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Of course I cried

stvincent

St. Vincent

This movie was totally a tearjerker, just like “The boat that rocked”. I can’t help tearing up when I see something designed to be touching, but sometimes the rational part of myself knows that this is totally idiotic. On some level, I found almost everything in “St. Vincent” revolting, and it blows my mind how the movie managed to get Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy and Chris O’Dowd to play in this film. I don’t understand Hollywood.

So here we have a world in which somehow being a prostitute is a bad thing, but enjoying sex with one is somehow OK, being a soldier makes you a hero and washing your demented wife’s laundry is too (even though you keep having sex with prostitutes). Being grumpy to people, drinking alcohol and going to horse races makes you bad, but not bad beyond redemption. Sadly I don’t remember all the details, but most of all I remember that I wasn’t bothered by how the film was made or how the story was told… It was rather that aspects of the story just bothered me. In my book, the moral of the story was a very conservative one and the world it is set in calls for openness but fails to hide its own narrow views on what makes a “good” or a “bad” person. I didn’t really like that part.

Other than that, Bill Murray is as much fun as he always has been! I always thought the film was enjoyable, I just couldn’t relate to its message.

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Amadeus Amadeus!

adventureland

Adventureland

The most fascinating thing about Kristen Stewart is how incredibly good she looks in kiss scenes. Besides having a very beautiful profile, she got that “I am really into you and I am the hottest woman in the world even though I am just looking naturally myself” look down perfectly. Maybe it’s because she’s just that young and essentially playing herself here, but unlike most others, she simply can do it. (Just compare her to Natalie Portman, who is a fabulous actress but utterly fails at “sexy”.) I can’t even describe what it is, but to me, she looks right when she does it, and it gives her a stronger identification potential than any actress I have ever seen. (No, I don’t identify with her beauty, but certainly with that “I am so troubled but I can’t help but kiss you” look.) I think she got the Twilight part because she looks so amazing in kiss scenes.

A big part of “Adventureland” actually survives on Kristen Stewart being that kind of girl. Since Jesse Eisenberg’s character is basically just a tumbling idiot in the story (albeit a likable one), she is the truly interesting character of the story, even though she isn’t all that messed up if you think about it (but she surely feels very, very confused about herself). Of course they are all teenagers with teenage problems, but Stewart made it relatable and go beyond the teenage movie fun. She turns the film from teenage comedy to coming of age drama.

With that said, the movie works amazingly as teenage comedy too. Lisa P! Everybody in the story is lovable, to be honest I even liked Frigo (who ended up being an actual friend) and Connell who was able to respond with sympathy and understanding when Emily breaks up with him. Perhaps only James’s parents were unbearable but they had no big part in the story besides setting the premise, thank God.

I am not sure I can admit it so easily, but I am in love with “Adventureland”. So many aspects of its youthful plot just spoke to me, and I want to pick up Kristen Stewart’s skill of sexily going through her hair.

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Humanity

sevenpsychopaths

Seven Psychopaths

Sometimes a string of bad movies makes me get bored of watching movies in general. It happened a few times, and sometimes even as low as two bad films could produce such a phase. This time, I completely stopped watching films ever since we came back from Singapore because so many things were going on (and because “Mad Men” and “Game of Thrones” continued airing). However, it had nothing to do with bad films and everything to do with how films didn’t really fit into my life anymore. It wasn’t that I was so busy (though this has happened in the past too) but rather that something totally crushed my ability to blog. Maybe around this time in life, I was writing so much (chatting, e-mails etc.) that it made me not want to write anything anymore. But then again I had other phases in life in which lots of typing on the computer occurred. I don’t know.

Case in point, my backlog is full of really enjoyable films, and “Seven Psychopaths” might have been the most enjoyable of all. I have been eyeing the film for a long time, but Loris told me he thought the film was so-so. I can kind of see where he is coming from, as this one is lacking the immensely sympathetic and interesting characters of the other McDonagh films whereas the protagonist here is rather bland. But to me, there was much to love in this film: I like the general premise of a screenwriter with a writer’s block (obviously I can relate to that), I totally loved the story of that monk, the way it started out completely absurdly and ended in a beautiful fashion, I really liked the ending which turned aforementioned bland protagonist into someone a little more interesting, and I ultimately enjoyed how the story was told very much. I have a thing for these gangster stories with many characters and absurd twists, and “Seven Psychopaths” was brilliant at it.

