Nowhere Boy

Since most of the zu Guttenberg excitement has died down, we actually made it to a movie last night: Nowhere Boy. It's the story of John Lennon as a teenager, growing up in Liverpool at his Aunt Mimi's and restarting a relationship with his birthmother. It's the story of an angry young man, a rebel not willing to let himself be pressed into a particular mold. And it's a very sad story at times - except you know that there will be a happy end after he travels to Hamburg with some new friends and a new band.

I'm not a big Beatles fan (WiseMan, however, is a fanatic), but it was a nice film. One wonders if John Lennon was growing up today if he would be considered an Intensivtäter, a youth in deep trouble with the authorities. I guess they didn't call the cops constantly back then.

Slumdog Millionaire

That's what a vacation is for, you get to go to the movies three times in a week!

Last night we say Slumdog Millionaire with some friends. Nice story, pokes fun at "Who wants to be a millionaire" and Bollywood, kind of funny in places, great kids acting. I kind of found it ho-hum, but WiseMan gave this 9 stars, the best of the week. I mean, it was entertaining and all, but it was kind of depressing seeing the slums. It really is amazing how anyone survives there.

The scene where the child Jamal has to escape the outhouse by diving into it kind of reminds what it feels like when I dive into administrative work.... IMDB says that they used a mixture of peanut butter and chocolate for that. Imagine the props guys going down to Sam's and buying 200 gallons of peanut butter....

I'm glad they got all the Oscars, must be really great for India. The music was kind of nice, but my vote for the week goes to Milk.

Milk

We went to see "Milk" this evening, in English, thank goodness, as I hear that MaHa found the German synchronization horrible.

We went with friends, joking about helping her do her homework. She is studying sexology at Malmö Högskola (no joke, this is a Master's program) and a current topic is how homosexual and transgender people were treated and how they perceived themselves in earlier periods.

Since Sean Penn (rightly so) got himself an Oscar for this, we thought there would be a few more people in the theater, but maybe 10 people had bought tickets. Okay, it was a Thursday night.

I was transported back, back, back to my teenage years and leaving the US for Germany. The clothes! The hair! That horrible Anita Bryant, leading to one of many boycotts I participated in without really understanding the ramifacations of what a boycott was good for.

I visited a friend in Castro in the 80s, long after Milk's assassination hat jump started the Rainbow Revolution. The guy I asked directions from assured me that I did not want to go there. And indeed, it was strange, being more or less the only different-sex couple out walking that evening. But an amazing, almost tangible energy was in that place.

The editing of the film was just marvelous, entwining historic footage with made-up historic-like stuff. The telephone tree was very well done. I guess the story was a little slow, as it tried to stay true to real events. I liked it a lot, WiseMan's rating went down from 8.5 to 7 on a scale of ten after a long discussion in the car home, fighting our way through a tremendous snow storm.

Casablanca

WiseMan is such a Casablanca fan, so we gathered the usual suspects for a long evening of films with this classic (in B&W, of course) first off. It turned out that three (3!) of the men had never actually seen the film. One admitted to having watched a few minutes while zapping, but never seen it in total. And he said that it was really fascinating to watch.

Even the kids - 1, 3, 6, 8 - were fascinated and either watched or played quietly to let the adults enjoy the film. The resident teenager, of course, thought it corny and slunk off to exchange nastilities with his buddies on his chat portal.

What a wonderful movie! The light and shadows; the framing of Ingrid Bergman; the tears; Bogie's cynicism; the corny plot; and all of these quotes that you just know by heart (although often quoted wrongly).

Reading up after the movie on IMDB I read that in the 80s someone submitted the screenplay with the original title to all the major studios. Some of the readers caught it, but many just rejected it on grounds of being too old, too boring, and not enough sex. When the film was made, it was really racy - a married woman having an affair, although to her credit she thought her husband was dead.

"You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh; the fundamental things apply, as time goes by...".

Mamma mia

Just the thing for a summer's evening when you've spent all day pretty much lazing around, reading, eating, and staring at the gorgeous blue Swedish sky!

I wanted to see "Mamma mia" in Sweden so that I could see the original version of the movie made from the ABBA musical. It was interesting to see that the Swedish subtitles were the Swedish words to the songs that had the same general idea, but were not exact translations of the English song texts.

Meryl Streep - what a wonderful actress! She is just 100% Donna, so utterly believable that she has a hotel on this Greek island and raised her little girl alone. Her girl is getting married, and having found Mom's diary she has an idea of the three guys who are possibly her Dad, so she invites them all to her wedding - in secret. And of course, they all come.

It is really amazing that you can string together all these popular ABBA songs and actually come up with something resembling a story line! Oh, sure, there's a little bit of dialogue stitching it together, but there is a lot of singing and dancing, and it is fun to watch! You have the feeling of being right there in the middle of it - so catch the movie while it is in the theater.

Pierce Brosnan, one of the prospective fathers and normally the protrayer of James Bond, is of course dashing (especially with the 3-day-beard he grows overnight). But he's lucky that James Bond is never called on to sing - 'cause he can't carry a tune. No matter, Meryl Streep actually gets so carried away in a scene just below the church (beautifully filmed with the setting sun in her hair and the wind gently blowing her clothes all around her) that you almost think that this is *her* song ("The winner takes it all").

