tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-183383722024-03-05T13:08:59.947-08:00Sunnyside kitchenMostly movie and reading reviewsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger100125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-31644561540725123842010-05-19T12:16:00.001-07:002021-09-24T15:10:09.194-07:00The Masaryk Case: the Murder of Democracy in Czechoslovakia * * * *<img border="0" alt="Jan Masaryk in exile Jan 1 1938" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKwDumXhEVerqvOKgQ8aVqTl4ezVDHbDK3-eBNg2y2N8ITmW_MNu3wUJl8Mm4BYlsTwSIoOo8xKIgTU9iX3_EJO6SgFvC8JFUTu42C5lE8U16-1PeS5oreib-_gP-QDsj_SFhyphenhyphenuA/s288/jan_masaryk.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 10pt 10pt 10px 10px;" title="Jan Masaryk" width="200" />World War II altered forever Americans "world-view" and how we view international conflicts and war. Though easily forgotten, Americans themselves were of an "isolationist" view before WWII. A poll in Dec. 25, 1938 found Americans 6 to 1 against sending troops to Europe; "It's not our business!" was the universal view. Munich 1938 was the beginning of a change[2] -- because it was such a terrible betrayal and because of Jan Masaryk's eloquent writings and speeches on his country's plight. Today few outside the Czech Republic and Slovakia would recognize the name of Jan Masaryk, but in 1938 and during WWII, he was a well-known diplomat and radio voice in America and Britain. <i>A BBC radio address by Jan Masaryk on August 27, 1939 as Germany threatens to invade Poland:</i> <div style="width:215px; clear:both; color:#2f363b;margin:5px 0; background:#fff; position:center; -moz-border-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px; border-bottom:#C0CFE0 1px solid "><p style=" font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:9pt; line-height:1.1em; margin:1px 3px; padding:4px 2px 0 2px; border-bottom:#5a84ae 1px solid">Czech Ambassador In London On Poland Situation – <span style="color:#5a84ae;" >1939-08-27 BBC</span></p><p style="margin:2px 0 1px 0; padding:0 0; position:relative;"><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.mp3hunting.com/player/player_mp3.swf" width="195" height="20"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.mp3hunting.com/player/player_mp3.swf" /><param name="FlashVars" value="mp3=http://www.mp3hunting.com/listen.php?track=1318204439109297742" /></object><br />
</p></div>After WWII, Jan Masaryk returned to Czechoslovakia to help save democracy in his country and prevent takeover by the communist party and imposition of a totalitarian government. On March 10, 1948, Jan Masaryk was murdered[1] and the communist party took over the government. <br />
<br />
Written by an American journalist, this book tells the story of the events of those tumultuous years and the events and people surrounding his death. The interviews and research for the book took place during the summer and autumn of 1968 -- a rare window during which a Western journalist could travel and talk with people in Czechoslovakia. During the 1950s, the Iron Curtain was an Iron Wall for people outside the communist bloc. Travel into the communist bloc from the West was difficult and once inside, speaking with people was next to impossible because the consequences for speaking with a Westerner were harsh. No one spoke freely except to their closest and most trusted friends. It was a cold gray never ending winter. But then in the summer of 1968, a miraculous thawing, the Prague Spring, occurred in Czechoslovakia. Restrictions on speech were lifted and for a brief few months the Czechoslovaks were free to speak out. During that summer of 1968, an American journalist went to Czechoslovakia to investigate one of this great intrigues of end of World War II, the death of Jan Masaryk. Her book, "The Masaryk Case", is about what she discovered during her investigations and interviews, but much more than that, it is a rare glimpse into the communist bloc during the middle of the Cold War.<br />
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The central character, Jan Masaryk was the son of Tomas Masaryk. Tomas Masaryk founded the Czechoslovak democracy after WWI and was the first Czechoslovak president. At the time, that is during WWI in the 1920s, Czechoslovakia was in some ways the adopted child of the United States. The U.S. was instrumental in helping guide Czechoslovakia to democracy after WWI, and the first Czechoslovak constitution was signed in New York City. The Masaryk family had a number of connections to America including close relatives there. During the 1940s, the time during which much of the story in this takes place, Tomas Masaryk was already revered as a great statesman and leader. To the Czechoslovaks, he was (and still is) revered like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln are revered in the U.S. <br />
