Melodic ambience » culture

Gigantic entertainment

Dietmar — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:52:59 +0000

Big finale at the Berlinale. I already got tickets for the competition movie “Gigante” before the first good reviews came out and before it won the special “Grand prize of the jury” at the awards ceremony yesterday. It is a very good, funny and unusual as well as intelligent movie about a security guard at a supermarket watching and falling in love with a woman from the cleaning staff. Unusual because a lot of things happening in the movie are presented in the view that the main actor watches them occur – on the monitor of the security camera screen and unusual too due to its sparse dialogue but witty situations that do not need long explanations or a lot of talking.

After the movie, director Adrian Beniez as well as main actors Horacio Camandule and actress Leonor Svarcas were ready to answer questions of the audience. Due to the fact that the present Berlinale person was not able to translate english -> spanish -> german or vice versa Leonor Svarcas had to jump in, Horicio Camandule was not really able to answer anything anymore since he obviously had some big celebrations going on after the award ceremony.

This movie fulfilled my expectations completely.

It actually got loud

Dietmar — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:27:59 +0000

European premiere of the documentation “It might get loud” at the Berlinale. After a short introduction by director Davis Guggenheim and The Edge, guitarist of U2, we watch a journey through the history of electronic guitar music looking at the works of three famous and influential guitarists: Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2) and Jack White (The White Stripes). They meet for an exchange of thoughts about their play and their influences. Old footage of their early works in former groups is shown, the audience laughs. The musicians show us their important places where music was produced. Animations follow, a lot of excerpts from live concerts and – you probably saw it coming – a jamming session of the guitarists. While the sound technician at the Friedrichstadtpalast probably thought a movie with such a title has to be played really loud everything else about the movie is likable, it is funny, entertaining, gives a deep insight into the question why these people became musicians and guitarists especially and there is a lot of good music being played in the movie. So, go and see it.

Skipping the Museum Night

Dietmar — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:09:11 +0000

I used to be a frequent traveller through the nightly Berlin whenever the Long Night of Museums was happening in this town. In summer and in winter. Now, as the winter edition of this event is happening I’m gonna skip it again. The reason is simple: They reduced the event in winter in the way that instead of around 100 museums taking part only 50 museums will be open in the late evening. This is ok, but what is not acceptable is that not only that the organisers raised the entrance fee from 12 euros to about 15 euros if you decide to get a ticket on the same day of the event but that they charge the same price for this “mini”-night of the museum as for the big one in summer. If I buy a noodle bag at the grocery store and I don’t get 1 kilo but only a1 pound bag they won’t charge the same price. So, by skipping this event I’d rather concentrate on a few exhibitions going on visiting them whenever I want.

08: Favorite movies

Dietmar — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:47:34 +0000

There is an international ensemble of movies when looking at my favorite movies of 08. Movies from France, USA, Germany, Denmark and the Czech Republic. I should explain that I watched them in 08 but many of them were already released before. That is because my main media to watch movies is the DVD. If I am really interested in watching a movie I like having all the little other features like commentary etc about it as well and I guess some of the movies really should be watched on the big screen, some of them are ok on the tv screen as well. So, here they are, my favorite movies, in no particular order:

Odette Toulemonde

The Dark Knight

The Darjeeling Limited

Community rescues piece of art

Dietmar — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:32:50 +0000

Has the expression of an opinion or wish that a community or neighborhood articulates any effect? It certainly does like a nice example showed that just recently happened in the Bötzow quarter here in Berlin. An artist group turned one piece of a pole construction dividing walkway and street into a horse jumping barrier. The whole thing looked unusual but very nice as well. Not much later vandalism took its course and one part of the wooden barrier was broken down.

Broken down "horse jump barrier" at Hufelandstraße

The neighborhood, obviously already pretty much used to the nice view of the piece of art before did not want to accept this. A note appeared on the barrier asking the artists nicely to please repair this art piece and a lot of people signed it.

Note on broken down barrier

So, the artists came back, fixed the barrier and even improved the piece of art by spraying some horsefeet prints onto the ground.

Fixed up "horse jump barrier" at Hufelandstraße

short career

Dietmar — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 19:58:54 +0000

There is a big media hype around “Second Life” at the moment. It seems that this simulation/roleplay/chat system is so interesting that almost every big magazine and tv station reports about it. Now, for ages, whenever I liked to chat with people I used IRC and I am quiet satisfied with what it offers. And I am not so much into those avatar thingies too so I didn’t really care about “Second Life” as much as I ignore Myspace and other new “toys” of the internet too. Since a big German magazine “Der Spiegel” had “Second Life” on its title page including a big report I thought I finally might try this program out too. So, I signed up, picked my avatar – some kind of reggae dude – and started the program. This is what it said:

- Outdated chip set

- Not supported graphic card

- Why on earth do you think that your stoneold computer can be used for this?

