Michael Moore Moved By German Kindness

But only about a centimeter or two.

Michael Moore

He’s a really big guy, see?

In a special wide-screen video appearance made especially for this year’s crappy Berlin Film Festival (Moore’s own latest crappy film, “Who to Offend Next,” oops, I mean “Where to Invade Next” is being shown here but he unfortunately cannot attend due to pneumonia and being a really, honking hefty dude, like I said) the annoying loudmouth commended Germany for its “kindness towards refugees, which has moved me and millions of Americans.” But, hey. Somebody’s got to do it, I guess.

Wanna see an even better Michael Moore video? When he was skinny, I mean?

Eure Großzügigkeit und Güte gegenüber Flüchtlingen haben mich und Millionen Amerikaner bewegt. Und ich weiß, es gibt Probleme.

Meryl Streep Wants More Inclusion

As Berlin Film Festival Jury head, that is. In industry and politics, I mean. And the Berlinale is just the place to, uh, want that kind of thing, or something.

Meryl Streep

You know, more women, more people of non-white color, more transgender cats and dogs, more environmentally friendly refrigerators, stuff like that needs more inclusion. Who would disagree? Who even could? And we’re talking inclusion as in diversity here, people. NOT assimilation.

Sadly, things that are definitely not included in the inclusion here – here at the Berlin Film Festival, I mean, the Berlinale, that is, the reason why this lady from Hollywood is here in the first place – are films that anybody/anything in his/her/its right mind might ever possibly want to see.

“The thing I’ve noticed from my different roles is there is a core of humanity that travels right through every culture. And, after all, we’re all from Africa, originally. We’re all Berliners. We’re all Africans, really.”

German Roots?

What? Like hair roots? They look like they could have been developed in a German laboratory to me.

Trump

Now we know why this guy rubs so many of us the wrong way. His real name is actually Trumpf. Or it could have been. Sorry, I can’t find a German equivalent for Donald (they even call Donald Duck Donald Duck over here, in case you were wondering).

The ancestors of the “anti-immigrant” crusader Donald Trump come from a small village in western Germany. The documentary film “Kings of Kallstadt” explores the modest roots of the family’s real estate empire.

Frederick Trump immigrated to the US in 1885.

German Of The Day: Realitätsverweigerung

That means denying reality.

Invasion

It is very popular in Germany at the moment due to the refugee invasion currently taking place, part of the denial process here being that this invasion isn’t even being referred to as one. They call it the refugee question or situation or policy or crisis instead (crisis is clearly leading at the moment).

It has a long tradition. If German reality deniers don’t like the facts, the facts – or at least the ways they view them – just get twisted around (or we are informed by them that “there are no facts at all”). And that’s a fact. Happens all the time. Everything is relative, you see. See moral relativism.

Latest example: The vast majority of perpetrators committing those infamous New Year’s Eve sex attacks were newly-arrived “migrants” from Morocco and Algeria, for instance. Rather than addressing this very real problem, German reality deniers prefer organizing protest rallies against racism instead. Needless to say, these are always well-covered by the media.

This kind of predictable, incoherent reaction makes me feel sometimes like I’m Donald Sutherland’s character in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Have the minds of these people been replaced while they sleep by copies of themselves having some weird, extraterrestrial and, in this case, irrational intelligence? Why are there so many of them acting this way? Is their number increasing? Are the body snatchers going to get me next? I’m going to lay off the sleep for a few months now just to play it safe.

Auch wenn jetzt alle davon reden, man dürfe nichts “unter den Teppich kehren”. Der so hochmoralische wie unehrliche Umgang mit der Flüchtlingsfrage droht uns um die Ohren zu fliegen.

The Recklinghausen Connection

No, not staring Gene Hackman. This thriller stars an asylum-seeker French police killed as he tried to storm a Paris police station last week.

Paris

This guy was registered at a German asylum center in the city of Recklinghausen, had a phone with a German SIM card and carried a paper on him in which he pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State. He had also been registered under four different names in Germany.