Anyway, happy end and all that. And do stay for the credits - The three men in their ABBA costumes are just soooooo comical, you fall over laughing! And see if you can see Benny Andersson - (one of the B's in ABBA and co-writer of the songs and producer of musical and film). The audience put up a roar when they saw him ('natch, we're in Sweden). I didn't get it until the credits, so I guess I'll just have to go see the movie again for scientific purposes. :D

At the end the audience *clapped* - and then burst out singing the final song, "Thank you for the music". Indeed - thanks for this movie, I really enjoyed it!

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

I was tired. Don't sleep much. Have over a hundred exercises to correct and two exams to make up. Spent all morning at a Berlin-wide church service. I don't have time for movies.

But the movie bunch insisted. I could still do my exams in the evening. And it was only 3 Euros at the little movie theater around the corner and I could leave any time I felt the violence was too bad.

Okay. So I went. Ah, flashbacks. Or a "multiperspective" film. A bit of sex at the beginning (I rather wanted to shield the eyes of the 17-year-old, as it was rather unappetizing). Then a bit of violence, but as it progresses, it is a sordid family drama. Melodramatic, no one has normal relations to their relatives. Anyway, it develops, racing toward a nasty end.

Don't want to go into detail - check out the IMDB. Philip Hoffman, the most horrible Truman Capote (he got an Oscar for that one), was very convincing. I know someone like that, and they even look similar. Brrrrr.

It was worth the 3 Euros, now I have to get the exam finished for tomorrow.

Kung Fu Panda and the Pirate Filmer

We hadn't been to see a silly children's film with the usual suspects for quite some time, so for Kung Fu Panda we rounded them up and headed for the local theater, which has recently remodeled. And they remodeled their fees, too, and are surprisingly now cheaper. They must be having trouble filling the theaters. Adults in the accompaniment of children attending the matinee can get in for children's prices - also the teenager who forgot to take his student ID card (grrrr) was able to get in for kid's prices. Okay, for 25 €, I'll watch Kung Fu Panda, although the party last night was wonderful and long and I think I had one whiskey too much.

The film is a Dreamworks one, they do lots of hairy figures, now that they have hair figured out. They need work on snakey-ness, that one didn't look right.

Let's see, the plot was the usual one: outcast bumbling main figure overcomes bad guy, saves the world/country/village and becomes a hero. Did I miss anything?

There were very few jokes for the adults to get, and lots of cartoon Kung Fu. The kids roared. Just loved it. Even the teeny thought it was not bad.

There was this strange sound two seats down during the film, some guy had his backpack on his lap during the whole thing. As the credits began I realized what the sound was - it was a video camera. And the guy was peering into his backpack that was lighting up his face. What cheek! And what do you do?

I whispered to the guy collecting trash behind me that it looked like he had a video camera, the trash guy went away briefly and then returned. They video guy had his kid with him, and waited for most people to go before he left. We stayed for the last shot, which was not worth the stay. The guy caught up with us at the ice cream stand outside, but did not say anything, and I didn't either.

Maybe I was mistaken and he was emailing on his Crackberry. But why would you do that inside your backpack, not out in the open? And if he was filming - why go to all the danger of getting caught for a crappy copy? In front of your kid? Or maybe they don't get caught, because there is no way to stop them and search them.

Anyway - don't bother for this film. It kind of looks like they had to do something nice for all those rich Chinese out there now wanting to have movies made for them, as Spiegel pointed out.

Iron Man

Wow, a film for the whole family! I hadn't read anything about the movie, but I wanted to go along with the guys, and they were going to see Iron Man, which was just released in Germany.

There was lots of action (shooting, blasts, car crashes, etc) for WiseKid, a rather witty screenplay with some references to other films and some good politics for WiseMan, and for me there was a ton of kick-ass mechanical engineering, robots, computer interfaces, and some awesome vfx. Figures, some of it was done by Industrial Light and Magic.

There were, of course, more people involved with the vfx and animations than there were actors and second second assistant directors. The music was rather nice, and the violence was, well, kind of comic-book-like. Guess that's what you get when you film a comic book.

An enjoyable evening, although Tony never got to kiss Pepper.

Sommer vorm Balkon

I volunteered last night to take a (what do we collectively call them? A gaggle? A school? A herd? A giggle?) couple of teenagers (15, 16, and 17) to the video store to rent a film for family viewing, i.e. for the teenagers and their aging parents. I gave the parents of T15 and T17 a key to the apartment so they could get food set up, because I was sure it would take a while.

WiseKid wanted something with action or horror. T15 wanted a love story. T17 wanted something serious or educational. I suggested humor, all three turned up their noses, no kid stuff, please. We walked around and around, found a few more or less passable ones, but they were already all rented.

WiseKid suggested Schulmädchenreport, T15 ran through the foreign language stuff, T17 was bored and I was amused at all the people answering their mobile phones "Hi, I'm at the video store right now!".

We finally agreed on the German film Sommer vorm Balkon (2005), (Summer in Berlin) because WiseKid had auditioned for the part of Rico, which had been exciting, but he didn't get the part, obviously.