At least that is what the conclusion of it all was.

Then came a question like “Ok, we all know this won’t work but you might try and start the program anyways, expect a crash of your system or very slow moving around”. It turned out that I got a glimpse of the reggae dude standing there with the standard clothes that every person wears at the beginning and I even saw some other avatars standing around probably looking at mine saying “that guy won’t be able to move around anyways”. And they were right, that’s all I saw from “Second Life” because then the program froze.

So, that was my unique, short experience with this very new program.

The annual christmas book

Dietmar — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 21:43:18 +0000

It has become a tradition for me to read at least one book during the advent time that deals with the Christmas topic. I started with some collections of german Christmas short stories by well-known authors years ago, then in 04 I read John Grisham’s “Skipping christmas” – a very funny book whose movie version – as I heard – was not good at all. Then, in 05, Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections” followed. This is probably not really a Christmas book but it involves a Christmas family meeting. Admittingly this very big book wasn’t finished by me so far.

So, now, in 06, it is David Baldacci’s “The Christmas train” that I picked out. The story involves a journalist, a train ride and of course – Christmas.

wasteland

Dietmar — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 21:43:57 +0000

Watching a german comedian on tv who pretends to be funny I realize again what a wasteland german tv is for people that come from Britain or the US whose tv programs actually have some really funny shows. If you do understand german you will desperatly search for a good laugh at the channels here but won’t find hardly any. Your options are these: Either you watch american sitcoms badly dubbed taking away much of the atmosphere and wit that these shows had in the original version or you watch german productions – basically none of them being funny at all. There is something on with a guy called Bastian Pastewka desperatly trying to copy Larry David (the Seinfeld Creater) and his “Curb your enthusiasm” show forgotting that he might have some talent but he is not like Larry David at all and the writers of the show lack completely of inspiration. If you wanna watch something that is copied but not as bad as that then watch “Stromberg”, a mediocre copy of the british “The Office”.

So, what’s left? You can either watch tv entertainer Harald Schmidt who sometimes has very funny and sarcastic statements or watch one of the many repetitions of ancient Loriot tv shows. Truly of the best comedians Germany has. Sadly, he doesn’t produce new stuff anymore.

Exhibiting Melancholia

Dietmar — Sat, 06 May 2006 23:47:46 +0000

It was pretty late already, around 10 pm, when I arrived at the new national gallery of Berlin. The Melancholia exhibition that had already so many visitors was about to end soon so I took one of the last chances to have a look at it. Surprisingly there was not a long line anymore when I came to the building, no waiting time, I just entered the building. When I passed the ticket control and arrived at the first room a wave of heat greeted me. I had difficulties to find the pieces of art due to the crowds standing in front of them. So I wondered if the paintings are really save in this pretty humid and warm environment since the air conditioning is obviously not able anymore to regulate the temperature and keep it at a normal level due to the many people gathering especially at this beginning part of the exhibition.

Another room, another situation. A woman was asked by one of the museum gards to not put her jacket above her shoulder that she is carrying. In which way would carrying it over the shoulder effect the paintings? I don’t know. This is otherwise a “tolerant” exhibition. Even bags are allowed to be carried around and you can make notes in sketch books, which is a a very nice way of dealing with the visitors compared to the prussian rules that exist normally in berlin museums.

I moved on through the crowded rooms. Already when the MOMA-exhibition was in town there were always a lot of people in the museum and I normally enjoy it to actually have a closer and longer look at the sculptures and paintings which is obviously not possible here but what can you do?

The collection of art from different centuries, from artists like Dali, Picasso, Casper David Friedrich, Warhol, Dürer, Munch etc etc. – all about the topic melancholia in it’s different forms – is well sorted and actually almost all of the exhibited forms of art do have something to do with melancholia.

All in all it was worth a visit and I can advise everybody to have a look at it today – the last day of the exhibition.

german carneval on tv

Dietmar — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 21:53:05 +0000

Just to let you know: If you visit Germany, watch tv and you see some ordinary people on a stage – they could be your neighbours from downstairs – singing and dancing like probably your neighbours would do – this is called german carneval. In between there might be some other people standing on the stage talking, signalising with their costumes “gee, I am funny” and the audiences laughs no matter if its funny or not – probably due to the rising alcohol level. All this is being shown on many german tv stations at the moment so with german tv program often being not very good anyways there is even less to find.

That I’m understood correctly: I do think carneval is an ok idea and the parades outside where many people celebrate together are apparently fun for a lot of people but seriously I do not know why there is such a huge interest in these inside carneval parties being shown on tv.