<br />
His son, Jan, however was an incorrigible playboy with seemingly none of the talents of his great father. In Jan's late teens, he was sent by his family to America to make his own way in life -- and presumably teach him a few lessons. Jan lived 10 years in America, working in menial clerk jobs. In his late 20s, Jan returned home and was promptly drafted into WWI and served in Austria. After the war, Jan continued his playboy ways but began to assume some of the responsibilities foisted upon him by his lineage as the son of a national hero. He took a position as a diplomat in the government of Benes, the 2nd Czechoslovak president. Jan perhaps would have remained just the playboy son of Tomas Masaryk in the Czechoslovak national memory if it were not for Munich 1938 and its aftermath. As it was, he became the embodiment of the tragedy of Czechoslovakia in WWII, and his death/murder became an allegory for the murder and betrayal of Czechoslovakia.<br />
<br />
Munich 1938. In one of the 20th century's great betrayals, William Chamberlain -- the prime minister of Britain at the time -- sacrificed Britain's ally, Czechoslovakia, to Hitler in an attempt to appease Hitler and preserve peace. Czechoslovakia's defenses along her western border were handed over to Germany and the Czechoslovaks were ordered not to resist. Once it became clear that Czechoslovakia's allies (those with whom she had mutual military assistance treaties), England, France and Russia, would not come to her aid, she was quickly dismembered by her neighbors. Four months after Munich, she was an occupied country. Her resources were sent to Germany, her industry was serving Germany, and her population was enslaved to serve the Reich. One of the most industrialized countries before the war, she would go on to become the arms factory for Germany during the war.<br />
<br />
Jan Masaryk's was serving as a diplomat in London at the time, and he became the voice of Czechoslovakia's tragedy. He spoke English fluently and without accent, and gave many radio speeches during that time. From one of his radio addresses after Munich:<br />
<object width="400" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/UD8C5MirY4U&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/UD8C5MirY4U&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="344"></embed></object><br />
<br />
<blockquote>Text of the radio address in the video above: “You will see things happening in my little country diametrically opposed to everything my father stood for and I humbly but proudly stand for today. And I beg of you to understand it. My people were terribly hurt. They were suddenly told, with very little ceremony, that they must shut up and give up. Otherwise – it was a terrible otherwise… This is another job for the historians. I am not really complaining. I am just trying to explain in simple words what went on in the heart of the simple Czech and Slovak, man and woman, who trusted their allies and their friends and quite suddenly found themselves alone, bereft and destitute in a blizzard of harshness.”</blockquote><br />
This book was fascinating to me because it told about the life of Jan Masaryk and the crucial pre- and post-WWII years involving Czechoslovakia. But it also tells a fascinating story about the Czechoslovak mindset in the late 1960s and about how people processed the war and the post-war betrayals and upheavals. The thing that comes up repeatedly is how Czechoslovaks who lived through the war and post-war period were trying deal with their own feelings of complicity in their downfall. The people she interviews have a sense that the Czechoslovaks did not really resist the Germans. In the sense that there was no great partisan movement as in some other Slavic countries, e.g. Poland and Belarus. This is not to say there weren't partisans and that there are not examples of courageous resistance, but the Czechs feel that they tended to take the easier (and less lethal) ways out. Upon invasion, the government quickly aligned with Germany--true the alternative was terrible. Later it aligned with Russia--again the alternative was terrible. <br />
<br />
