Moving pictures

El laberinto del fauno - this was the movie I watched this evening. It's a Guillermo del Toro movie, who's probably not the most famous director around. The movie is not completely unlike The Fall, as both have a young girl as a heroine and both movies unfold as the girl dreams them up. The main difference is that the Labyrinth is a very, very dark movie, full of pain, hopelessness and despair. Some of the images are also quite disturbing, and I did not feel the need to include such scenes to keep the tension up. And of course the movie was in Spanish, with English subtitles (I was expecting German subtitles, now that would have been interesting :) ). I was glad to notice that I did not forget all my Spanish, but without the subs I would have been almost completely lost. Most sentences I was only able to reconstruct after reading the translation. I think the main problem with my Spanish understanding skills, that it takes a lot of time to consume a sentence - I guess I should improve this. Speaking and writing is a completely different matter, right now I am quite hopeless in this field :)
But anyhow, the movie was very good, with good acting again - I guess we'll hear the name of the young actress who played Ofelia in the movie (Ivana Baquero). The movie is nominated in 6 categories at this year's Academy Awards, it'll be interesting how many it gets and in categories. Of course at the time I'll post this entry, written on Friday evening, the Oscar ceremony will be already over.

(Update: Das Leben der Anderen got the Oscar for best foreign movie, and it deserved it, too. I think El Laberinto got one for best mask & special effects.)

Erm, my mind keeps wandering. I should rest before the coming tiring last-weekend-in-Berlin party :)
Take care,
M.

Another day, another dollar

Wow, this Sunday was long! And it was very good, too! :) As I mentioned before, I woke up, looked at the snow, did my laundry, and was more than ready to start my day rolling. The first step was heading to a 'net café and forget to post my previous entry, so it has to be backdated :) Then, I got a Turkish börek, with cheese, to keep my tummy occupied until dinner, which I was sure will be very late. I ate half of it and got on the bus, heading to the Museum of Photography. The museum is dedicated to Helmut Newton, and funded by the Foundation named after late artist, thus one floor only has the items of Mr. Newton. It's a very good part of the exhibition, gives a good insight on how many beautiful naked models he had the chance to photograph :) He also did quite good portraits, some were on display too. The other part of the exhibition was entitled "Men, war and peace", which had pictures by James Nachtwey, who was there in every region the US had intervened in the last few decades, be it Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan or the Balkan, and took very sad and very shocking pictures. I did not really understand how David LaChapelle's extravagant and colourful portraits were related to the title, but I really liked how his flamboyant pictures contrasted the black and white and pale sadness Nachtwey's pictures emanated. LaChapelle made very complicated pictures, using very bizarre setups and figures - of which the best example would be "Xenophobia", showing a black and a white model, naked, with their heads mixed up, seemingly by cutting the head off and sewing it to the other body. Hey, I said it was bizarre :) The third exhibition was about cities of the world, by a French guy with a name one easily forgets (Raymond Depardon, I looked it up). He was sent out by a French foundation with a still and a moving picture camera to shoot pictures of everyday moments in various cities around the world, including but not limited to Berlin, New York, Moscow, Johannesburg, Shanghai and Rio de Janeiro. There were twelve cities, each with around a dozen of photos, and a 5 minute reel. The photos were nice, everyday life at it's best, but the short movies were more interesting. They had 12 big movie screens in one huge room, and the films were running on and on, all at the same time (sans sounds, of course). The artist usually chose a semi-crowded place (he must have had an easy job in Tokyo :) ) and just filmed people running around. He is a man, so he usually followed a nice face (ass, even) or two in every city. Bah, men, they are all the same :P :) Actually I was quite suprised that none of the movies showed the camera being ripped out of his grip and stuck up his ass :) I thought people liked it a lot less to be observed, but it might just be me. I did not stay to watch all the films though, as it was a bit cold in that huge room, so I left to have a coffee before the movie I was going to watch. Right now the 57th annual Berlinale, the Berlin Film Festival is taking place here, which actually is the first film festival I've ever been to :) I watched one of the smaller movies, smaller as in "not part of the main program". It was entitled "The Fall", a film by the Indian director Tarsem Singh, or just Tarsem, as he was credited. And, I must tell you, I expected this flick to be amazing, and it truly was! To sum it up, it's about a 5 year old Romanian girl, living in the US in the 1920s, who is in a hospital with a broken arm, and who meets a young actor who lost the will to live. The actor tells her the most amazing story ever, and the story unfolds visually as if it was taking place in the girl's imagination. The special effects are great, used very well, and only in the necessary amount, this movie truly is something for the big screen. Both characters and scenery change as in the wildest dreams, since it's just that: a wild dream, a child's imagination :) The movie keeps a good balance between smiles and tears, and even though it did not seem to hold a too deep meaning, it was one of the best I've seen recently. After the movie was over, there was a very short Q&A session with Tarsem, which was sadly cut even shorter since the next program was about to start. Still, Tarsem answered a few questions, and as his train of thought rolled on in every answer, it was easy to see why the movie had the flow it had. The most interesting thing in the event was the applause after the movie :) Not usual in your neighborhood cinema :) I guess it would be better if I had allocated more time on this event, but there's always another time, though sadly most probably another place, too.
So, after the movie, I took the longer route back home, just so I become hungry enough for dinner :) I made Sechuan turkey, which turned out quite good (I even dared to add a little honey to the meat, though I did not feel that in the taste...), and sipped a nice Californian Chardonnay with it. I don't think I would spend this much money on a wine at home, but here, the price range at the supermarket is quite narrow, what I consider quality wine is between 4 and 6 EURs. And while at home I at least have a slight idea what regions and grape types mean, here, I only see the colour difference between an Australian Shiraz and a Spanish Rioja.
Anyhow, this Chardonnay by the Gallo family is very good, very tasty, so a good choice :)
Well, to wrap it up...I just realised will only spend one more weekend here in Berlin...next weekend I must go home, work reasons, and then it's only one more left. I guess I just should let go of "Sic transit gloria mundi" and let "Carpe diem" take it's place...
I only hope I quoted the fitting parts from my French cookbook :P
Oh wow this was long. Bye!
M.

