German Filmkunst in action

I don’t know what to believe. Is Germany the great film-making nation we all think it is because of this guy?

Or is it maybe less of this great film-making nation because of this “worst director in the world” guy here? I’d say it’s both, maybe, or neither, although it’s hard to say for sure.

Sure, Alexander Freydank may have received the Academy Award last night for Best Short Film for his 14 minute long Spielzeugland (Toyland), but Uwe Boll got an award, too. He got this year’s Golden Rasberry for the worst directing for, uh, well, for directing everything he his been allowed to direct so far.

Personally, I love trash films, whatever the language, whether they’re the worst foreign types or not, so leave Uwe Boll alone you elitist cinimatic snobs, you. And so what if he’s “the Teutonic twerp (Eumel) of world cinema”, there is obviously an audience for that kind of stuff, and I’m probably sitting in it. In the audience, I mean. Haven’t had the pleasure to see one of these Boll productions yet, though. I will, though. Or I’ll wait for the book to come out.

“Alles, was Boll mache, sei einfach scheußlich.”

It’s always 80 percent here

February 22, 2009 By Hermann Observer in Hate Leave a comment

Some 80 percent of Germans polled by Die Welt have welcomed the talks that just took place between Mr. Teflon former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Iranian President Mahmoud the Moody Ahmedinijad themselves, in Tehran, in Iran, in the official land of Holocaust denial, right before Ahmedinijad’s bid for reelection.

It’s always 80 percent plus approval here if it has anything to do with Schroeder. He is the guy that said no to America before America ever asked (Iraq), for instance (that was a reelection issue, too, by the way), and he is single-handedly seeing to it that Germany keeps getting all the gas it needs. From Russia, I mean, from his buddy ex-President current-Czar Vlad the Glad Putin.

Is there anything wrong with this picture? Nope, not in Germany there isn’t. When were 80 percent of those asked here ever wrong? Even when they weren’t asked, I mean.

“Nur das Auswärtige Amt schweigt.”

Andrea K.

February 21, 2009 By Hermann Observer in Hotness Tags: Andrea Kempter Leave a comment

Beautiful German of the week.

Because somebody has to admire them.

PS: Sprechen Sie Dumb Deutsch??

Limp, limper, am limpsten

February 20, 2009 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes Tags: NATO 1 Comment

Or lame, if you prefer. What some are praising as an impressive and welcomed response by Germany, others are clearly less than impressed. Germany will be sending litterally, uh, hundreds of new troops to the northern reaches of Afghanistan in the coming months while US forces in that country will be beefed up another 17,000.

Wasn’t everything supposed to be better after Obama? “The message (from Washington) is that it is a new administration and is prepared to make additional commitments to Afghanistan. But there clearly will be expectations that the allies must do more as well,” US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters the other day. He was basically asking for a few of NATO’s so-called Rapid Response Force (NRF) troops, which have never been used, of course.

And this is Germany’s response to the new message coming out of Washington? Like other European countries who have announced to send additional troops to Afghanistan, Germany will send hundreds, not thousands. And none of them are destined for combat with the Taliban, either.

And to top it off, Germany insists that the NRF should not be used for Afghan duty at all. “The NRF should not be used as a reserve,” German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said. “The NRF has fundamentally different tasks.” Yeah, like being kept on reserve in Europe, I guess, forever.

“US officials have long been frustrated by European reluctance to make new long-term troop commitments to the Afghan mission and Gates said it was unlikely that large increases would be forthcoming anytime soon.“

Low point, high point, what’s the point?

February 19, 2009 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy Tags: Investor confidence 3 Comments

Germany’s Ifo-Barometer is pointing south bigtime. After asking 1035 experts about the world’s economic climate (not that other one), they dropped its rating (a credit rating, so-to-speak) from 67 to 45 index points, the lowest its been in, well, quite a long time.

At the same time, however, German investor confidence has just jumped to its highest level since 2007, this according to a place called the Zew Institute. “By the middle of 2009, the economy is likely to improve again. A sign of hope – no more, no less,” one analyst said.

High, low, more, less, Hauptsache (the main thing) is that everybody stays on the same sheet of music, right?

“Still, the gathering clouds have a silver lining.”