But they Czechs she interviews express a lurking sense that their country and they themselves were always making a Faustian bargain with some devil or another. On the other hand, the Czech Republic was the only German-annexed country that did not provide troops for the Reich Army. Every other annexed country did: Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Poland. The Czechoslovaks that the journalists interviews bring this up themselves and are obviously trying to process all these conflicting views of themselves. They seem large unsuccessful in this attempt.<br />
<br />
--EEH, May 19, 2010<br />
<br />
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Radio Prague article about the 60th anniversary<br />
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/101758<br />
<br />
Radio broadcasts<br />
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/11875<br />
<br />
http://archiv.radio.cz/english/talking/16-11-99.html<br />
<br />
[1] Change in the official verdict: murder<br />
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/49113<br />
<br />
[2] A sea change in public opinion about strict neutrality (including no arms shipments to England) occurred after the Munich agreement. This change in public opinion is reviewed from the perspective of late 1939 in the article: <br />
Influences of World Events on U.S. "Neutrality" Opinion, Philip E. Jacob, The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Mar., 1940), pp. 48-65. In a short period of 8 weeks public opinion switched from high levels of support for complete neutrality to the opinion that the US should support England and ship weapons to England and France to resist Germany. This change in public opinion did not however extend to sending troops. Resistance to sending troops remained very high--ca. 95% against and ca 80% against EVEN if England and France looked like they would lose. After Munich, this erodes a bit to 84% and 54% (if E and F are losing). But by the end of 1939, opinion switched back to extremely high resistance to sending troops (unless the US is attacked). However, the change in public opinion concerning arm shipments to England did have an effect. The arms embargo that prevented weapons from being sold to England was lifted on November 4, 1939 (via modification of the Neutrality Act). For reference, Germany invaded Poland on Sept 1, 1939 and England declared war on Germany on Sept 3, 1939.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-75348027260402959322008-07-03T22:12:00.001-07:002021-09-24T15:10:25.357-07:00History of the German Freikorps * * *<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786713429?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0786713429" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img border="0" alt="History of the German Freikorps" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219024220274748034" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4RONEwuhi0g3pBXCtdX6W23lANk9zzTPFuBU4LaQ-qcY7H0OPnen6O0Ykp6QJzBlw81AkzIsetH82KJAWjM02-HB0Up02aZF_o3B9XAV7SUcbdngbsl1bHr6Lcb5uh2B5wkPS9Q/s320/freikorps.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" title="" /></a><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786713429?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0786713429">A Brief History of the Birth of the Nazis (at Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0786713429" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
The book begins at the end of WWI as civil unrest is spreading within Germany<br />
due to widespread dissatisfaction with the war among the civilians and the soldiers. During this time, there was a strong communist/revolutionary movement within the naval soldiers and within the working class. As with the Russian communist revolution, the German communist revolution-that-wasn't started with mutinies aboard naval ships. Towards the end of WWI, losing the war seemed inevitable and naval soldiers began to balk at dying for a lost cause. The first large mutiny occurred at Kiel on October 29, 1918 when the navy ordered a last, and at that point suicidal, battle against the British blockade. The 'Red' soldiers took over the ships and the port. This revolt was put down by the Kaiser but unrest continued to spread -- until the Kaiser was forced into exile on November 9, 1919 and the monarchy was replaced by a fragile republic, the Wiemar Republic.<br />
Out of this chaos, the Friekorps were born.<br />
<br />