Turned out to be a good choice, even though the parents of T15 and T17 had already seen it, they said it was hilarious and would love to see it again. There are two friends, Katrin and Nike. Katrin is the alcoholic, out-of-work, single mother of a young teenager and Nike, who lives in the same house, works as a home helper for the elderly. Nike cleans, makes beds, changes diapers, makes people take their medicine, and then takes time to speak with them or read to them - and gets into trouble at work for this, as she is not paid to read aloud to them.

Both Katrin and Nike are looking for a man. Nike settles on an outrageously horrible truck driver who is quite the male chauvinist pig. They go through a number of episodes during the summer, some extremely funny, some quite sobering. They survive in Berlin, but just barely

Niko only has a bit part and does not say more than WiseKid had to learn for the audition. We all agreed that the kid they chose didn't do a good job, which pleased WiseKid.

For dessert we watched Tim Burton's Frankenweenie. What a riot! Genius kid brings his dead dog back to life with lots of commentary on American surburban life. The short film is hidden deep within the bonus material for the Nightmare before Christmas.

Nordic Film Festival 2007

Köld Slóð (Cold Trail)

Luckily, my headache from the day before had disappeared and was not the flu, so I drove 4 hours to Lübeck to the Nordic Film Festival and came just in time to see this Icelandic thriller. There are very few actual murders in Iceland, so the current crop of writers and filmmakers are making ones up to suit them.

The film starts in Reykjavik with your typical reporter, getting up out of the bed of some woman, and then heading off to his horrible job of wrecking people's lives by writing garbage about them for one of the daily rags. He has a pretty young colleague who needles him a lot.

There's been a death at a hydroelectric power station, but it's an accident. Just the same, it makes the front page, and his mother sees it, breaking down and telling him that this guy was his father. So off he goes to the station, having somehow obtained the job replacing his father. The station is located somewhere remote, cold and snowy where you can only get around with a snow scooter.

There are lots of sinister people there, some illegal stuff, some attempts on his life, and he - of course - falls in love with the only woman approximately his age there. The filmography is great - many scenes that cause you to hold your breath because you think something bad is about to happen. Then the director, Björn Br. Björnsson, takes a mad twist with us and we head off, careening in another direction.

Gorgeous scenery, quite thrilling, ghosts, and the first Icelandic film in ages that has not had the obligatory pissing-in-the-snow scene. Looks like Icelandic film-making is growing up.

Tatt av kvinnen (Gone With the Woman)

The director of the "Elling" films, Petter Næss, has produced another amusing film about a guy who just does not quite fit into the real world - but he attracts beautiful and interesting women just the same. He ends up following Marianne around, falling in love with another woman in Paris, but not daring to really do something about it until Marianne has figuratively walked all over him in her Army boots.

I've seen worse films, and there are amusing scenes. The painting (which was painted for the film) of a thin person trying to catch a large ball with a small net gives a motto that is very serious. But on the whole, Elling was better.

Den man älskar (To Love Someone)

Åke Sandgren has made a very gripping film on the topic of violence against women. He portrays the problem without being able to offer any answers to questions such as why men hit women, why women let themselves be hit, and why they return to men who have beaten them to within an inch of their lives. Intertwined is the story of a man approaching 50 who thought he loved the woman he rescued from an abusive relationship, only to find himself beginning to be violent, but in a different way.

Direktøren for det hele (Boss of it all)

I don't like Lars von Trier, the director of this film and enfant terrible of Danish film-making. But Fridrik Thor Fridriksson was playing a nasty Icelandic company president, and I had heard that there was Icelandic mixed into the film, so I got in line for this one. The tickets for the accredited guests were gone just a few people in front of me, although I thought I was there on time. I decided to wait - usually a few people get in. The couple in front of me decided to see something else, so it was clear to me: I will squeeze in if there is one seat left. I got in, and it was worth it!

This time, von Trier has done away with the camera people. He sets up multiple, stationary cameras, and lets a computer randomly choose the scenes. Of course, he does a lot of work in the editing, but mostly the scenes are focused and properly lit, they just don't pan.

Oh right, the story. Well, this guy, Ravn (the name means "fox" in Danish), who likes to be liked, but is actually a shark with contracts, owns a company. Except he plays just another worker, and blames all of the nasty decisions on the "Boss of it All". He wants to sell to an Icelander, but he insists on meeting this "Boss of it All", so Ravn hires an actor to play the role.

It's a comedy, so there are lots of funny complications and twists and turns. The actor, Kristoffer, does a great job playing at being an actor playing a director. He is at times so stupid, at times so wise, it is fun to watch him. Fridrik Thor should stick to directing films, he can't act his way out of a paper bag. He just sat there, trying to look angry, and cussed up a storm. His translator to Danish did a fantastic job, reacting to Kristoffer's craziness with raised eyebrows or opened eyes, as necessary. He softened up the cussing on the way to Danish, and the English subtitles restricted themselves to just "sh*t" and "f*ck", which is a shame, as Icelandic is so rich in swear words.

This is definitely a must-see film, but it probably won't make it to Germany, as dubbing it in German would ruin it.

