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

February 6, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, High Art, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Berlin Film Festival#, Berlinale, Film Festivals, Film Snobs, Films, German, Germans, Germany, Hollywood, Humor, Movies, Satire, Snobs, Stars 2 Comments

Or seriously crappy films, if you prefer.

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.

From Myth To Monster In 2.5 Seconds

January 11, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hypocrisy Tags: Acting, Actors, Film, German, Germans, Germany, Incest, Klaus Kinski, Megalomania, Movies, Sexual Abuse, Werner Herzog Leave a comment

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.

Film Critics And Other Smart People Disappointed

February 19, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Berlin Film Festival#, Berlinale, Film, Film Festivals, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Intellectuals, Movies, Satire, The Golden Bear 1 Comment

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…

February 15, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Atomic power, Berlin, Berlin Film Festival#, Berlinale, Film, Fukushima, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Movies, Nuclear power, Political Agendas, Satire, The Greens 2 Comments

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

February 11, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, High Art, Home Cooking, Hotness, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Berlin Film Festival#, Berlinale, Film, German, Germans, Germany, Hollywood, Humor, Movies, Satire 1 Comment

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.

Talk About Your Hollywood Nazis

January 26, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Hi-tech, High Art, History Tags: Berlin, Berlinale, Film, German, Germans, Germany, Hollywood, Humor, Iron Sky, Movies, Nazis, Satire 1 Comment

How about Nazis from the dark side of the moon?

Well, this isn’t quite Hollywood. It (Iron Sky) is actually a Finnish-German-Australian co-production that will concur the earth next month at the Berlinale.

And it’s a comedy. I think. Isn’t it?

We come in peace.

Speaking of Deep Space

May 5, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Hi-tech Tags: Berlin, Film, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Movies, Satire, Science Fiction 3 Comments

And being that the US “now acts indifferently vis-á-vis sovereign states not only in a global but in an orbital fashion,” I couldn’t help but think of this terrifying (and up until now top secret) example of American hi-tech technology (I don’t really know why I couldn’t help but think of it, however).

Remember: Robot Monster stalks the earth to destroy humanity.

Overwelming, electrifying and baffling or something.

PS: Whatever happened to Fukushima?

Reality Show 2.0

March 11, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, High Art Tags: Berlin, David Lynch, Film, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Movies, Satire Leave a comment

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

February 20, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, High Art Tags: Berlin, Berlinale, Film, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Iran, Movies, Satire 1 Comment

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!

February 18, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hate, High Art, History, Hypocrisy Tags: Baader-Meinhof, Berlin, Berlinale, Film, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Movies, RAF, Satire 1 Comment

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?

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

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