<img border="0" alt="Spartacist in Berlin" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219028480647331106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicT_dgALAzhxy-_SZPqTJTQk_sF9GTxAcXf9oqJCYPLs-bbWcrybzapYy5qiSmWGRLssvI8RR0VavUhBUaxDFixCLpX78u2FEJP99blkelLn495VvK5sn-EXCRLd_vFUL77buskw/s320/Spartacus_fight.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;" title="Sparticus worker fighting in the streets in 1919" width="200" />The young republic was facing multiple uprising from various revolutionary groups: the communists, the Spartacists, the Red naval soldiers and the Workers' parties. These groups were engaging in mass revolts in Berlin and were taking over government offices. The regular army was ineffective and riddled with 'Red' sympathizers. Instead ex-military officers formed their own scratch militia, called Freikorps or Free Corps. These were made up of young, hard men who had been tempered in the trenches of WWI. These newly minted Freikorps were sent to quell the civil unrest -- with a heavy hand. The Freikorps became famous for their violence and independence -- and their virulent disdain for the Wiemar Republic government. At their height in 1920, there were about half a million Freikorps soldiers in militia of various sizes up to battalion strength. Some of these only lasted a few months, while others lasted to the Versailles Treaty after which they were eventually absorbed into the regular Army.<br />
<br />
<img alt="" border="0" alt="Munich Freikorps" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219035058728446162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD6shgdcSxeZiAImsteCPPoISJZLAHxgZ2jVL5ahSdLxRMiAgWBKSM9mrtcHyVbolKx1tLa-joXikSKiNngnVg4GBJ_RECGCaxmUT8k9EDvuSyeIniIadmyjis0SJNl5NzSCmVdA/s320/munich_freikorps_sm.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" />"A Brief History of the Birth of the Nazis: How the Freikorps Blazed a Trail for Hitler" tell sthe history of the Friekorps from their inception in 1919 to their official dissolution in 1920 by the Versailles Treaty through their change to illegal political terrorist militia in the 1920s and then to their final end in the summer of 1934 when the Nazis carried out a purge known as the Night of Long Knives. The first half of the book is mostly about their various military actions up to 1920: from their military action in Poland to mercilessly putting down the Ruhr Red revolts in the spring of 1920. The second half of the book concerns the post-Versailles Treaty period. The Versailles Treaty strictly limited the number of soldiers that Germany was allowed to maintain, and the Wiemar government was certainly not inclined to turn a blind eye to the Freikorps. The Friekorps were a threat to the government, and had been involved in multiple putz attempts to overthrown the republican government and replace it with a fascist government. <br />
<br />
By the early 1920s, the majority of the Freikorps had been disbanded or integrated into the Wehrmacht. However, many Freikorps evolved into illegal anti-republican groups and some of these were terrorist right-wing groups that that assassinated republican officials. These illegal Friekorps groups were important to the nascent National Socialist Party (Nazis). Specifically, the Bavarian Freikorps were critical in the Munich Beerhaus putz in 1923 when Adolf Hitler attempted to seize power by force. After this failed, and Hitler sent to prison, Hitler decided to seek power within the political system and distanced himself from the more unruly elements of the Freikorps. Nonetheless many Freikorps officers went on to become leaders in the Nazi party and of the SS. <br />
<br />
This book was a real eye-opener for me. I was not aware of the extent of civil unrest in Germany at the end of WWI or of the communist revolts that occurred in 1919 and the early 1920s. The history of these revolts gave me a very different image of pre-WWII Germans than I had before. In Berlin Diary, the memoir of a US journalist, we see only the stereotypical view of German citizens fawning over Hitler in mass assemblies and there is certainly no evidence of widespread resistance. The history of the Freikorps shows a completely different German citizenry. For example, in March 1920 in what is known as the Kapp Putz, a Freikorps militia tried to overthrow the republican government by force and succeeded in taking over the government headquarters in Berlin and sending the leadership running. However, they were faced with massive passive resistance by government employees who stalled in carrying out their orders. Then a Berlin-wide strike was called and the city was shut down. After a few days of civilian resistance, the putz leaders were forced to leave. On the other hand, the image we see of the Freikorps is striking similar to that seen later in the Nazi party and SS. Lieutenant Mann, an officer of the Freikorps leading the failed Kapp Putz, said afterwards "If we had only shot more people [meaning civilians], everything would have been alright." It was a lesson they put to use in quelling the Ruhr revolt a few weeks later and one that the Nazis took to heart also.<br />