Recap on the weekend

This weekend was spent alone again. People left on Friday in the afternoon, and I was almost the last person to leave the offices, due to some problems others had with my work. Of course the culprit wasn't me, even though all the traces led to me. I'm not really fond of how the version and project control software works here :(
So after a long Friday I spent the evening at home (I think, I can't really recall :D but hey, it was 3 days ago! ) All I know is that I bought some tea, again, Ostfriesische Blattmischung (translates to East Frisian Leaves Mix) this time, which is very good, and I chose it myself this time. So I'm kinda proud of myself :)
Saturday in the morning I did my laundry (how exciting) and also bought food to cook dinner on the two days of the weekend. I did plan to do some clothes shopping and stuff during the day, so I went to check out the nearby Karstadt. This is basically a big store with a lot of different branches (clothing, electronics, books, etc.) I did find a pair of trousers that would be second best in any competition, but I think I'm gonna look for the winner in some other store too. I also found some scarfs which were made out of the right material, but I did not like the design. So basically I did not buy anything :) But there was also a hairdressers in the store, which I visited, and even though I lacked the words to explain properly what I wanted, the end result does not look that bad. All my ears are still in place and stuff. And with some promotional price the haircut only cost two times the Hungarian price I usually pay :)
In the end I also bough some South African wine in the store to complement, which was quite surprising - it delivered exactly the taste I was expecting. I don't usually get that from wine. It was only a Sauvignon Blanc/Chardonnay couvee, but still, it tasted like it should, and that pleased me.
In the evening I went to the movies to see the Borat movie, which was quite funny, even though it was very weird :) IMHO it was not Borat making an idiot of himself most of the time, but the people he fooled. Though I'm sure some of the were filled in, otherwise they would have killed the poor guy with bare hands :) One surprise in the movie theather (Cinestar in the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz) was, that almost everyone around was a native English speaker. Though there were some Spanish and German too :) And my German while buying the tickets must have been horrible, the cashier girl immediately asked if I wanted to see the movie in English :P This may be the reason for not having any subtitles on the movie, which was just fine.
Dinner was nothing special, by the way, I just fried some chicken breasts and had some frech fries and barbecue sauce with it. And of course the wine I mentioned. After dinner and an episode of one of my series, I slept like 12 hours. Not that I had to hurry anywhere in the morning or to do anything at night. So anyhow, I woke up and got ready just in time to catch the historical U-Bahn train to take me to the U-Bahn museum and the Olympic Stadium. The train was nice, it had people opening the doors, and there was even a guide who told us the story of the Berlin underground railway system. I chose a non-smoking car in the train, but still, it smelled like an old bum. The ride was not that bad altogether, just the smell and the heat made it a bit uncomfortable :) The museum itself was quite nice, with free entry, as this weekend was dedicated to Alfred Grenander, the architect designing lot of the Berlin U-Bahn stations. In the museum there were the usual things, old U-Bahn-tickets, old uniforms, insides of old cars, and an old Siemens control system for the complex U-Bahn station of the Olympia Stadion. I also got to know that in the 80s and 90s Berlin had a maglev train, the M-Bahn, which was used for normal public transport for 2 years in the late 80s until the Berlin Wall was brought down. It was also interesting to see how the Wall tore the underground network in two, some line were just used on one half of their line, others simply skipped the stations on the Eastern Side. One exception was Bahnhof Friedrichstraße (German link), the so-called Palace of Tears, which was used as a border station and was the place for a lot of sad goodbyes while the city was split.
All in all, it was an interesting visit. After the museum I still had time before the next historical train went back in the city, so I decided to check out the Olympic Stadium. Well, it's big. And now I've seen it, even from the inside. Surely a lot of sport fans would kill me for being so cool about this :) But it's just a stadium ;) I had a lot of time to walk around, I've even seen a football match on one smaller sportsfield nearby, between two smaller teams. The road home was fine, I listened to the second part of the guide's story (the man must have repeated it like 6 times that day...), and headed home for an early dinner. I had the other half of the chicken breasts, but this time with sweet-sour sauce by Uncle Ben's and rice, and some leftover wine. The candle I lit complemented it just fine, and of course I had my private reasons to light it too. After dinner I watched the movie "Proof", which was quite good, only as crazy as it had to be. It totally deserves the 7 points IMDb lists it with. I think the synopsis is quite useless on the movie, though, but that's because the timeline is quite mixed up in the flick :)

Phew, long entry. I'd rather not say anything about today, it was long and boring anyhow :)

Oh, and next weekend I'm gonna have visitors again :D
Great success!
M.