Homo Viator

Alright, the trailer does not look too convincing, but this movie is said to be lots of fun to anyone into movies about musiciens. It is a persiflage on movies such as Walk The Line or I am not there and features lots of jokes about famous 60s idols such as Jim Morrison, Elvis or the Beatles. Just my kind of movie I think.



Cox and The Beatles

Don`t be put off by the trailer. The movie is much better than the trailer will make you think and even though you hear and read some German, I can assure you that the movie is 99% in English. Three of the four travellers it follows are British, who do not speak a single word of German. So try to see it, wherever you may live!

If you have ever backpacked this is a must see and if you have never backpacked and always asked youself why we do it, then you may also want to check it out. When I heard that Germans had produced a movie about four backpackers in Asia (India and Thailand), I expected the worst: An unrealistic, exaggerated, stereotyping movie full of clichees. But don`t worry, the movie is far from that. It is almost documentary in style and does not forcefully try to convey anything in particular to the viewer. Thankfully, it does not spend too much time showing us how different backpackers can be. We all have our own backpacker stereotypes (The beer drinking Brit, The unpresent American, The Trance listening and group travelling Israelis, etc.), but the movie goes way beyond feeding and recycling those. It effectively depicts those seemingly unspectacular, but real, travel experiences that you can only have if you travel with time and can forget about your itinery and allow yourself to open up to and connect with locals and fellow travellers. Those are the moments, where you do not seem to be travelling anymore, but seem to have found a home among strangers, far away from home. To me those are the forgotten highlights of my trips.



Many scenes of the movie play in the Pune Ashram. My sister taught Yoga there, so I can`t wait to hear what she thinks about the movie and its representation of the Ashram.

If you like dry, British, cynical humor, then Alan Patridge is the best. You really need to see a whole season though to fully understand this character.

Always knew Michael Moore was a truth-twisting demagogue, but was surprised how schizophrenic and arrogant he can be. See this movie if you like or dislike Michael Moore and are into revealing dcumentaries. When you have seen Roger&Me for example, his first and for me his best movie, you will be surprised to find out that he had indeed interviewed Roger.

....that is, if you are into the Beatles (don't worry, we are talking about their psychedelic late 60s period). The movie may look cheesy, but hey, people were romantic back then. Critics rave about the new film and even though I would have preferred the original Beatles tunes, I do look forward to watching it. The 60s, psychedelic art, New York, the Beatles - what more could I ask for? A piece by Bobby D. maybe....

The New York Times wrote that "the movie reveals its intention to use the Beatles’ catalog to tell two stories at once, one personal, the other generational." As a great aficionado of the 60s era music, I wonderd, which other musician or band could have succeeded in conveying these two closely tied, but nevertheless different strings of storytelling. I think that next to the Beatles it could have only been Bob Dylan. Dylan, too conveys the motivation, the agression and the creativity of a whole generation, while at the same time revealing the emotions and sensitivity of the individual. Well, I am not a music critic, but those of you who, like me, consider The Beatles and Dylan the best song writers in the history of the human ear, will know what I mean.

I often thought how well music can convey stories, but always disliked the cheesy parts of musicals, although I do dig West Side Story, which leads me to agree with the point the NYT critic made in his final paragraph: "Falling in love with a movie is like falling in love with another person. Imperfections, however glaring, become endearing quirks once you’ve tumbled."

My friend Peter, the most knowledgeable cinéaste I have ever come across, a guy that can entertain you for minutes just speaking about a single, cut-out scene from a 1943 film that never made it to cinema has dug up the following: a British 1990s, low budget show with a very unique sense of humor. The show superbly depicts the greyness of those routine days in the British countryside. It is about a fired TV presenter, who tries his luck at a regional Radio station; a neurotic cynic, who lives in a 3 Star hotel and only buys his groceries at the gas station. The actor, Steve Coogan, is phenomenal. I also liked him the movie, 24 Hour Party People. Below a clip from the Alan Patridge show. One clip is a poor representation of the show though, as the humor and genius of it does not so much lie in the individual lines of Alan Patridge, but in the thoroughness of his acting and the steadiness of his character throughout all shows.

