Movies of 2010

Top 10 Movies of 2010

This is a weak list, and there are two reasons for it.

1. Up to october of 2010, there were close to no really good releases, most of it was decent, some terrible, but just very little brilliant stufff. The winter however is brimming with masterpieces, most of wich will be released in Germany in the early month of 2011.

2.This has´t been a good movie-going year for me at all. The lack of interesting new movies took my passion away and only recently it got reanimated.

But let´s stop complaining and get right on with it.

10. Robing Hood

Told you it is a weak list. Ridley Scott knows how to direct action and has an eye for detail, wich saves this movie from being abysmal. I can´t imagine this movie working on a small screen, so I consider myself lucky to have seen it on the big one.

9. Predators

The best thing about this movie is Adrian Brody. Probably the most unlikely of actors to replace Arnold Schwarzenegger gives this rather tame actioner the little push taht heaves it above mediocracy.

8. Kick-Ass

Filled with nerd-culture references and stuff that makes the average geek go WOOOW, this movie fails to deliver a story that features actual likable characters. It is telling that Nicholas Cage(!) is the best thing about this movie. It is fun, but not as effective as it wants to be, and there is a movie that trumps this one in each and every aspect further down this list.

7. The Book of Eli

Im a scuker for post-apocalyptic scenarios, and this movie gives me just the right mix between "Fallout" and "The Road". The visuals are fantastic, and the cannibal-scene is among the most memoral moments of the whole year.

6. Toy Story 3

Now we come to the first really good movie on this list. This animated film has it all : it is a funny, exciting and emotional ride for everyone. A perfect ending to a groundbreaking triology.

5. Shutter Island

Scorseses old-school direction in this one is amazing. The arrival scene on the island sets the tone for this one perfectly and gives me the creeps everytime. Sadly, later on this movie gets a bit too convoluted and heavy and the ending may not be satisfactionary for everyone.

4.The Expendables

Yep, it´s that good. Seldom before I had so much fun in the cinema, laughing my ass of about level of violence and over the top action in this campfest. If you wan´t to have fun with your guys, get a beer(or two..), gather around the TV and watch this movie!

3. The Social Network

I would have never thought this material could be exciting. But Finchers direction, Sorkins script and Renznors score make it happen. It is really just people being douches to each other for two outs, but it is brilliant. Great performances all around, and a haunting last shot rounds up this masterpiece.

2. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

I have to admit, I find the whole nerd-chic of recent years a bit annoying. Nontheless this movie just rolled over me with its high-speed dialogue and flashy visuals. Packed with great ideas and unforgettable moments, this movie can secure itself a spot in the Pantheon of comic-book-movies.

1. Inception

What can I say about this movie that hasn´t already been said?

Yes, it is THAT good.

Flops of 2010

Legion

Terrbile all around, bad acting, ugly special effects, horrible horrible dialogue. Ew.

Salt

What good is all this great action if you wabt th main character to die until the last scene that changes everything?

Alice in Wonderland

Tim Burton has gotten lazy. This is so awful taht I would probably ad started to cry if I had to pay 20 Dollars jsut to see Johnny Depp getting lost in a 3Dmark benchmark.

Movies to look forward to in 2011

Black Swan

Aronosky always delivers, and this movie has gotten so much praise that waiting has become practically unbearable.

True Grit

The Coen brothers and Jeff Bridges reuniting for a western? I´m in!

Tree of Life

The trailer to this movie is one of the most beautiful things I´ve seen in a long time.

Tron Legacy

I´m a scuker for great visuals, and this movies seems to be filled with just that.

TinTin

If its coming, I´m coming too.

Source Code

Duncan Jones directing Jake Gyllenhaal in a sci-fi thriller seems not the worst of scenarios to me.

I´m sure I´m forgetting a lot of stuff here, but all in all I can already say that 2011 will be a uch better year for film than 2010 was, probably also because I can start it off with half of the movies of the list above.

Addiction of the Week VIII

Bree Olsons Twitter

Shes insane.

I´m not on Twitter and I have no plan to be on there in the near future, but I still check out this womans page every day.

Thanks to Scott Bromley and the other guys from the Gamespy Debriefings Podcast for digging up this pearl.

http://twitter.com/BreeOlson

Addiction of the Week VII

Kim Jong-Il Looking At Things

Title says it all.