Old Europe reaching out for New Iraq’s even newer money

February 18, 2009 By Hermann Observer in Hypocrisy Tags: Old Europe 3 Comments

It’s simply breathtaking how suddenly how interesting Iraq has become for Old Europe nations like France and Germany. No sooner does President Obama take office than “stablisation” starts stabilizing the hell out of everything down there.

Nicolas Sarkozy zipped by for a visit to Baghdad last week. Now Frank-Walter Steinmeier himself, Germany’s Foreign Minister and losing chancellor candidate in Germany’s upcoming election, pulled on his obligatory bullet-proof vest and did his unannounced visit thing to check out the stabilization process first hand.

And to kickstart that big business networking made-in-Germany thing all over again, of course. The last visit by a German foreign minister here was back in 1987. The Germans made tons of money with Sadam back in those days, you must understand.

“My visit shows that we want to support the new Iraq as it moves towards consolidating democracy,” Steinmeier said. “Germany wants to assist Iraq in reconstruction,” he added. “And in handing out lucrative contracts from a country with some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves,” he didn’t say, but thought.

The Germans will now open up an economic office in Baghdad with a branch in Kurdish Irbil, both places indescribable hell holes of civil war sectarian violience, chaos and death, just a few weeks ago.

“We have seen in the last months important successes in stabilizing the country.”

Star quality

February 17, 2009 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy Tags: Daimler Leave a comment

That’s what the Mercedes-Benz star used to have. Well sure, it still does, I suppose. Although with a net loss of 1.93 billion dollars last quarter, it’s suddenly not shining like it used to. That’s 65% less profit for 2008 as a whole and, needless to say, worse than anyone here had forecast.

Consumers all around the world, and not just those normally so reliably wasteful American type ones, just aren’t buying these bug luxurious German cars anymore. But take heart a little. You can still blame Chrysler on this one if you want to, Daimler. This one last time, I mean. Onkel Dr. Zetsche will be pulling out his cost-cutting axe now all the same anyway, though.

„Der Ergebnisrückgang sei vor allem auf Belastungen von 3,228 Milliarden Euro aus der Beteiligung an Chrysler sowie durch das niedrigere Ergebnis von Mercedes-Benz Cars bedingt.“

Virtual warriors now virtually out of control

February 16, 2009 By Hermann Observer in Hi-tech Tags: Computer worms 1 Comment

Where will they strike next? This new German virtual warfare unit is going absolutely hog wild these days. It wasn’t enough that they took down the Interior Minister’s website last week. After that they just had to go and infect the French military’s computer network with that mysterious new “conficker” worm of theirs (well I have to assume that it’s theirs).

And now they’ve obviously lost all sense of proportion. They have begun infectiong hundreds of their own Bundeswehr PCs with the same worm, unable to demonstrate enough patience to wait for some virtual enemy out there to do it for them, like is supposed to happen (you can’t rely on anybody these days).

Word is that certain sections of the Bundeswehr’s IT network have now had to be taken down and isolated from the rest of the systems, to better take evasive action or something. Damn. Can you imagine how dangerous these guys would be if somebody gave them real guns (even if they only had one Barney Fife bullet each)?

“Einzelne betroffene Dienststellen wurden vom Bundeswehrnetzwerk getrennt, um eine weitere Ausbreitung zu verhindern.”

Exotic muss es sein

February 15, 2009 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes Tags: Film Leave a comment

„American cinema is the big winner at the 59th Berlin Film Festival. Of the nine official Bear awards given, five went to films made across the pond – four of those went to South America, however. This year’s jury in Berlin was again consistent in selecting the strangest film for its audience and followed this principle to its extreme.”

It’s another heart-warming story about a young woman who was born of her mother’s rape in the 1980s, this time in Peru. The same film was made last year (or was it the year before?) in Croatia or Bosnia or somewhere, but I can’t remember if it got first place or not. Why am I the only one who finds this humorous? Oh, the glamour.

„Ein durchschnittlicher Berlinale-Interessierter wird von Kate Winslet im „Vorleser“ gelesen und Heike Makatsch aus „Hilde“ auf dem roten Teppich gesehen haben – aber von den jetzigen Gewinnern haben die Medien vor ihrer Krönung äußerst wenig berichtet.“