Den nya Människan (The new "man", mistranslation for "human")

Sweden is considered to be a nice, good, egalitarian welfare state. it was neutral during the Second World War, meaning that it did not openly choose sides. But as the writer of the film, Kjell Sundstedt, noted after the film, the Nazis came to Sweden to see how they were solving their poverty problem by sterilizing young girls from underprivileged homes. The sterilization program continued into the 50s, the government has now been forced to offer the over 50.000 women thus sterilized compensation which many never picked up because what had happened to them was so horrible, they did not want to open up the old wounds. Sundstedt, who is blind, is currently writing a book about the sterilization program. A number of his own aunts were castrated in this way.

This is the story of Gertrud (the actress, Julia Högberg, is somehow not credited in IMDB). Her father, a poor widower with 7 kids, agrees to let the state take his oldest girl to a home where she will be cared for and have regular meals. She does not want to go, but is taken. It is a horrible institution, demanding obedience of the girls and making them work from morning to night. She tries to escape, but is caught and returned.

Pregnant by the groundskeeper (who denies being the father), she devises a way to escape - and exact a little revenge on the horrible Dr. Berg, who is running the institution. The director, Klaus Härö, notes that he looked for an actor that looks like himself, as he wanted to understand how Dr. Berg could be convinced that this was a good thing he was doing. The actor, Tobias Aspelin, portrays a "Herrenmensch" who would be at home in any Nazi movie.

The film was not well received in Sweden - what a surprise, as it puts scratches on the shiny clean image that Sweden likes to project of itself. Sundstedt noted that in Södertalje they are talking about sterilizing young immigrant women, who seem to have lots of children that drain the Swedish welfare system. All the more reason to try and get this dark chapter of Swedish history out into the open and into the limelight of discussion.

Miehen työ (A Man's Work)

Since I had already seen the films I thought were interesting, it was a toss-up what to see Saturday evening. I was actually on my way to see the Danish film "Homesick" when I saw that there were tickets still available to a Finnish film. Okay, Finnish films are not high on my list of favorite films, but this one had looked mildly interesting.

So in I went, I had another nice wide seat in the back, and we settled in. Finnish people in films don't use facial expressiveness much, they are very stony-faced, and don't say much. I know a Finnish woman who lives in Sweden, she is bright and cheerful and bubbly and her face is full of expression. Maybe that's why she left.

Anyway. Juha lost his job in the factory and can't bring himself to tell his wife. So he still gets up at 5am and pretends to go to work. Actually, he just kills time all day. He drinks a lot of coffee with his taxi-driver pal, Olli. We learn that Olli is also the birthfather of Juha's son. But they are good pals. Juha finally puts up signs that he will do handyman's work.

His first job is in the home of a woman who wants him for completely different services. He performs as asked, and gets paid a lot - tax-free. He debates with Olli, and then turns into a professional call-boy. But since he is still trying to keep this secret from his wife, he has to make up lots of stories.

Many of his customers just want to talk, they want to be seen by a man, have a man take time for them, to massage them. Even though he hears from these women what they want, he is unable to do this with his wife, who just irritates him. The director and writer, Aleksi Salmenperä, brings it to a rather improbable close.

Some folks walked out during the film, I waited until the credits started. It was better than watching TV, and the story was a good idea, but somehow the spark did not ignite.

Pornostjerne? (Porn Star?)

This is a documentary about the young Norwegian porn king I will not name here to keep him from added advertising. The director, John Sullivan, followed him around for quite a long time, documenting his tactics of filming drunken high school graduates and selling the films, as well as organizing wet-T-Shirt contests and other stuff.

Oh, the girls all do it because they want to be stars, we here. But we also hear his girlfriend, who now sees that this is not the way to fame. This is just the way for the guy to have lots of girls around and to have lots of sex while he makes money off them while cheating everyone else around him.

The documentary is very disturbing - why do young people fall for this sleaze? Why do they do all these things drunken in front of the camera? In the discussion - which was very intensive and very long - we explored this being the rebellion of young people against their liberal parents. Porn as a "normal" drug like alcohol and cigarettes.

I found it very sad that the young women felt they needed to act like this, that the guys goaded them on, and that there does not seem to be a way to stop this guy. He's a poster child for the anti-alcohol lobby in Norway for sure. A scary documentation that needs to be shown to all Norwegian students in the last year of school so they understand what this guy is up to when he show up at their school-leaving parties.

Die Hard 4.0

Hah. Bet you never thought I would go to see one of these, did you? Well, up here in Ísafjörður there is actually a movie theater that shows films Thursday through Monday. They have matinées for the kiddos on the weekend with a speaker speaking in the Icelandic over the English. Not good for me, although I would have liked to see Ratatoullie.

Last week war Transformer, I decided to wait a week. It got worse, the choice this week was Die Hard 4.0. Or Icelandic TV, which is like US TV, only worse. They choose the worst of German, US, and English TV, and everything about fish. And then pepper it with advertising and sub-titles. Since tonight was a nice film about tuna fishing on TV, I figured I would go for the movie. It was about computers, wasn't it?