Addiction of the Week VI

NintendoCapriSun lets plays

NintendoCapriSun is a youtuber famous for his "lets plays", wich means he plays a lot of videogames (predominantly Nintendo games) and comments while hes playing.

He has an amazing pensum and uploads several videos a day, playing through several games at the same time.

His play-through of "Super Metroid" brought back a ton of childhood memories, and I jus couldn´t stop watching his videos since then.

http://www.youtube.com/user/NintendoCapriSun

Addiction of the Week V

Helge Schneider

German Musician, Comedian, Clown

It is nearly impossible to describe the work of this man. He got famous in Germany for a song about Cat-Toilets, and has since then toured the country with a wide range of programs. He is mostly famous for his comedic songs, wich he mostly makes up while recording. His work also includes two CDs of short stories and plays read and acted by himself and a recently released auto-biography, wich closes with a scene of Schneider cutting off both of his own legs with a scythe while mowing his lawn.

What makes this man even more interesting is that he is a brilliant musician, capable of playing two dozen of instruments. Over the years, he began to include more and more Jazz-Instrumentals into his programs, wich made him appealing to an even wider audience.

Here is a excerpt of his recent program:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8AgLsCi07I

And a piece more focussed on his musicianship:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YH_MxCM6No

The Name Game

The name of a person is a very important part of his identity.

However the longer you know a person, the less his/her name strikes you as a specific trait or a characteristic. Over time a familiar persons name jsut blends in with the general persona, and seems to have no special association to it at all.

But what happens if this person decides to change his/her name?

Exactly thats what I´m facing at the moment, as my girlfriend of two years is currently deciding by what name she will go by in the future.

You should know that my girlfriend is from Hong Kong, where people have two official names, a three part Chinese name (eg. Kwok Wing Li) and an english first name. This english first name can be changed at will by the person, and there are no limits set. So it often happens that a Hong Kong student will be called by his Chan Yat Wai by his friends and relatives, but will be introduced to you, a foreigner, as Peter Chan. Some people also jsut use their english names, while others dont have one.

Side effects of this policy are:

1. People change their name weekly.

2. A lot of people have the same names as their favorite singers/actors.

3. Names like Mushroom, Rainbow, Cloudy are nothing out of the ordinary, as students often pick their names out of english textbooks.

But to me as a westerner, who has always called everyone by his english name, I have nothing to fall back on. It would be weird calling her by her chinese name, but even weirder to call her by her new name for some reason.

I guess she has to live with the fact that she will forever be called by the name in wich I fell in love as part of her persona.

3 Movies to watch before the year is over

1. Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky is probably the best director under 50 at themoment, his movies Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain (yes, that one too) and The Wrestler are among the best of the last 15 years.

His newest movie features Natalie Portman in the role of a ballet actress that is slowly losing it while fighting for the lead role in the famous "Swan Lake" ballet piece.

Probably not the setting for a philosophical masterpiece, but in Aronofskys hands, this material is sure to become a very tight thriller that will go under your skin and shake you to the bones.

December 1st, 2010

2.True Grit

Coen Brothers, the dude, can I make it any more clear?

The Coens follow-up to the brilliant black comedy "A Serious Man" is a remake of the John Wayne movie of the same name. Because the original was a western that was mainly carried by Wayne in the lead role, the two headed director made sure to get one of the best there is to replace him: Jeff Bridges.

But of course this wont be a straight western, there will be a lot of Coen-typical characters in this, played by stars like Matt Damon and Josh Brolin.

True Grit is certainly the most interesting movie in this list, the Coens are always worth a watch, and this time they step on new ground, not without the help of many big names.

December 25th, 2010

3. The Social Network

What can I say about this one? A tale about the founding of facebook does not sound very intruiging at first, but the names Fincher, Reznor and Sorkin on one bill can make every movie interesting.

October 1st, 2010

Addiction of the Week IV

Mesut Özil

German soccer player

A true genius with the ball.

Impressed the soccer community during the World Cup in South Africa and was traded from the German Club Werder bremen to Real Madrid, one of the best Clubs in the world.

There, the 21 years young was thrown into the position of the playmaker, and up to now he has to fulfill on his to become the worlds best player.

For any non-spanish fan who wants to keep up with him, some youtubers keep track of all his actions.

The Silver Cat

I´m currently working through a couple of files that my father found in my grandfathers basement after his death. The files contain letters , company records from his time in Italy 1944-45, lots of photos and certificates. Those reach from the Nazi-Era over the occupation time to the late 90s.