By the way, is every movie with Woody Harrelson a good one? I wonder about that. It surely makes me look forward to the second season of “True Detective”, even though Harrelson won’t be in it anymore. Conveniently, Colin Farrell will be in it (but I am not actually a fan of this guy despite all the great films he was in).

“The McDonaghs can do not wrong” is what Pixelmatsch said after we saw this film. So far, I get the impression that this is absolutely true. If my main criteria for a film to appear in my top 30 is whether it says something poignant about humanity, then every McDonagh film is a strong contender for it.

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1001 postings

I am the kind of person who crumbles under pressure. For the longest time, I thought it was the other way around, because pressure actually helped me in many aspects in life (like working 10 times harder and being productive when faced with a deadline) and led to almost every success I have had in life. Even my stubbornness actually helped, because you have to be stubborn to ask for what you want again and again. Nowadays, I think the three values I cherish most in life could be summed up with gratitude, empathy and simplicity. I even think these are the things that make a blog great: Appreciation for the people who read it, the ability to understand how others perceive the world and adapt to it, and a simple organization and writing style.

I was under time pressure when I wrote my last posting over 2 months ago, the celebratory 1000th one. It was probably the preparation for our Singapore trip, but I don’t even remember. What I remember quite clearly is how I was generally satisfied with the way I wrote the posting, but not what I wrote. I managed to cram what I thought was every relevant memory of the Berlinale (which was not too personal to blog about), but I completely failed at even mentioning what I actually wanted to write about the most: A reflection on this blog, the journey (haha buzzword!) of this blog until today, and, most of all, to show my gratitude to everyone who has been accompanying me here. I perceive you guys who are reading this blog as eternal, even though experience shows that friendships dissipate and interests and hobbies don’t last forever (I don’t read manga anymore, can you believe it?) Perhaps I am simply taking things for granted, but I don’t think that must necessarily be true. The romantic belief that this blog and its readers will exist forever no matter how crappy my writing and how deep my writer’s block shouldn’t keep me up from feeling grateful to you, my readers, for being in my life. Instead, both of these feelings are grand and meaningful to me, the first makes me feel secure and the latter makes me feel lucky. I don’t really know how to express these in words (poetry is so not my thing), so I will try the simplicity route: Thank you for having me. Please make my dream come true and continue to be there.

With that said, my goal is to kill my backlog before the PIFF begins on May 28. There, I said it. Publishing goals are supposed to help with maintaining them, so now I shall go back to doing what I do really well: Keeping a deadline.

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Berlinale 2015, Afterthoughts and statistics

After Pixelmatsch pointed out to me that this would be our 1000th posting on About Chocolate Parfaits, I spent days agonizing what to write here. I wanted it to be something special and – since these are the afterthoughts – something meaningful. And then the unavoidable happened: My feelings of the Berlinale this year began to fade. It was very reminiscent of last year’s Berlinale where I had very similar feelings. It feels lame to quote myself, but it’s so true for this year as well:

About one month after it happened, I look at it with fond memories, but I already see that they are less vivid than when it happened.

On top of that, last year’s Berlinale was a blast. It was stressful and it was during a time when O still needed much care and attention (whereas this year he went to daycare, though that mean that I had to be there to take him there and back from Monday to Thursday), but in many ways it totally blew my mind. We saw some amazing films (this year’s best films would be perhaps comparable to last year’s 7th or 8th ranked film), had tons of silent films with live piano accompaniment and spent such an incredible amount of time in movie theaters. It was just amazing. Therefore it’s rather unfair to compare this way, but my honest feeling is that this year was overshadowed by last year’s experience: Getting tickets was annoying as hell, it was “only” 20 films in 9 days vs. 27 films in 10 days, my terrible cold made Berlin’s weather feel even worse, and the number of interesting titles for me was much smaller this year. While last year had some 50+ titles I thought were interesting, this year had perhaps 30+ or so.