Well, yes. Former US computer specialist is fired, is now determined to show the country its soft underbelly. He can get into all systems, and bring them down. But never fear, Bruce Willis is here, with more lives than a cat. He saves the last hacker who can help, and together they save the country and Bruce' lovely daughter. Along the way a lot of things get blown up, a lot of cars get smashed, an airplane that can fly through bridge columns gets smashed, and a lot of people get killed.

Bruce and his side-kick get wounded a lot, but it is rather amusing to see the wounds come and go. I think they forgot to hire a continuity editor. I eventually begin to see bits of the Gisli Saga in the movie, which makes it a lot more fun, Gisli and his wife were able to kill 8 others in that final battle, you see, just like Bruce.

The computer stuff was awesome. Nokia mobile phones; rollable keyboards; suitcases with multiple color screens that flip up when the suitcase is opened; biiiiiig flat screens, lots and lots and lots of them. The two Palms just mystified me, however. What were they doing with them, checking off their task lists? Mine is a great address book and alarm clock and a nasty opponent at backgammon, but can you cause mass system failure with a Palm?

The software was kind of silly - the screens were either bunches of numbers, or TTY-type terminals flashing login codes, or fancy maps and videos and stuff. One funny scene at Warlord's basement - Bruce puts his finger over the camera to ask Warlord something, but of course that doesn't kill the mike. The nasty opponent makes a sarcastic remark to this effect.

These guys can trace anything, anytime, get into anywhere with phony FBI suits and ID cards. In times of an emergency, anyone who says they are FBI probably is. And as one character says: they needed 5 days during Katrina to get water to the Superdome. The US systems, computer and human, are broken, terminally.

Some observations:

1. Even if we have all these surveillance cameras just to find the "bad ones" and the government is always going to be a "good" government (cough, cough, cough), if the bad guys can penetrate their system, then they can use all this stuff for their own deeds, as shown in the movie.
2. When the mobile phones go out, you are hosed, unless you still have a ham radio outfit working.
3. If you are planning on stealing millions of digital dollars, you won't actually be able to cash it in if you trash the financial system while you are at it. Bits aren't gold.
4. Even though Icelanders pay a pretty penny to see the movie (about 9,50 €), they get popcorn and chips and cokes both before the film and during the break, and they rustle in their bags the entire film. That's why the film has to be turned up so loud, I suppose. The advertising was nice, though - just slides for the next films and the one clothing shop in town. They had to cycle though it many times.
5. Icelanders can't read - even I could figure out that one of the slides said: Don't dump your garbage on the floor, put it in the garbage can!!!!! And there were BIG garbage cans at the end of the rows. But they still just dropped everything.

Some questions:

1. Can planes fly down the lower level of a double-decker highway?
2. What was in the final truck Bruce was driving and why?
3. Where did all his guns come from? He always had a new one.
4. Why was there always a drivable car available for Bruce?
5. How many flights can he fall down and not get killed? How often can he get wounded and not get killed?
6. How did the hacker guy get all that cool equipment into his tiny shoulder bag?
7. How can you drive a car up to the 4th floor in order to smash it into people?
8. What are the physics of smashing up a car just so that it manages to down a helicopter?
9. If there are all these wrecked and burning cars all over the place, why are there no dead drivers anywhere?

Enough questions, time for bed. Got class tomorrow early!

"The Seventh Seal" and "The Summer with Monika"

Still glued to the TV.

I realized that I had seen the "Seventh Seal" on TV in the US when I was a teenager. I didn't understand the film then, but I really liked all the Medieval stuff. I hadn't realized it was Swedish.

It goes heavy on symbolism, and has some really good photography that turns out to have been good luck. The eerie light that shines down on the corpse robber just after he himself dies of the plague was Bergman seeing that the clouds were moving and not giving his usual "Thank you" as a cut order after the scene, but just letting precious film roll. Today something like this is done in post-production, but for the time it was quite a stroke of luck.

The famous Danse macabre in the next to last scene is actually done with grips and tourists, the web site says. They were packing up, the actors had already left for their hotel, when a strange light and a strange cloud appeared. Bergman had the camera put back up, rounded up 7 people, put costumes on them and had them dance on the top of the hill as silhouettes.

The Summer with Monika caused quite a stir when it was released, as Harriet Anderson actually disrobes and flashes a bit of breast and a lot of bare bottom at the camera. The story is rather corny - boy and girl, fed up at home, steal a boat with an endless supply of gas and load up a few supplies for an entire summer of bliss on the islands east of Stockholm, discovering the bodily pleasures in the process. There is an ugly scene when they decide they need food other than mushrooms and steal something from a house on a nearby island, and another one where some guy tries to set their boat on fire and he and Harry get into a fight. But other than that, it never rains and life is grand!

Anyway, they go back home, Monika is pregnant, Harry gets a good job, Monika gets bored and takes a lover, they quarrel, Harry slaps her, she leaves, Harry carries on with the baby, heroic single father. Feminist critics are divided over whether or not this is a good movie - some say it is great because Monika leaves - others hate the stereotypes shown here.

