Man.  It is good to talk to Chris.  Even if it’s just online.  The boy can be all kinds of annoying, but so can I, which means that when we hang out one on one, we can be as irritating as we like!  There are not enough safe spaces for doing that at Hampshire.  Perhaps I should start a student group in support of more “Safe Spaces to Be Annoying.”  I’d like a little piece of the FiCom pie.

Yesterday was the last day of the Berlinale, so now I’m gonna tell you a little bit about the films I saw.

Our first film, “Home From Home,” was a funny little documentary about three old couples (the men, Germans; the women, Koreans who went to Germany when they were young women to work as nurses).  After spending their lives in Germany, these couples retired to the women’s homeland, South Korea, to live in this bizarre German-themed retirement village.  The film didn’t delve too deeply into any one topic, but it had some extremely funny and subtle moments.  For example, when one of the old men, “Little Willie,” dressed up in full traditional Korean dance clothing, to dance with his wife and about a hundred other Korean women for a festival.  It was a fun and well-paced documentary, and I’d recommend it.

The second film I saw, “Pink,” was downright horrendous, but in such a fantastic way that I am now DESPERATE to get my hands on a copy.  This is the kind of film that deserves to be watched in a group so that you can all look at each other from time to time and go: “What the fuck???”  It was supposed to be a sort of romantic comedy about this punk poet girl who has three guys madly in love with her.  However, there was very, very little in the way of plot, and absolutely zero in the way of character development.  There was, however, a surplus of tits.  Also a lesbian sex scene, and another scene in which a man snorted coke off of a prostitute’s stomach.  As I said, I am dying to get a copy.

On Saturday afternoon I saw a film that I believe will remain in my top 10 for quite some time.  Like the previous two, it was also a German film, but with some English.  It was called “Short Cut to Hollywood.”  It was a very black comedy, about three late-30’s wannabe musicians who fly to the U.S. in a last-ditch effort to become famous.  There were some terrific musical numbers, and scathing commentary on reality TV, and American stereotypes (the Germans love their cowboys…).  Without giving away too much, I’ll say that the separation of the words “short” and “cut” is intentional; the band’s lead, Johannes “John” Salinger takes the idea of artistic suffering to a grotesque level.

Saturday night I was supposed to see an American film, “The Exploding Girl,” but I got completely lost, and finally gave up.  In all honesty, I didn’t mind.  I was still completely high from seeing “Short Cut to Hollywood,” and listening to the cast and directors give a talk afterward.  Plus, from the reviews I saw, “The Exploding Girl” was perhaps not so great.

Sunday afternoon our group watched “Deutschland 09: 13 Short Films About the State of the Nation.”  There was quite a mix here; some were rather heavy-handedly political, but others were lighter and helped balance it out.  Overall, I came away with an interesting sense of the German state of mind, and what it means to be a German right now.

My, such pretentious commentary from someone who scribbles ugly little cartoons about Bonnie Tyler!