Nevertheless, I cannot so easily write off an event I have been spent basically a month of my life on: Preparing for it, watching films and then blogging them. We had some great surprises (“Under Electric Clouds” is so incredibly brainy and sophisticated, it’s Russian filmmaking at its essence, really, and reminds me that I need to check out Zvyagintsev’s other films), a few disappointments (ugh “Ten no Chasuke” and “Der Geldkomplex”) and most generally things went very smoothly (no long delays and the likes).

This year, Shii couldn’t make it to the Berlinale (*still crying about it*) but luckily 6451 came to visit! Despite a relatively short 4 1/2 day visit, he managed to see 2 operas and 13 films, now how efficient is that? It’s unfortunate that I wasn’t able to see all of these with him, but even though some of the films we saw were not so great, just having seen them together made me enjoy it. I think the presence of 6451 would even make “The Prince” enjoyable (and actually I reminisce fondly about our experience of seeing the film in the AMK Hub, even though the film itself is total crap), and that makes his visit the definite highlight of this year’s Berlinale. I am so glad we ended up getting some take-away food at the end and hung out at Pixelmatsch’s place, eating delicious köfte, drinking tea, looking up stuff on the internet and – most importantly – talked about the films we saw, life and everything else. We even talked about our fear of death, to which 6451 made one of the wittiest, most memorable jokes I have ever heard in my life.

Another nice side effect to the terrible wait at the ticket lines was my coffee and lunch with the old guy I met, who I really enjoyed talking to. I have basically already said everything about this in my posting on “Koza” though, hm.

My dream is still to have one Berlinale with plenty of good films where the entire PIFF can attend!

Finally, here are the statistics for this year’s Berlinale. Unlike last year, we were happily able to go to the Berlinale Palast, the Zoo Palast and the International, but only Pixelmatsch made it into the Cubix (twice even!) Neither Pixelmatsch nor I have been to the Friedrichstadt-Palast or the Haus der Berliner Festspiele this year, but 6451 saw screenings there. I miss the Cubix hahaha. After I missed out on the International last year, I had 3 screenings there this time, and if I happen to catch another Berlinale in my life again, I will make a visit to Cubix 9 a top priority.

Continue reading “Berlinale 2015, Afterthoughts and statistics”

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Berlinale 2015, Films we did not see

This year was much unlike last year where I had a huge list of films (42!) I wanted to see, and then ended up seeing significantly less of it (27). This year, I pretty much saw almost everything I wanted to see even though I “only” saw 20 films, except for the films that Pixelmatsch saw and blogged (Otouto, Enjo, Yukinojo Henge, The River, Mizu no koe o kiku, Que horas ela vola). There were a few more films which I considered but didn’t watch:

  • Corbo – Canadian film about a radically activist boy, could have been wonderful or terrible
  • Alice in den Städten – From the Wenders hommage, recommended by Gorp
  • Der amerikanische Freund – From the Wenders hommage, not recommended by Gorp but I am irrationally interested in it
  • Wonderful World End – Gothic lolita teen movie? Surely it will be on the internet one day
  • Le dos rouge – Bonello sure does weird stuff; I totally think this film could be very awesome or very terrible, even Loris was interested in it
  • Gone with the Bullets – My dad told me he didn’t like the movie and it’s so sad because it sounds great, so I refrained from seeing it
  • Sworn Virgin – The old man I met waiting in line for tickets recommended this one to me, so technically I didn’t consider it beforehand but the description of the film did catch my eye

Besides Pixelmatsch’s films (which now all sound so attractive to me except “Dari Marusan”!), there are also tons of films that 6451 saw but I didn’t. I am surprised there actually ended up only being 5 of them:

  • Mr. Holmes – I was going to watch this film too, but I didn’t want to use my precious Berlinale time for it. From the looks of it, it could be the best film of the year.
  • Der letzte Sommer der Reichen – Weird Austrian black comedy on high society… or something, but I still think it sounds like fun
  • Woman in Gold – If this was a German film, you’d think it’s a lame attempt at a “tu quoque” towards the Austrians who apparently were terrible about giving back stolen artwork
  • El Club – 6451 said he wanted to see a film from Latin America, but since Pixelmatsch has always been disappointed in those films so far (minus Brazil, where movies are apparently awesome) I am not surprised he didn’t like “El Club” that much
  • Tell spring not to come this year – Afghanistan documentary, apparently nice (it also got some awards)