As one of the papers put it: Generations of Swedes have had to combat the stereotype of being Swedish that Bergman projected in his films. The women as sexy babes, disrobing in an instant (actually, Swedes are ashamed of being naked in public outside of a sauna and won't even change into a bathing suit at the beach without putting a towel around themselves and doing a silly dance to get into/out of the suit); men willing to do anything for their children (there are some, but not the majority); smokers, the lot of them (actually, it's the Danes that smoke like there is no tomorrow); gorgeous women marrying ugly men, good-looking guys with the plain Janes. And on and on and on.

And, of course, Bergman, that randy dog, also slept with this leading lady. Seems at one time he had 4 women more or less at the same time....

The next film is not until Saturday, I suppose I shall have to get some work done....

P.S. changed the spelling, Monika is spelled with a "k" in the original.

Ingmar Bergman and "Wild Strawberries"

Ingmar Bergman passed away this morning, peacefully, in his house on Fårö. Swedish radio and TV, newspapers and online publications have gone into overdrive - nothing else noteworthy has happened this so-called summer, and reporting on the rain is getting really boring. They have jettisoned the stupid films they were planning on showing, the boring interviews they were going to broadcast and print. Unisono they are honoring Bergman, one of the cultural icons of modern day Sweden.

And me? Glued to the TV.

They are showing a wonderful documentary that Marie Nyreröds made of his life and cinematography a few years ago. They are furiously digging out his films, all of them. The news is interviewing filmmakers around the world. Unfortunately, they are broadcasting this on both TV stations at the same time, why can't they just have a dedicated Bergman channel?

The first film off the block is Smultronstället, Wild Strawberries. Professor Borg decides to take the car from Stockholm to Lund for his golden doctorate, and meets a lot of his past life on the way. I saw this film, made the year I was born, in English soon after I came to Germany. I don't remember if I had already visited Sweden when I first saw this film, but it was clear to me that I had to get to know more about this mysterious, wonderful country. I think it was Bibi Andersson, smoking a pipe just as natural as can be, that led me to get my first pipe. I had 2 or 3 "lady pipes", nice to hold, and loved to smoke whisky-flavored tobacco.

The twisted story, time folding back upon itself, myriad sub-plots and nightmares and pieces of everyday life - just fascinated me. I remember looking up wild strawberries in a book, drawing them, doing watercolors. I wonder where they are now? I didn't get to taste wild strawberries until many years later, visiting a friend Uppsala. She took me out berrying, picking blueberries by the ton. Then she found a few wild strawberries, and gave me one to taste - unbelievable that something so small can taste so good.

I have my own "wild" strawberries planted in the terrace garden now. I got four this year, each one better than the one before.

Watching the film again, in Swedish now, and having spent many, many years visiting and even living here, I see it through different eyes. I recognize the landscapes, the stories. I recognize so many names now when watching the credits. I know about the ceremony that Lund makes about its doctors. In a way, I wish we had something like that in Germany, perhaps not in tuxedos and in Latin, but some public ceremony marking the passage to Dr., not just a handshake all around, a hat from the colleagues, and a sip of champagne.

The film speaks a lot about relationships: parents to children, man to wife, young woman to suitors, professor to housekeeper, person to God. The surreal sequences - watches without hands, the oral exam, the Sarahs which keep popping up - interspersed with the harsh reality of an auto accident, rain, and Marianne's unvarnished truths, are just so well-done. Bergman was, indeed, a master filmmaker.

In the documentary he speaks about the one thing he misses most about filmmaking - working with Sven Nyquist, his cameraman for so many films.

I had the privilege of seeing one scene of "Fanny and Alexander" being made in Uppsala in the 80s. I knew nothing about filmmaking then, but was fascinated by the amount of effort put into this one scene, done over and over, with a horse and buggy careening down the cobblestone street. Bergman knew exactly what he wanted, and was not happy until it was just so.

Bergman inspired many filmmakers who carry on, shining light into every nook and cranny of our complicated relationships. I have so enjoyed seeing so many of his films.

Shrek the Third

We wanted to take in Harry Potter at the local 3D movie theater (in order to enjoy the last few scenes to the fullest), but that was out of the question - sold out. And we didn't want to cram into any of the 1000 other theaters showing Harry Potter. So we decided to do Shrek the Third.

I went down to the theater 2 hours early to get tickets - could have saved that effort, there were only maybe 15 people watching it. The teenager came along so he could go mobile phone shopping (only the best will suit him, but that's another post).

It started off with some unusual advertising. Instead of the drastic if-you-copy-this-you-will-land-in-jail-for-years threats, there was the rat from Ratatouille giving advice that stolen copys are real boring, go for the real thing. It was actually mildly amusing. The trailer for the film itself was cute, too, so this one goes on the must-see list as well.

Shrek was, well, Shrek. Since I just learned how motion capture animation works (we have a set-up at school, one student did his thesis on using the system and I got to be second grader for it), it was interesting to see how nicely the figures moved. The donkey seems to be hardest to make move credibly.

At times I even felt that they had real people mixed in with the creatures, or real people who were "spruced up" a bit. Hard to tell anymore.

Lots of laughs, no real deep plot, just the thing for a Friday night after exams-exams-exams!