<br />
--EEHUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-89850410052840292052008-06-01T08:34:00.000-07:002010-01-20T10:05:59.968-08:00Hanover Street *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOrTX9FxyAfFyBfqBxPZaImEW62WKQD2LxEMkInI8fDAoeEJBWZdhkGQN18IuV4zQoLhbFxn7zD9T-kFt_4C-laNNPgIyyu184QMr3znrokDXL9Y6vMFTOvtPiqAXkSdMNsClCPA/s1600-h/hanover+street.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOrTX9FxyAfFyBfqBxPZaImEW62WKQD2LxEMkInI8fDAoeEJBWZdhkGQN18IuV4zQoLhbFxn7zD9T-kFt_4C-laNNPgIyyu184QMr3znrokDXL9Y6vMFTOvtPiqAXkSdMNsClCPA/s320/hanover+street.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206948143147535506" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005LB88?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00005LB88">Hanover Street (DVD on Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00005LB88" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
What can I say? I was overcome with Indy nostalgia. Last week, I went to see the new Indy IV movie and so thoroughly enjoyed it that I decided to re-watch Indy I. Alas, as I expected, the local video store was out of it. Thus I found myself poking around on Netflix Instant Viewing for a Harrison Ford movie to watch. My choices were Air Force 1 (seen it and hate it), Devil's Own (seen it and hate it), or Hanover Street, a 1979 movie WWII romance movie with Harrison Ford and Christopher Plummer. That sounded kind of interesting. Reviews suggested it was lite-romance fluff but entertaining to people who like that sort of stuff. I wasn't sure if I was the sort of movie viewer who likes that sort of stuff, but I decided to find out.<br />
<br />
Wow. This was unbelievable horrible. The sets and costumes were great, but the the two leads (Ford and some woman) delivered their lines like they were reading them. There was negative charisma between them and they were supposed to be madly in love. And the plot...ok, I can't criticize the plot. Inane, sappy plots are part of the lite-romance genre. That said, the plot was inane and sappy. Christopher Plummer was alright, or at least not painful to watch, but one wonders why he would have taken such a role in 1979, after blockbuster roles such as in Sound of Music and Pink Panther.<br />
<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRZvfKkquCSMsc9MsLeW2P8QeaF1Bs8hJ5Sub6Bk52AH8GX5cjYNDCVoHHCSP_Gnfyi8b78XYn29jHTYtahCP9tv4VBEfMf12TND_UuBgR8iRnPPQUx2G1Gzc_qDPvMhqQmzXDqg/s1600-h/hanoverstreet.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRZvfKkquCSMsc9MsLeW2P8QeaF1Bs8hJ5Sub6Bk52AH8GX5cjYNDCVoHHCSP_Gnfyi8b78XYn29jHTYtahCP9tv4VBEfMf12TND_UuBgR8iRnPPQUx2G1Gzc_qDPvMhqQmzXDqg/s320/hanoverstreet.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206947769485380738" /></a> So really avoid this one. There are many other entertaining mindless romance movies for you to enjoy -- no need to revisit the late-1970s for that. Only see this if you are curious if you can see a glimmer of Han Solo (1977) two years later. Answer: No. Oh wait, there is a reason to see this. I've watched many of Ford's movies over the years (even the terrible ones like this), and this one has the best snogging scene I know of. He gets into it -- unlike later films where he fakes it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-41808798088536486222008-04-28T22:14:00.000-07:002010-01-20T13:36:25.408-08:00Idi i smotri (Come and See, 1985) * * * * *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000BWVCR?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0000BWVCR"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCmpIYGPeEvLGwKTkFuPeH2T-hwCh2dSTia-8GZAe4GbpcncLB3BFZEs-UG_mLIplnNvZM6WdIZZieDzXfSfWG3KsXr7eydRjbAoo9wZrLVvoSvO3nuasWPSBVtLDBa8DaZ6yVqw/s320/vlcsnap-75140.png" border="0" alt="Come and See film" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194901962773502450" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000BWVCR?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0000BWVCR">Come and See (link to DVD on Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0000BWVCR" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
Ethnic cleansing of the Slavs living in the Eastern European lands including Poland, the Baltics, Ukraine, Belarus, Czechoslovakia and western Russian (to the Urals) was outlined in Hilter's Generalplan Ost as part of his long-term plan for creation of <span style="font-style:italic;">Lebensraum</span> for Greater Germany. This plan involved removal of 70-90% of the existing Slavic population in these areas. Much of this was to be carried out after the war (after Germany's presumed victory) but pacification and elimination of certain areas was to be carried out during the war, in particular in Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. <br />
