Tag Archives: Film
We All Lose Our Heads Once In A While
But how do you lose a 5.6-foot tall one of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin? It’s not easy, but Berlin city authorities can do it.
It was the star of Good Bye Lenin, Wolfgang Becker’s tragicomedy set around the fall of the Berlin Wall: a statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, suspended from a helicopter, seemingly waving goodbye to the crumbling socialist republic.
But more than two decades after it was torn down, Berlin authorities have admitted the giant monument may be lost in storage.
Some Things Never Change
And this is supposed to be news? “Berlin is the European capital for secret agents.”
Or how about this one: “Most of the foreign agents active in Berlin enjoy diplomatic status and can therefore not be collared by German law enforcement authorities.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like I’m living in Wunderland sometimes. In “the old days” everybody knew the deal and nobody ever even raised an eyebrow (“früher war alles besser“). Now everybody’s got hurt feelings all the time. I do wish someone would finally call their parents and have this all explained to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82ZC3qYhSc8
“Die meisten ausländischen Agenten, die in Berlin tätig sind, verfügen über einen Diplomatenstatus und sind damit für die deutschen Strafverfolgungsbehörden nicht fassbar.”
Neo-Hippie-Eco-Porn
No, no. Don’t look to read on here. That title has said enough already.
Marczak spoke with sexologists and sociologists and read reams of hippie literature before he started shooting.
And The Losers Are…
This year’s Berlinale Golden Bear goes to the Rumanian film “Child’s Pose,” a heart-warming family drama about a domineering upper class Rumanian mother’s attempt to bribe freedom for her ungrateful creep of a loser son after he kills a child from a poor family in a traffic accident.
The Jury Grand Prize Silver Bear goes to the uplifting and inspirational Bosnian docudrama “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker,” which re-creates the institutional abuse and neglect of a Roma family that has to collect scrap metal to survive (but at least now they’ve got the Silver Bear).
And the Gay/Lesbian Teddy went to several films (they were all that good this year, I guess), the most interesting sounding one being a flick called “Undress Me,” this being an allegory or metaphor for, uh, I dunno, something.
Actually, the only film I would have really been interested in seeing was the one that got the the Silver Bear for best script. It was an Iranian movie called “Pardé” (Closed Curtain). However the filmmaker, Jafar Panahi, could not take part in the intoxicating Berlin celebrations because he lives behind said closed curtain and has been prohibited by Iranian authorities from travelling, for some strange reason.
“It’s never been possible to stop a thinker and a poet.”
From Myth To Monster In 2.5 Seconds
The sexual abuse claims levelled against Klaus Kinski by his daughter Pola make it clear that cinema fans have deified a monster.
I’m disappointed, to say the least. But sadly, it somehow seems to fit.
Megalomania is a psychopathological disorder characterized by delusional fantasies of power, relevance, or omnipotence.
When Will The Hurt Feelings Ever End?
Germany has decided to take precautionary measures and will now be closing its embassies in Muslim countries after word got out that Bettina Wulff is currently planning to produce a Muhammad film.
“We have intensified security precautions everywhere in the region, and in some cases increased security personnel too.”
Film Critics And Other Smart People Disappointed
This year’s winner of the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlinale was actually a real dog, German film critics and other intellectual thinking folks and artist types everywhere are saying.
It’s not that the Italian film “Caesar Must Die” was bad in a cinematic sense or anything. It just didn’t meet the standards that modern film-makers and their kind aspire to, that’s all.
It was, in other words, too “humanist,” not at all a “strong, political film from young, engaged film-makers” (the film-makers who made this non-political film are old, engaged film-makers) and, worst of all, “it was a very conservative selection.” Pfui (yuck)!
Geez. If they had wanted to watch human, uplifting drama they would have gone to some other film festival. I don’t know which one that would be, of course, but it certainly wouldn’t/shouldn’t be the Berlinale.
“The jury shunned almost all the contemporary films that were admired or hotly debated at an otherwise pretty remarkable festival.”
Not One, Not Two…
But three films about Fukushima are being shown this year at the Berlinale.
That was to be expected, I guess. Especially now since Fukushima hysteria has all but disappeared from the Bildfläche (screen), even here in Germany.
It’s hard to keep people scared for months on end, now matter how important you think your agenda is. They just get tired and want to move on with their lives. The latest media stunt I just barely heard about had a lot of potential, for a few minutes, but then it rolled over and died, too.
I am looking forward to the big one-year anniversary media terror show bombardment to be held here in Germany next month, of course. But what are they going to be able to scare us with then? The German nation threatening to shut down all it’s nuclear power plants? Been there, done that. It makes you wonder sometimes why they even take the trouble to keep on agitating at us like they do. Now that the war is over and all, I mean. There’s just no place else to agitate at the moment, I guess (thanks for nothing, “Occupy Movement”). It must be hard being progressive sometimes. Much less all the time.
The 11-day film festival, which prides itself on its generally edgier and more politically-overt line-up over other film showcases, was perhaps a fitting backdrop for the documentaries.
Berlinale Predictably Boring
As usual. But at least we get to look at Angelina Jolie for awhile this year.
She and her husband what’s-his-name have been here for days now and refuse to go home, giving the notoriously anti-Hollywood Berlin Film Festival that all important Hollywood touch.
But as for the movies, the only Lichtblick (bright spot) I have heard about so far is a film called Barbara, “a harrowing reminder of what life was like two decades earlier behind the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall that stood just a few meters to the east of theatres where the Berlinale is based.” You know, it’s a film about how suffocatingly horrible communist East Germany was. But who wants to see that? Here in Berlin of all places, I mean.
That and that flick about the Nazis on the dark side of the moon, of course.
“It’s not a film about East Germany, it’s a film about how people survive in a country that was on its way out.” – Hmm. Sounds like a film about Syria.
Observing Hermann 