The Love of a Priest

I'm terribly sick with a cold, so no movie this week, just a film on TV. First thing I happened on was "Die Liebe eines Priesters" (The Love of a Priest). Filmed in beautiful Prague on the Moldau it is a wonderful love story.

A robber has just robbed something with his gang when he sees a woman jump from a bridge into the river. He jumps after her, gets her out of the water and to a hospital, but leaves without giving his name. He goes to a fatherly priest friend, who encourages him to leave town and go to a cloister.

She, it turns out, is pregnant. Cut, 6 years later.

She is back in Prague with her daughter. He is back in Prague, for a last test before taking his vows as a priest. He recognizes her the moment they meet, but he doesn't tell her anything. He gives her English lessons, they fall in love.

Lots of problems and twists and turns until the happy end, after he decides not to take his vows and saves her life again. Kleenexes, please!

The actor, Erol Sander, (yes, that is a stage name, his agent thought that Urcun Salihoglu would not be an easy name to remember) was born in Turkey but grew up in Germany. MAN, is he handsome! Sort of a Cary Grant type, been in all sorts of TV films. I hope to see more of him! Lots of good pictures on his web site....

Four Minutes

I can be soooo lazy at times, and prefer to go to the second-run movie theater around the corner (3 1/2 minutes leisurely walk) instead of fighting the crowds to see whatever is movie-of-the-week. And anyway, this theater owner has good taste in films.

I had never heard of "Vier Minuten" before, but it had won some sort of "Best German film in 2006" award - although with the state of German films, it doesn't take much to win an award like that. The plot outline on the IMDB was, um, meager: "An elderly piano teacher trains a young convict at a women's penitentiary." Full stop.

Okay. Just the thing for a rainy Saturday evening. I got there just as the ads were starting and was shocked to find that I was getting one of the last free seats, the place was jam-packed!

The movie started in fits and starts, it was hard trying to sort out who was whom, what time it was playing in (the present, but it is filmed in Luckau in Brandenburg, where time seems to have stood still), which bits were flashbacks, and which bits carried the story on.

An angry elderly woman, Trude, insists on teaching women convicts to play the piano. And one is really, really good, and really, really angry: Jenny. Turns out she played the child prodigy circuit before her life disintegrated. Her father started a "relationship" with her, as he put it, she ran away to live with a male prostitute, who got her pregnant and then killed his father, she got framed for the murder because her Dad would not give her an alibi and here she was, doing time with some, um, lovely ladies in the women's pen.

Anyway, Trude and Jenny get connected, practice a lot, and Trude gets Jenny to the German national youth musician's festival. She makes it to the finals, and then 2 days before the competition her cell mates tie her hands to the bed with her dress while she is sleeping and set it on fire, burning her. She pulls free in rage, grabs something, and smashes a cell mate to the floor. This gets her privilege of attending the finals rescinded.

But Trude manages to sneak her out of prison, they have a big fight ('cause Jenny's father had visited Trude) and Trude ends up telling Jenny her story, about being a lesbian nurse during the Third Reich and ratting out on her communist girlfriend, who was then executed. Somehow they manage to get themselves pulled together and make it to the contest.

They need to prove that Jenny is Jenny, and of course she does not have ID, having just escaped from prison. Trude finds a phone booth (something seldom these days!) and calls Jenny's father, who has an old ID for her, and he comes. She gets in just in time to play - and just as the police enter the opera house to re-arrest her. Cops all over the place, at every entrance, and the jail boss coming up to Trude, who is waiting backstage.

Trude insists that they wait four minutes, so that Jenny can perform, and man, what four minutes those are! Jenny plays Franz Schubert's Impromptu Op. 142 No. 2, but not like you have ever heard it, classical mixed with jazz mixed with beat box mixed with playing the piano strings directly. It is really amazing! The patrons are shocked at first, but then they give her a standing ovation, and she curtsies (something she had fought about with Trude many times), with two cops putting on handcuffs as she is bowing down.

I wanted to put this synopsis into the IMDB, as there is so little there. But they will only do that if I validate myself as a real person by either logging into Amazon or giving a credit card number or giving a (US) mobile phone for them to send me an SMS to send back. Nope. I have a login at IMDB to read the juicy stuff in the forums, but they're not getting real data from me. So here is a synopsis, you are welcome to come and get it!

Oceans's 13

They were predicting heavy storms for this evening, so we decided to take in a movie instead of visiting the German-French fair and downing good French wine. Trying to get 4 adults, one teenager and a going-on-thirteen to agree to a film is not easy, but we decided on Ocean's 13.

Some of us had seen 11 and 12, others just 11, others none. The adults had all seen "The Godfather", so that was kind of fun for the jokes.

Those who had never seen one before just loved it; those who had seen all felt that 13 was better than 12, but 11 was still the best. The teenager felt that it was boring because there wasn't enough "action" in it.

I found it all rather hum-ho. The sequences on finding (and changing) data in FBI files is supposed to be a wild fantasy - actually, with the Bundestrojaner in Germany, it is getting closer every day. As the computer screen was shown filtering data, looking for the known accomplices, I remarked in a loud voice "Schäuble lässt grüssen" (the minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, who started a "terror file" and wants to intrude on all computers, even personal ones) - but no one laughed or seemed to understand.