Besides “Gone with the Wind”, there basically were no more Retrospective films I would have wanted to see. But amongst newer films, there are quite a few major productions which I hope to catch later on:

  • Als wir träumten – This one is actually already in theaters, it’s about kids in the former GDR or something
  • Are you here— A comedy by Matthew Weiner
  • Every thing will be fine – The new Wim Wenders, though it did not do well with critics it seems
  • Life – The new Corbijn, apparently people in Berlin were excited to see Robert Pattinson while I have never seen him on screen
  • Little Forest – Based on a manga I really like, this would have been a must-watch if it hadn’t been shown in the culinary section (way too pricey)
  • Nobody wants the night – The opening film of this year’s Berlinale did not gather a lot of good reviews, but I am mesmerized by the Greenland shots
  • One & Two – Kiernan Shipka outside of “Mad Men”, I am so intrigued
  • Queen of the Desert – The new Werner Herzog film; I have never actually seen anything by Herzog, but one has to start somewhere, right?
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Berlinale 2015, Day 9 (Yukinojo Henge)

It was so wonderful to see that this year I can watch the remake of a great movie from last year! I was so curious to see what Ichikawa would do differently than the already wonderful Kinugasa.

Yukinojo Henge (An Actor’s Revenge)
Japan 1963, Ichikawa Kon, 114′

For the synopsis you can really just read last year’s post, the script is nearly identical!

It’s madness to think, an actor could play the same role in a remake 28 years later. Well it’s Japan, so Kazuo Hasegawa did just that as his 300th movie and reprised his role as Yukinojo. You do see he’s older now and actually at times he does look a little too old for the role of a young man in his twenties at most. However both his feminine side and his vengeful side are still there in full bloom and I can not imagine someone else for Yukinojo. To be fair however, if judged on the performance of Hasegawa alone, I do slightly prefer the original as no matter how excellent of an actor he is, you can not unsee his age.

The remake stays faithful to the original story, no really meaningful changes are made, however the cinematography is much different: exterior scenes are deliberately shown as shot on a stage: the ground is not real dirt, the trees and houses and walls are almost symbolic, the background is solid black. It evokes a feeling of watching a theatre play. Also, most fights are stylised, no classic swordplay here. Blending and split shots galore! In general Ichikawa surprisingly went for the more artsy choices, which does work quite well with the script, as the revenge trip together with the constructed manner of the shots blend well into a Tarantinoesque artificialness.

It’s hard to say which movie is better, especially as we only have a heavily cut, almost disjointed 97-minute version of the original 5-hour 3-parter available. Without a doubt, the Hasegawa of the original is the better choice and in it’s current state the original loses to the remake which has no pacing issues for example. Ideally, the 1935 Hasegawa should have met the 1963 Ichikawa.  Scratch that, someone just needs to invent a time machine and rescue the original movie in all its glory.

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Berlinale 2015, Day 9 (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)

I am going to finish blogging the Berlinale 5 days before last year, but last year I saw 27 films while this year it was “only” 20. At the same time, I think my postings became longer, so it’s all relative I suppose. (I am not even sure if greater length is a good thing – am I rambling more too?) At least this posting will be short, because.

Usually I try to see bigger pictures on the last Sunday, because I expect there to be less people trying to see them on this last day. But this year, there simply were no “big” movies of interest to me, but instead I was only interested in less popular titles. In this screening of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” was packed though, just like “Paris, Texas” afterwards. I really enjoyed spending my last two films at the Berlinale staying seated in CinemaxX 8. It’s lovely to end the Berlinale with this, and the chance to do so is one of the reasons why I chose to see these films in the first place.

drrt

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
USA 1953, Howard Hawks, 91’

Marilyn Monroe plays Lorelei, a pretty blonde stupid money-grabbing showgirl who goes on an overseas trip with her down-to-earth muscle-loving deadpan-humoured friend Dorothy, played by dark-haired Jane Russell. On the trip, the family of Lorelei’s husband-to-be hires a private detective to find proof of her assumed infidelity, but throughout the process, Dorothy falls in love with him.

