Viewing entries tagged with 'movies'
Melbourne International Film Festival
Once again the Melbourne International Film Festival is screening a very nice and special programme of films you can´t see at the big screen usually. I went to a few of those during this 52nd festival.
The "animation shorts programme #1" showed films like the British Aardman "Presentators" (three really great characters) and "Angry Kid" (not the most secret tip), "Atama Yama" by Koji Yamamura (the story is about a man who drowns in a pond located on his own head - weird and in a very nice style) or "Penguin Parade" (too slow, too long and too predictable for me - which is too bad for all the hard work for this stop motion animation). "I´m A star" (see image above) is a rather weird Austrian animation/collage about a macholike guy who had seen better days. "Flat" is a stop motion animation about the happenings in an appartment building - I really like the style. "Mother Tongue" is a piece about a Korean girl and her lost mother tongue (nice style, but I doubt that the audience really cares about the character). "Pan With Us" is a nice experimental work based on a poem by Robert Frost in a style I have not seen before throughout a whole piece. The real environment becomes part of the aninmation, or precisely it´s the other way around: the animation becomes part of the real environment. The Russian animation "Hash" tells the story of the three little pigs including some unexpected happenings. "The Pirate" is a very nice Czech animation about a pirate whose centre of interest is the bottle (of rum) and who has to get over some adverse conditions to keep his lifestyle. Here and there a bit too long, but alltogether very nice. The animations shorts programme finished with "Mood Motions", a great piece about how hard life can be when you are an abstract. Simple, funny, good.
The Bayside
We, that is Yuki and me, change our accomodation from Flemington which is in the north of Melbourne to St. Kilda. We had very nice 6 months in our 2-houses-14-people shared accomodation. On February 1st we will move to a 3-bedroom appartment to the bayside. This means: a couple of minutes to St. Kilda beach and a few steps to Chappel Street, which is a nice place to go out. It´s also very close to the Astor cinema, a quite nice film theatre with a more special programme than most other cinemas, such as the triple feature Bad Taste, Meet The Feebles and Braindead which are the first three films by New Zealand director Peter Jackson. Or the double feature of Woody Allens earlie works Sleeper and Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (but were afraid to ask).
From February 10 we are looking for a new sharemate. For guests: don´t hesitate to come over, we always have one bed free. (If it just was not so far away from Germany and Austria ...) So my new contact-address is:
Anatol Bogun
unit 8 / 26 Charnwood Crescent
St. Kilda, Melbourne
Victoria 3182
Australia
Talking about Peter Jackson: does anyone know Forgotten Silver? A great great mockumentary you shouldn´t miss out.
Genesis
And this is the story how everything began, my way to Melbourne. I wrote this for the animation and animation workshop class of Mr. Felix. I am sure that it is not what he expected (or wanted?) me to write, but - to be honest - for me it was the attempt to tell a boring story in a more exciting way. So I just took him at his word: »There is no right or wrong, there is only interesting or uninteresting.« I wonder if he reads this now (Hello Felix!).
The reason for this biblical headline maybe comes from a few animation short films about the ten commandments by Phil Mulloy which I saw on the Melbourne International Film Festival yesterday. Dark British humor, but the characters in the Austrian movie »Hundstage« (dog days) by Ulrich Seidl were much worse.
Ballade d´une Femme de Paris
Frühlings erwachen in your video store: Amélie is out to lend since today. Et n´oubliez pas: Keine Frau auf Erden küßt so süß... Apropos Kinski: his lost first film was found: "Der rote Rausch".
Tea Time
Brrrr. As cold as it is you either start knitting a warm scarf and go out to toboggan or you keep inside. Maybe my video advice for long winter nights will help:
Magnolia - a great film by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights) about chance, sin and forgiveness with great camera and strong use of sound. Most people I told about it said that they would not like to watch it because they don´t like Tom Cruise. Don´t misjudge this. It´s a perfect role for him. The film reminds of Robert Altman´s Short Cuts.
Wonder Boys - a writer (and professor) with a writer´s block who succeeds to make the chancellor´s wife pregnant, who is involved in the killing of her dog, the vanishing of Marilyn Monroes jacket, the homo-erotic urges of a student, a few more things and who attempts to find out or hesitate the solution of his problems by pot smoking.
Memento - a film about a man without shorttime memory who seeks for revenge for his wife´s dead. It´s an interesting plot structure: The film starts with the last scene on the timeline going backwards in blocks (interrupted by short forward-playing scenes), so that only the last scene (so the first scene in time) shows the truth.
I Kina spiser de hunde - in china they eat dogs by Lasse Spang Olsen: the perfect looser who wants to make things right but provokes one catastrophe after another ending with a dogma-like scene.
Una pura formalità by Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso, Malèna), nearly a two-person play (like Der Totmacher) with a suspect (Gérard Depardieu) who affirms to be the writer Onoff and an inspector (Roman Polanski) who wants to find a murderer. Cathegory: Surreal.
Nice vector and pixel art to look at on quickhoney and a nice magazine to click through : tigermagazine (see image).
How to Install your Hammock
The last days I was visiting my brother and Miss Partykeller in their new habitation in Berlin. They live in Prenzlauer Berg which is a really, really nice place to be. Old building. High walls. Stuck. Good bars. Enviable.
Oh, concerning partykeller: there is a new weblog project she participates with design - let´s have a look in a few days on antville (read more) - but psssst! It´s still an insiders´ tip and you still get some nice names which are free, like: konfirm.antville, bonviv.antville, vac.antville, dist.antville, domin.antville, hydr.antville, fulmin.antville, hughgr.antville, hairimpl.antville, hubblesconst.antville, ignor.antville, intigr.antville, irrelev.antville, mut.antville, nonchal.antville, deodor.antville, powerpl.antville, pregn.antville, simul.antville, Stuyves.antville and a lot of other names.
While I was in Berlin I made an investment for life! I bought my first hammock. Not just any hammock as you can see in the picture, but a Columbian siesta hammock which is only available in a specialized hammock trade. Plus: an instruction sheet with invaluable hints like this one:
»Be careful: Never climb into your hammock feet first! The hammock will rock, you might loose your balance and fall. The easiest way to get into your hammock is to sit down in the middle of it and only then to strech out and lie down.«
Seems to be wisdom which was given from generation to generation. However, it´s tested, it works, it´s good! ¡Hasta luego!
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