I liked the split screen (at times 5 different films showing, or the same scene from different angles) and the animation with the winnings above the heads of the people. I think I laughed 3 times, but I've forgotten what for. I found it rather boring and predictable (the teenager agreed with me on that, shock!).

And then it didn't rain, after all. We could have had that nice French wine....

Stranger than Fiction

The second-run theater around the corner (tickets just 2,99 € per person) was showing Stranger than Fiction this past week. I had heard something vague about the film, and at this price, if I don't like it I can leave.

The place was packed.

And good reason, too, it was a great film! A tax auditor for the IRS is hearing voices - describing him, and what he does. He counts a lot, for example. He calculates minimal paths from point A to point B. He can do math fast in his head. (Oooh, I know the feeling, the first two I also do, constantly).

He falls madly in love with the young lady running a bakery that he is supposed to be auditing. And he hears these voices, finally realizing that he is a character in the novel of a writer with writer's block. She wants to kill him off and finish the book, but can't see how to do it.

She eventually hits on something, he finds out, gets contact with her with the help of Dustin Hoffman as a literature-professor-and-life-guard, pleads for a different ending with a happier end, and so it goes.

The fx (often depicting the calculations he is doing in his head) are just marvelous. The love story is sweet (they eventually get each other), and the story ending kind of corny, but in all it was very amusing and well worth the price.

The Sugarland Express

Saw an old DVD with the usual suspects last night, The Sugarland Express from 1974. It was the first "theatrical feature film" by Stephen Spielberg (begging the question as to whether he made some non-theatrical feature films or some theatrical non-feature films or some theatrical feature non-films before).

The main character is Goldie Hawn, whom I best remember as a regular on the Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. She plays a very childlike, very loud, selfish, talkative, blonde American woman who gets her husband out of a mimimum-security jail so that he can help her kidnap their child back, who was taken from her by the welfare system.

The movie is based on a true story, as they kidnapped a police man and involved more than 100 police car units chasing them across the state on the way to Sugar Land, where their son is with foster parents. The husband pays for this with his life, getting killed by Texan sharp-shooters as punishment for his crimes, without benefit of judge or jury.

The movie does not seem dated at all, except perhaps for the police radio system and the absence of mobile phones and computers. It brings back memories like collecting Green Stamps like my Mom used to do, pouring over that Green Stamp catalogue and dreaming of the stuff we could get if we only had 5 more books filled with the stamps (think "HappyDigits" or "PayBack" or such today, only unified, as many companies participated).

And in the context of the current "War on Terrorism" it is very thought provoking. For the police these two are criminals who are committing a felony. For the people who greet them along the way they are heros, fighting for their kid, taken from them by a mean-old state system. The kidnapped cop understands that these are just children in grown-up bodies, that they are really only trying to get their son back. He tries to explain this to his boss, who does seem to understand, but is under pressure to "do something", which in Texas apparently means calling in sharpshooters from the Texas Rangers. Kill first, ask questions later.

I was glad that we had turned on the subtitles in German for the DVD - although I spent many painful, teenage years growing up in Georgia, the Southern Drawl and the vocabulary in Texas are quite something, and I could often only understand what had been said by reading the German and translating back. I had to then explain to the rest of the gang things like why they kept saying "doggone".

Welt am Draht, the 13th Floor and Second Life

Saw a triple-header last night with some friends - both parts of Welt am Draht, a 1973 made-for-TV science fiction film by the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder based on the novel Simulacron Three by Daniel F. Galouye and the remake in 1999 of the same novel produced by Roland Emmerich and directed by Josef Rusnak, called The Thirteenth Floor.

Since I was just reading a review of the state of things in Second Life in the c't, (Goldesel Second Life?, 07/07, p. 94ff) and had just re-installed Second Life in order to check things out, I was struck by the parallels. Galouye tells the story of what Linden Labs would like Second Life to be - a parallel universe in which we can manipulate "units" who do not know that they are units in a higher level.

I don't think we will ever get to that position - or are we currently ourselves units in some higher level, unaware that we are not making our decisions ourselves, but are being directed from above? But the questions raised by Galouye and illustrated by Fassbinder and Rusnak are valid - what is reality? Why are we researching into virtual realities? A quote from Welt am Draht: There will always be questions, so there will always be research.

The Fassbinder version is extremely long, slow, painful - but the music lets us know exactly when something strange happens. The camera work, playing with mirrors, is superb. And the memories of the interior decorations, the clothes, and the horrible hairstyles men wore during the 70s makes this a wonderful film.

The Thirteenth Floor goes into a lot more detail on déjà vu and was so disconcerting for me because I always knew exactly what was coming next. I don't remember ever seeing this movie - maybe I saw it on an airplane to the States? I cannot recall, but it is so vividly etched in my mind, perhaps I was acting in it on a higher level and it got streamed down into my reality?

Second Life, btw, is still as boring as the first times I went in. Jerky graphics. Unresponsive system. Ads everywhere. Stupid idiots soliciting you. And without money, nothing fun to do. Luckily, there are plenty of other games around.