<br />
Belarus (was Belarussia) has the sad distinction of being the country where the Generalplan Ost and the genocide of Slavs was most effectively implemented during WWII. 25-33% of the population of Belarus was killed in the war (about 2.2 million killed), the Belarus intelligentsia and Jewish segments of society were entirely eliminated, every city was devastated and large portions of Belarus were laid waste in a scorched earth policy (<a href="http://www.khatyn.by/en/genocide/">Belarus official website on the genocide</a>). In some of the worst war crimes committed in WWII, in628 villages across Belarus SS troops rounded up and burned <span style="font-style:italic;">alive</span> <span style="font-weight:bold;">every</span> inhabitant as punishment for partisan actions. Another 4667 villages were burnt to the ground with less than 100% of their inhabitants killed. The website on the Khatyn memorial even has archival video taken by SS troops of the plan in action: <a href="http://www.khatyn.by/photo/clip5.avi">Plan Ost</a>. <br />
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<img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhTLBEmDg8KQ6cmpu2qwUsjcAJay7i7id0aI9_BgXqROa4thaQEGVpjiac3SUEnGwvbZDu5VpDH1R1LM5nA0kr338sLvJn1YStFa_hLE6urgSEaQjH6wIUq5qKXzLlAg5Ffs2Ewg/s200/come+and+see+1.png" border="0" alt="image from Come and See, Russian WWII film" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194906150366616066" /><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQxOpz602rQ1LRBEq5Mh6x6rksz3pskEUhR1vqa0K_3YDQPLrBvkA2dfhNmbFIT_t9KM_LzGiPrWl4loSH4XftqouuE_nr1PfdfU25nV0BrEPN0JSB8Qj-QAyJ1XDrvw2l7U6sOg/s200/come+and+see+2.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194906725892233746" /><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi99Sruqg1cWhrKFOZpsgyixG3OsemfXYgqrLB9JP6MqjnltYAqIwGZ5TyvcvXVjFSDbLwcO8eCEQTWBv8mLWVDkAnFgRMjCuHo6KWXO_LCJ0fVxdH-OeI2iB9re36YTRrS1c5AOg/s200/come+and+see+3.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194907086669486626" /><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Syi4NfcFrpulfMo_h8BT0J7-B4j-J3z0-pVXRd59pDiNjtJyRwpOLOFtMj5QWfV11liG_2ZrB5Y0HCR_WsxpsvKjyn6DVsgLiU03PLzy1TkmkyrUQ1ddJ5OJvHJlSveQ71F2tA/s200/come+and+see+4.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194907464626608690" /><br />
Come and See (1985) is a movie about WWII as experienced in Belarus. It follows a teenage boy who joins the partisans. It shows the horror of the SS annihilation of villages through the eyes of this naive boy. As you might expect, there is a fairly well developed partisan-mythology in Belarus (Robin Hood with a gun). However although Come and See is sympathetic to the partisans, this is not your typical air-brushed film of the heroic partisans saving the day from the evil Germans. Come and See tries to paint a realistic picture of war, without any romance. In that sense, it is has a documentary quality almost, and like all "realistic" war films, it is decidedly anti-war. There is nothing, nothing remotely romantic about being a partisan in this movie because war itself is horror. During the course of the 2 days covered by the movie, we watch as Florya ages physically before our eyes. With each new horror -- the death of someone next to him, watching villagers rounded up and burned, the loss of his family, the gang rape of young girl -- his face becomes distraught, then crazed and finally wooden.<br />
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Come and See is one of the most famous modern movies about the Eastern Front. It is very well done and the cinematography and acting is excellent. But I had been warned by Kaja that Come and See is a disturbing movie. It was, however, not as distressing as I was bracing for. I was expecting to be forced to watch people burning alive, children getting their heads split open with rifle butts, or the gang rape of young girls. We see the after effect of these things and we see dead bodies, but the film doesn't actually show these horrors happening. I never needed to hit the "stop" button on the remote in order to avoid any really distressing scenes. That is a real accomplishment because the temptation would be to want to 'rub people's faces' in the horror: "look, look, LOOK!" But it is more powerful, I think, because instead it focuses on how Florya reacts and copes (or not) to seeing these horrors. <br />