Just like everyone else, I know the film for the “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend” song, and Pixelmatsch rightfully concluded that the film is an operetta. Sure it’s actually a musical, but it’s closer to “Eine Frau, die weiß, was sie will” than to “Grease” or “West Side Story” if you ask me. As a result, we loved it! It looks awesome, it has a few great musical numbers, it has a very bold philosophy on love and relationships and most of all, it was actually funny. Who cares about whether the story fully makes sense or not. I think my favorite was actually Dorothy’s number with those ridiculously handsome swimmers, I understand why it’s less famous than “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend”, but it was so much more fun and it’s refreshing and only fair to sing about male beauty when the rest of the film showcases female eyecandy, right?

As I already said before for “Yolanda and the Thief”, I love musical films nowadays. Perhaps not all and perhaps only those of the screwball comedy or the step dancing variety, but it’s interesting how my slowly growing love for operettas has also changed my view on musical films. Life is better with musicals than without, that is for sure.

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Berlinale 2015, Day 9 (End of Winter)

I like pre-purchasing tickets for the last day of the Berlinale because the tickets are cheaper anyways, and because having the tickets already motivates me to actually go and see films on the last day. Originally I even wanted to see 5 movies on this day (6451 shows how easy it is to do so), but I didn’t get tickets for “Wonderful World End”. That is fine – I don’t expect the movie to be good anyways, it will most likely be available online someday and this way Loris and I were able to enjoy the fine weather we luckily had that day.

After Pixelmatsch and 6451 saw “End of Winter” on day 1 (while Loris and I watched “Love, theft and other entanglements”), they both ranked the film pretty low. Honestly, if I hadn’t had tickets already, I most likely would have skipped on the film which, I think, would have been a grave mistake. Just like “Ship bun”, this is not a film you will easily find on the internet (I suppose). It was absolutely worthwhile to see the film at the Berlinale if this is my only chance to see it.

drrt

End of Winter (Cheol won gi haeng)
Korea 2014, Kim Dae-hwan, 103′

Wife, two sons and a daughter-in-law attend a teacher’s retirement ceremony. There are dissonances between all of them, but when the father announces that he wants to divorce his wife (from whom he has been living separately for a long time), everybody is shocked. On top of that, a snowstorm keeps everyone up from going home as buses are not running, so the entire family is stuck in the father’s little apartment and forced to spend a few days together.

I cannot explain it, but this film was much to my tastes. 6451 is right with his assessment that this is a movie where essentially nothing happens, nothing big gets revealed (besides the divorce announcement at the beginning) and which doesn’t seem to lead anywhere. Nevertheless, I thought it was a lovely character study, and I especially enjoyed the father’s quiet grumpiness. In an effort to explain myself, the film reminded me a little bit of “Still Walking” which I disliked. In “Still Walking”, however, the entire family is dysfunctional in a different way: Everybody is polite but there is so much hatred underneath that I cannot possibly fathom why some critics ramble on about the film is about “love” in a family. There is no love between them, for goodness’ sakes. “End of Winter” is similar, but they are much more open about it in comparison. There is much miscommunication and simple refusal of communication, but at least it’s not pretense and hidden hostility. The daughter-in-law openly complains to him about her husband’s family, and the son asks his father the right questions – I liked how this family was generally less mean-spirited (except for the mannerisms of the mother maybe), which makes the gravity of their differences more interesting. I think if you are mean, it’s no big surprise you cannot truly bond with other people, but if you are simply normal, the inability to understand each other and be ‘good’ to each other is much more tragic and ultimately more interesting.

Oh, I should also mention that I did fall asleep in the film a little bit, but not for too long. It certainly is the type where not all that much is happening for sure, but it’s fine that way. For a young director’s work, I thought “End of Winter” was well-crafted, and I surely liked all the snow and the Korean barbecue. (The movie gave Pixelmatsch a craving for it, and now I am craving it too.)