I don’t think that’s fair. That a poor refugee gets welcomed to Germany four times like that, I mean. Then there are fewer welcomes left to go around for the next wave of folks that comes in. And the next, and the next…

Der Mann posierte in seiner nordrhein-westfälischen Flüchtlingsunterkunft mit einer IS-Fahne. Die Landesbehörden stuften ihn demnach als Verdachtsfall ein, doch im Dezember 2015 verschwand er spurlos aus Recklinghausen.

PS: There’s this German turn of speech I really like: Ich glaub ich bin im schlechten Film. That means I think I’m in a bad movie. I’ve been hearing it more and more these days, too, for some reason.

German Of The Day: Fack Ju Göhte 2

That of course means “Suck Me Shakespeer 2” in our language.

Fack

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

– William Shakespeare

If my film makes one more person miserable, I’ve done my job.

– Woody Allen

Sommerloch Tornado Coming This Way!

The German Sommerloch is famous for being the time for scary none-news news reports. It is also famous for being the time for reports about scary non-animal animals, too.

Sharknado

That is why everybody is all hot and bothered right now about that scary low front “Zeljko“ approching Germany as you read this. Many Sommerloch weather forecasters are worried that this could be the beginning of a real live Sommerloch tornado (ignore the fact that Germany doesn’t actually do tornados, please).

Others who prefer to remain anonymous are going to go even further out on the limb and are predicting that “Zeljko“ could turn into the dreaded Sommerloch Sharknado ITSELF!

Im ersten Teil bekämpfen sie die fliegenden Haie in Los Angeles, in Teil zwei in New York und in „Sharknado 3 – Oh Hell No!“ macht sich der Raubtier-Tornado über der gesamten Ostküste der USA breit.

German Of The Day: Heimatfilme

Heimatfilm (German pronunciation: [ˈhaɪmatˌfɪlm], German for “homeland-film“; German plural: Heimatfilme) is the name given to a film genre that was popular in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. They were usually shot in the Alps, the Black Forest, or the Lüneburg Heath and always involved the outdoors. These films were noted for their rural settings, sentimental tone and simplistic morality, and centered on love, friendship, family and non-urban life. Also, the polarity between old and young, tradition and progress, and rural and urban life was articulated. The typical plot structure involved both a “good” and “bad” guy wanting a girl, conflict ensuing, and the “good” guy ultimately triumphing to win the girl to the happiness of everyone and the children.

Heimatfilme

Well that’s cool and all but I guess they’ve tweaked the genre around a bit because they’re going to film the next bunch of “homeland-films” with lots of guns and blood and terror and stuff right here in not so non-urban Berlin itself. But still.

The fifth series will pick up two-and-a-half years after the previous one ended, with main character Carrie Mathison out of the Middle East and in self-imposed exile in the German Capital.

And That Little Girl’s Not Wearing Her Head-Thingy, Either

Officially banned from filmmaking in Iran since 2010, Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s third film since then, Taxi, just won the Golden Bear at the 65th Berlin Film Festival.

Taxi

Iranian creative folks still officially allowed to work in Iran are now petitioning their government to officially ban their work, too. Unfortunately, however, the head Islamically-correct-artistic-expression-mullah-what’s-in-charge said nichts da (nothing doing) when reached for comment, as “official bans like ours don’t just grow on trees, you know. And besides, if we officially banned everything then our official bans would not be nearly as effective as they have been up until now. And that’s official,” the official said.

“Limitations often inspire filmmakers to storytellers to make better work.”

North Korea Demands Film Not Being Shown At Film Festival Not Be Shown At Film Festival

And when North Korea demands something, the Berlinale listens.

Interview

Organizers here quickly buckled under pressure and have now sheepishly agreed to take the film not being shown on their program off their program immediately. The wussies.

Somewhere along the line, because of the February 5th start dates, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry misinterpreted that The Interview was an official entrant in the 65th annual Berlinale. As a result, North Korean’s state-run broadcast issued a statement demanding that the film not screen at the festival, which it’s not and never was scheduled to. An organizer for the film festival spoke to the North Korean ambassador to Germany to clear up the misunderstanding.