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Overall this a <span style="font-weight:bold;">must-see</span> movie for those interested in the Eastern Front and the effect of WWII on Eastern Europe, along with <a href="http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com/2006/03/stalingrad.html">Stalingrad</a>, Mein Kreig, and <a href="http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com/2006/07/shoah.html">Shoah</a>.<br />
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References<br />
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<a href="http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/GPO/Generalplanostnew.htm">Generalplan Ost</a><br />
<a href="http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/GPO/gpoarticle.HTM">Hilter's Generalplan Ost</a><br />
<a href="http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/GPO/gpo%20sources.htm">Online documents and transcripts about Generalplan Ost</a><br />
<a href="http://www.dac.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm">Except from Janusz Gumkowkski and Kazimierz Leszczynski's POLAND UNDER NAZI OCCUPATION</a><br />
<a href="http://www.ilhr.org/ilhr/regional/belarus/updates/BU-2005-PDF/vol8no20-2005.pdf">Belarus : a partisan reality show</a><br />
<a href="http://www.khatyn.by/en/">The Khatyn massacre website</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-83343201257999767602008-04-22T18:51:00.000-07:002010-01-26T10:07:47.544-08:00Pupendo * * *<img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 0 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYxOmc4vEbyXT-l4IHzH1-9VvDu1wAAqEFEUn5xHQLzTSFcQhF8x4y2eLJ_uo-ktY_mWeZNeLfa9KuApbAGXkusdlUAnaucTXxQ2J_awS1HWoFvDiaIqsbN_lbvcv8yuevfnATOg/s320/vlcsnap-167218.png" border="0" alt="image from from Pupendo, Czech film" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192321159875008274" /> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002UX5MF8?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B002UX5MF8">Pupendo (link to DVD on Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B002UX5MF8" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
"One day a little tapeworm poked her head out of an anus, looked around at the big wide world. She popped back in and raced to find her mother. 'Oh, mommy tapeworm what is that great and lovely blueness that is all around outside?' 'That my darling is the sky.' 'Oh mommy tapeworm, what is that beautiful yellow orb in the sky?' 'That my darling is the sun.' 'But why mommy, why do we live here, here in the dark?' 'Oh my darling, because this, this is our <span style="font-style:italic;">HOME</span>...yes, my darling, up someone's ass.' -- a joke told by an insurance appraiser from the movie Pupendo.<br />
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<img style="float:center; margin:0 20px 0 20px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIGV_c1fX5rnzYXYHmPMuNLGz8LK1V5aMuL9EirsLCgLLUB0qGeYLHjIOT5O__Qt4_bid-Qz5KvgTDGssJYHF8YAtm_m7atsbQauQ1KtrKl6AxizucrGG92k_eQMofPVFnF_BeJA/s320/vlcsnap-163880.png" border="0" alt="image from from Pupendo, Czech film" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192329101269538610" /> <br />
This movie is a comedy-drama about the 1980s in Czechoslovakia, and that little joke sums up the Czech perspective pretty well. Yes, we're living in crap, but nonetheless it's home. The story follows a talented Prague artist, Bedrich Mara, who in the heady years around the 1968 Prague Spring was one of the top artists in the country with his work shown in the west. But he refused to make the necessary compromises (join the communist party presumably) and has fallen out of favor with the authorities. He loses his job, is ostracized from the art community, and barely brings home enough for his family by making kitschy clay things, like a money bank that looks like a butt. The movie tells the story of a summer in which on a bit of a lark, he brings home a bum. The bum turns out to be an art historian caught at a particularly low point. And through a bitter-sweet series of events, he helps Bedrich return to the international art world -- although at costs that have a certain black humor to them.<br />
