) by everybody else in the German music industry (and just about everywhere else, for that matter), he has now begun a winter offensive by offending bands like Rammstein and Die Ärzte. By covering their songs, I mean.

They clearly never saw it coming. And word is they don’t like it. The Spießer (bourgeois squares).

Der Schlagerbarde singt die Lieder derer, die ihn bisher so gern verhöhnten. Aber wehren können sie sich dagegen nicht.

The Joys Of Aging

Helmut Berger starts out as Dorian Gray,

Dorian Gray

only to end up as Dorian Gray (the painting),

Helmut Berger

throwing in the sweat-drenched towel on day two of RTL’s Dschungelcamp (The Jungle Camp) in Australia.

“Das klingt jetzt blöd, aber ich bin auch nur’n Mensch.”

Well It’s Certainly Anti-Something

Whether the quotes below from Jakob Augstein (Der Spiegel) are anti-Semitic or not, you decide.

Jakob Augstein

One thing is for sure, though: If a German is not sure about which opinion is the “correct” one he is supposed to have, he takes a quick read through the Spiegel to find out.  These quotes represent mainstream thinking in Germany today.

“With backing from the US, where the president must secure the support of Jewish lobby groups, and in Germany, where coping with history, in the meantime, has a military component, the Netanyahu government keeps the world on a leash with an ever-swelling war chant.”

“Israel’s nuclear power is a danger to the already fragile peace of the world. This statement has triggered an outcry.Because it’s true. And because it was made by a German, Guenter Grass, author and Nobel Prize winner. That is the key point. One must, therefore, thank him for taking it upon himself to speak for us all.”

“Israel is threatened by Islamic fundalmentalists in its neighborhood. But the Jews also have their fundamentalists, the ultra-orthodox Hareidim. They are not a small splinter group. They make up 10% of the Israeli population. They are cut from the same cloth as their Islamic fundamentalist opponents. They follow the law of revenge.”

“The fire burns in Libya, Sudan, Yemen, in countries which are among the poorest on earth. But those who set the fires live elsewhere. Furious young people burn the American, and recently, the German flag. They, too, are victims, just like the dead at Benghazi and Sanaa. Whom does this all this violence benefit? Always the insane and unscrupulous. And this time it’s the U.S. Republicans and Israeli government.”

“Gaza is a place out of the end of times….1.7 million people live there on 360 sq. kilometers. Israel incubates its own opponents there.”

Try And Stop Me

Some ideas are so unoriginal that they’re almost original. But only almost. That’s why it’s time for something completely different (not) and “Dinner for One, or the 90th Birthday” on New Year’s Eve – in Germany. Yet again.

Dinner for One

Happy New Year!

It’s a German New Year’s tradition – an English-language TV sketch that has been broadcast more often than any other program. It will be 50 years old in 2013.

10 Years Of College Down The Drain

I mean 10 years of hilarious German-Afghan Police Academy high jinks!

High jinks

German officials have been training police in Afghanistan for a decade, but a visit to their training center in Mazar-e-Sharif creates major doubts about the effectiveness of the mission. Afghan police remain poorly prepared to tackle the mighty challenges they will face as Western forces withdraw. 

“What we want to achieve with the recruits is a change in mentality,” says a German instructor. “More team spirit, a better sense of community, more loyalty. More soccer, less buzkashi*.”

*Buzkashi is the Afghan national sport and is a game in which horsemen battle over a goat carcass.

The New York Times Must Be Hurting Even More Than We Thought

Wow. Front page material even (online): Cindy aus Marzahn herself.

Cindy aus Marzahn

An overweight 6-foot-2-inch Valkyrie of a woman in a pink velour sweatsuit, Cindy plays up the worst stereotypes of Germany’s contemporary version of the welfare queen. She wakes up at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and begins drinking. Her dream man, Enrico, stands 4-foot-10, weighs 375 pounds and works as a bouncer.

Critics call her act offensive, lowbrow and worse, mixing high-minded attacks on her with patronizing depictions of her supposedly benighted fans.

“I have Alzheimer’s bulimia,” Cindy likes to say. “I eat everything in sight and then forget to throw up.”