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Berlinale 2015, Day 9 (Kurzfilme Kplus 1)

Sunday in Berlin-Friedrichshain at 10.30am – needless to say that there were pooptons of children. This time it was not huge groups of school or kindergarten kids, but affluent and hipster looking parents trying to instill some culture into their children. The whole affair was quite loud, but it actually made the Q&A rather pleasant. As always, the children asked a lot of “why”-questions and most of them were really good. I really liked the answers given by Montoya who explained his film so well that I liked it more afterwards, and I was in love with the Iranian woman who appeared on-stage with a light headscarf and a very cutesy but elegant outfit. I was impressed by how child-like and thoughtful her answers were, though sometimes she overdid it a little bit (and the children actually did not believe her version of the world). On top of that, the lady from the first film had stamps with her film’s characters for the autograph session. The children were delighted and I thought that marketing scheme was brilliant.

drrt

Der kleine Vogel und das Eichhörnchen (The Little Bird and the Squirrel)
Switzerland 2014, Lena von Döhren, 5′

A short film about a bird and a squirrel fighting over something (food?) and then meeting a fox who tries to eat them. It looks utterly adorable and the kids laughed a lot, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the story itself. It seemed utterly pointless that the little bird couldn’t fly, and there was basically no point to the story except it had action that children like.

Camino del agua (Water Path)
Columbia 2014, Carlos Felipe Montoya, 8′

The story is really short – mother tells girl to go to a further away water source to fill up a bottle of water. She does so but on the way back a stranger with crutches asks her to give him water. She does so, but it turns out that the stranger lied to her and can actually walk just fine. She ends up filling up her bottle again at a pond, and a little fish gets caught in the water. I like how ambiguous the end is (we don’t know if she gets scolded, if the mother notices etc.) and especially how unclear the moral takeaway of the story is. Was her decision a “good” one?
Oh and how much I loved the little girl’s outfit! I was amazed at its cuteness. But I think all of these – ambivalent story, beautiful landscape, cute outfit – are things that little children don’t really care about. Only for adults like me it was truly fun.

The Tie
Belgium 2014, An Vrombaut, 7′
I think this one got an award for being visually impressive or something, but I thought it was remarkable that this was the only film I did not remember just from its title. It sure was beautifully rendered and features a cute idea, but its story was all but forgettable and I was not a huge fan of its style. But the children sure liked it.

Messages dans l’air (Air-Mail)
Switzerland/France 2014, Isabelle Favez, 6′

A cute little story and an awesome cat (see picture above! I loved the cat so much that I chose the picture for this blog post.) I doubt the children were very into it, but I certainly loved the style and enjoyed the sweet love story.

Agnes
Sweden 2014, Anja Lind, 15′

“Agnes” is the longest and one of the more meaningful stories in the bunch, about a 6-year old girl whose 16-year old brother is the most important person in her life. She experiences jealousy when he starts becoming alienated to her as he has a new girlfriend. But before it takes a real toll on their relationship, they reconcile. I didn’t fully get what was going on in their heads because it was all subtly hinted at, but I actually liked the way it was done.

Rosso Papavero
Slovak Republic 2014, Martin Smatana, 6′

A visually stunning dream sequence of a small boy who dreams of, well, a circus. The whole thing looked pretty surreal and the director actually said something about what it was supposed to mean, but I couldn’t understand his answer very well (sad!) One kid asked how those circus waggons could all disappear in a small tent, and his response was: “It’s a magic tent!” Cute.

Mahiye sorkh shodeh (The Fried Fish)
Iran 2014, Leila Khalilzadeh, 11′

Based on a Japanese children’s book, this is the story of a fish who gets caught, then fried but manages to escape being eaten. He offers a part of his body to animals who find him in exchange for taking him to the sea, but one by one they abandon him after eating his flesh. Ultimately quite a sad story, and I would have hated it as a kid. (What is the point of all this sadness?) I also was not a big fan of the animation which looked sloppily done. However, I really liked how it stirred up a lot of discussion with the children. (One of them complained that mice don’t eat fish hahaha.)