This is incredible!!! Way to complicated to explain, so the best thing for you to do is to check out these two clips (Clip 1, Clip 2) and if what you see instigates further interest, then read upon the insane story of Jonas Moore here.

Designed specifically for download onto the iPod and PC The Many Worlds of Jonas Moore combines comic book illustration, with 3D animation, live action photography, newsreel archive and an original music score. Wow! Fans are also invited to become part of the journey by downloading the Jonas Moore digital elements and animating their own stories or creating comic book adventures for Jonas Moore.

How does someone come up with something like this? I am not a sci-fi fan at all, but this story is just intriguing. It shall set the benchmark for graphic novels.

This is what the creator, who also heads Factory Publishing, has to say about traditional media agencies: "In an effort to reinvent themselves the global media agencies are trying to claim they are now somehow experts in the field of branded content; the new content digerati. They're not. In branded content terms they are the embarrassing father drunk at a wedding trying to look hip on the dance floor dancing to sounds of the 80s."

Just read an interesting article, where the writer argues that animation in movies has lost its appeal, even to the mass that normally uprightly follows the marketing leads of commercial blockbusters. One of the most expensive and most animated movies in recent years, Evan Almighty, was this summer's biggest flop. The authors say that the surge of interest in real animal documentaries for example shows that people do want to completely loose touch to the real world and that the movie would have more appeal if those animals had been real. The grand old Hollywood productions dealt with similar themes and screenplays but put the effort to at least partially recreate reality.

I completely agree! In Lawrence of Arabia for example, the director waited in the desert for hours, at 50C, just to get the perfect shot of a "real" fatamorgana.
The authors also mention Fitzcarraldo for its incredible use of real images. In the movie Werner Herzog makes his cast carry a huge ship over a hill, in the heat of the Amazonas. Many members of his crew got injured or sick, but the images made movie history. Nowadays all those kinds of images would have been created digitally, but would clearly lack visual and emotional impact.

If you have never watched Fitzcarraldo, please go rent it. Werner Herzog is one great director, who sees movies more as a form of art than entertainment.





Klaus Kinski, the main actor of most of Herzog`s movies was quite a lunatic, but definately one of my favourite actors of all times. Below footage from the making of Fitzcarraldo, where you can see what a twisted character Kinski was. A camera man continued filming, while Kinski gets into a fight with the Head of Production. Apparently he goes nuts, just because he did not like the food in the morning. You gotta see this!!!! A mad genius at work. The comment is from Werner Herzog himself. This is just one example of Kinski's aggressive outbursts. Most of the interviews he gave, ended in a similar turmoil.



Here another example of how great of a filmmaker Herzog was. The first minutes of Aguirre. He proves so well that real mystic images and intense music do not need to be accompanied by many cuts, dialogs or digital footage in order to get under you skin.

I just had a long chat with an old university friend of mine, with whom I had not talked in a long time. At ebs we actually met during the creative management class and teamed up with some good friends to create a short clip on how to improve Selfridges in London. Not that this great retailer needs many improvements. He went on to pursue his interest in films after university, setting up an indie production company in Berlin, called cmate. His first film,Sovia, will debut in cinema this summer and has been nominated for an emerging movie award in Monte Carlo. Below a little teaser of his movie. Hollywood beware, zzzze Gerrrrmans are coming!

Go rent this movie. I am not saying it is a great movie, but I would say it is a movie that one should see. How ever macabre you may find the story, it is a unique style of screenplay. A fictitious documentary on a fictitious future happening, based on real-life characters, Death of a President is a documentary about the deadly assassination of George W. Bush in October of this year, 2007.
It has won numerous important film awards, but for obvious reasons this movie did not have an easy run through the tightly knit classic distribution networks, controlled by the usual Hollywood production companies and New York media conglomerates. But hey: if I found this movie at Chubbies, the Barbadian movie rental place that does not only offer a poor selection of films, but offers them mostly on VHS, then you should be able to find this movie easily. By the way: Don’t you think that Chubbies is the best possible name to give to a movie rental place? I love that name! I mean, come on, compare that to Blockbuster of Netflix. Maybe one should franchise that name or just change it slightly and trademark it CHUBBY.