Update

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Unfortunately I have been too busy to write on this blog in the past few weeks, so here are a few films I have seen during that time:

Enchanted

To my surprise, I greatly enjoyed watching this rather silly film. A Disney cartoon Wanna-Be-Princess gets pushed into a fountain by the evil stepmother of her Prince, bringing her into the Real World. Here the Princess meets a grumpy lawyer and turns his world upside down. When her Prince (her true love) comes to take her back home she starts to doubt where her home really is.

It is a cute story with fun characters. Nice Disney entertainment.

Liberty Heights

A group of young Jews are struggling against prejudices in Baltimore, 1954. Against their parents’ will, high school senior Ben strikes up a friendship with a black girl from his class. She introduces him to James Brown and other black artists from the time. Ben’s older brother falls in love with a blonde débutante at a party. This, of course, gets him into all sorts of trouble. Rock’n’Roll, nice cars and growing up in the 50’s (oh, and my favourite: the gorgeous Adrien Brody). Liberty Heights is a wonderful movie and absolutely worth watching.

Hellboy

We watched the first Hellboy on DVD in preparation of the upcoming Hellboy II. It has great characters and a good setting, but I have to say: It’s absolute rubbish. The story is just plain boring.

The Other Boleyn Girl

This is the story of Mary and Anne, the two Boleyn sisters who are presented to King Henry to become his mistresses (one after the other). Obviously, they start fighting over the king. Anne finally succeeds in seducing him to marry her. In order to do this he first needs to break with the Pope, set up the Church of England and then divorce his wife.

This is a fascinating story (although I’ve read that it is very inaccurate) with two beautiful lead actresses (Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson) and gorgeous costumes, but something’s lacking in the film. The characters are not very complex, Anne is very headstrong, Mary weak and Henry easily manipulated. It seems like the king had nothing to do other than entertain his mistresses, the affairs of politics are only mentioned on the side. It was still entertaining to watch.

WALL – E

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The new Pixar/Walt Disney film is about a love story between two robots.

The earth is completely full of rubbish and robots are cleaning it all up while mankind has fled to big ships in space, supposedly for five years. 700 years later WALL-E seems to be the last robot on earth still cleaning. The humans have not yet returned to earth. The clumsy little robot is living in a broken truck with his pet cockroach and meanwhile has a huge collection of things he has found in the piles of trash he’s been cleaning up all this time (similar to Ariel’s collection in The Little Mermaid).

One day a big space rocket lands and the beautiful robot EVE is left on earth to see if any plants have started growing again. WALL-E immediately falls in love with EVE, who shows no particular desire to get to know him. In fact, she tries to blow him up.

When EVE gets collected again by the space rocket, WALL-E follows her and the story continues among the humans on a big spaceship.

Even though this is an animation film, it seems to be aimed more at adults that at children. The love between the two robots is a very grown-up love and the film has a political message. The people on the spaceship are what we are heading for at the moment: Everyone is living on a floating chair, with a screen right in front of their faces and food in a shake. They are unbelievably fat, stupid and ignorant.

Of course, WALL-E and EVE change everything and people begin to realize what they are doing and will hopefully now mend their ways.

The film is very cute and even though there is hardly any dialogue it is thoroughly entertaining. I really loved it and recommend it to everyone!

Ben X

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Fairly traumatizing Dutch teen drama. The autistic Ben gets bullied at school and retreats into a world of on-line computer games. There he is all powerful (level 80 at least!) and can protect himself against his enemies. There he has a girlfriend, a fellow worrier, who fights at his side. Unfortunately this does not translate into the real world. Ben gets severely tormented by his classmates and does not have any friends. This leads to suicidal thoughts.

The story is truly touching and the film is beautifully made. This is Greg Timmermanns’ (Ben) first role and I was amazed by his acting. The only thing that I didn’t like was the ending. (Don’t worry, I am not going to spoil it for you…) It just seemed unlikely (or maybe too idealistic?) in this rather realistic narrative. The film is still worth watching though!

Rainbow Brite (Regina Regenbogen)

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This is highly embarrassing. We (I’m using the word we intentionally to make clear I did not watch this in my room on my own…) spent the evening watching Rainbow Brite. To be honest it was actually quite gruesome. Scary monsters and robots. And a horse (Sternschnuppe) with the biggest ego in the universe. Don’t watch it, it’s freaky.

(Photo: amycgx/flickr)