While randomly skipping through a file I found a from an old friend of my grandfather, describing his struggles in post-war germany. The following excerpt shows pretty well how much violence was accepted among people born in the early 30s in Germany. Those people grew up being taught that violence is the best solution for anything.

"I found myself in a small village, and a local family hired me to watch over a castle which stood a few miles away from the village in the forest. It was probably a summer residence for some loval duke in the old days. Now I lived alone in this castle, except for a huge, silver cat. I quite liked this cat, it had a blue and a green eye and there were talks in the village that witches in the forest used it to perform magic (?). However, after a while the family started complaining, they said I didn´t behave like a real lord and didn´t have the right manners to live in a place like this. They fired me eventually. Before I left, I searched for the cat. We had lived together in this castle for so long and I was sure she couldn´t take the pain of my departure. So when I found her, I mercyfully released her from her sorrow with a clean shot in the head..."

Addiction of the Week III

Elvis Presley

American Musician

Legendary for a reason.

Addiction of the Week II

Chinese Propaganda

I´ve always been interested in propaganda. Those stylish, but simple pictures, that say so much without many words are just fascinating to me.

This applies to the chinese propaganda in particular, wich strikes me as more diverse and rich with symbolism.

A huge collection of posters, post cards and other propaganda swag can be found here.

Review: The Expendables

Going to a movie is all about expectation to me. Take for example "The American". It gets horrible reviews by the people because they didn´t expect that the movie would be as slow as it is. Trailers do their part in obscuring the actual style of the movie, and make it seem more action-packed or fast paced.

Now, "the Expendables" does not have to worry about that problem in particular. It is exactly what the trailer makes it seem like: A stupid action ride.

Still many people left the cinema disappointed, probably expecting a much more grand scaled action masterpiece. Also many people point at the many plot holes and the not-so-good directorial work of Mr.Stallone.

Here I wonder for what reasons those people went to the cinema. I agree on their points, but this is not an arthouse movie, it doesn´t claim to be clever or well made entertainment. It´s a rough hommage to the 80s action flicks, which doesn´t take itself very seriously. And if all those movie buffs can´t turn their trained eyxes from the technichal flaws of this movie, I feel sorry for them.

My friends an I had a ton of fun in the cinema, drinking beer and laughin our asses off.

6/7

A Prussian Slip

There was a saying about germans, which became popular durin napoleons better days:

The french own the land, the british own the sea, and the germans, the germans own the clouds

During this time, germans masters created the most beautiful pieces of music ever known to humankind and german poets were able to bring the clumsy and dry german language to a beauty previously unknown.

Nowadays however, germans excell mostly in another discipline:

Bureaucracy.

How efficient we bury any human aspect under paper became clear to me when I heard this story from my mum:
The mother of a friend of my mum, let´s call her Mrs.P, went to hopital and fell into a deep coma. Two weeks later, she died.

A week after that the daughter recieved a letter from the hospital.

It was a bill for two weeks of cantine food, around 13 Euro per day.

The daughter then called the hospital to explain that her mother never ate in the cantine. The lady from the hospital office then explained that Mrs.P had subscribed to the cantine upon arriving in hospital, and during her stay has never called the office to unsubscribe...

On making S.S.D.D. II

Making films is always fun, but it is also always a pain in the ass. Especially when you do it alone.

It´s just so limited, I can only have fixed amera angles as I dont have a tripod, and if I want to move, I have to film in POV. Also, the things I can do on my own are pretty limited.

So for the next film, I plan to have more people involved.

I already had plans for a biggeer film in April, a friend and me already worked out most of the plot details and a script was in the works, but we just never got to it.

So this time I will take some time to work out some ideas, and hopefully I can shoot in either beginning of December or end of January.

Addiction of the Week I

For me, often I don´t just like a certain object/artist/subject. Upon discovering something special, I get obsessed with it for a certain time, then lose interest, before it gets included into my canon of cool stuff. During this period my mind is mostly filled with thoughts about said thing, and I can´t help going back to it whenever I can.

This doesn´t have to be something completely new, sometimes I just stumble upon stuff I have been interested in before and I begin to dig into it deeper.

In this section I will introduce the object in question, in the hope you might see something that catches your interest in any way.

John Cale

British singer-songwriter. Writes beautiful music, mostly pretty simple, but not annoyingly dull. His 70s stuff is Pop-Music at it´s best.

"Paris 1919" is a very good example of the style of his work.