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Pupendo is by the same director that made <a href="http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com/2005/12/pelisky.html">Pelisky</a>, and it feels like a follow-up. Pelisky was a comedic-drama about life in the summer of 1968, while Pupendo is a drama-comedy about life in the 80s. But I think one reason Pelisky was more successful was that Pelisky combined funny with a very obvious tragedy -- the 1968 invasion. In Pupendo, the juxtaposition of funny and serious is not as effective -- perhaps because the tragedy of the 1970s and 1980s, the post-1968 period of "Normalization", is difficult to capture on film unlike tanks rolling down streets. "Normalization" is an Orwellian term because it refers to squelching the "abnormal" ideas of freedom of speech and civil liberty that dominated the the attempt at humanizing Czech communism (Jan-Aug 1968). I once heard a Czech describe the difference between the Stalinist oppression in the 1950s versus the Normalization oppression in the 1970s. In the 1950s, you were executed but there was a certain logic and predictability to what activities would get you killed. In the 1970s, you were ostracized rather than executed, but punishment was completely capricious. You think you are fine, and then some innocuous comment, or forgetting to put up a flag, gets you on the blacklist.<br />
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For this reason, I think the film probably has mainly home-market appeal, unlike <a "href=http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com/2005/12/pelisky.html">Pelisky</a> which is likely to be quite funny and tragic to non-Czechs also. Also Pelisky has Miroslav Donutil, one of the most famous Czech comedic actors, who is hilarious in the movie.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHGT9MFi8rR9tEIJoQppK9XTZ4qGjd33lsYaHt2dvFnB8LZHY_yfd1Acne0jiqJv9pmO5aHmarAEQJI26wA78awVVql2MS9gQr7IGOAY71NJ5QPCHpGbCZUmoLGRESw5dL-TlEAw/s1600-h/vlcsnap-163487.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHGT9MFi8rR9tEIJoQppK9XTZ4qGjd33lsYaHt2dvFnB8LZHY_yfd1Acne0jiqJv9pmO5aHmarAEQJI26wA78awVVql2MS9gQr7IGOAY71NJ5QPCHpGbCZUmoLGRESw5dL-TlEAw/s320/vlcsnap-163487.png" border="0" alt="image from from Pupendo, Czech film" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192328237981112098" /></a> Pupendo refers to a Czech "game" in which a heavy coin -- in this case a 5kc piece which is about like a Sacajawea or Loonie -- is thrown swiftly down onto the bare belly of the "recipient". If done correctly, the coin lands flat and gives a frightful sting. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j3sz2FTDLc">Video of pupendo being played</a>. Why this movie-vignette about life in the 1980s in Czechoslovakia is named after this slightly sadomasochist game is unclear. Presumably it is meant as some kind of metaphor, but I couldn't quite get it.<br />
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<hr>I purchased the DVD in the Czech Republic where it is widely available in video stores. Purchasing or renting it outside of CZ is difficult, but in the U.S. you can try searching on www.eBay.com; you'll sometimes find it for sale there.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-5045321527482516292008-04-08T09:44:00.000-07:002010-01-20T10:15:55.358-08:00Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress * * *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AYELXI?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000AYELXI"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSuESQsgl-qa_cIaIbF85FLGAm5U0GQ5zgJJyle3W7fqH4HpSFneJC0s3a4DzAy0CrkvQc-QDpHWmjuBjYU2LPlI_g5yFDdZfpFIXkZ6cnVpCeZCMlitcMp4Bdn9xXyDRXEWHT3Q/s320/Balzac_and_the_Little_Chinese_Seamstress_poster.jpg" border="0" alt="DVD cover from Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5186927749719595842" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AYELXI?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000AYELXI">Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (DVD on Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000AYELXI" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
Not wanting to sleep the other night, I flipped through Netflix instant viewing and saw that "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" was available. The book is excellent -- a real page-turner. It tells the autobiographical story of two young men (about 19 yrs old) who are sent to a remote village in the mountains to be "re-educated" in the early 1970s. This was part of Mao's Cultural Revolution during which time he waged an all out assault on anyone with higher education, i.e. doctors, lawyers, musicians, engineers, writers, etc. They were labeled as "reactionaries" or "black elements". Their houses confiscated and property destroyed. They were forced into menial labor and all aspects of their lives constrained. In the late 1960s, Mao instituted the "Up to the mountains and down to the villages" policy. The children of the intelligentsia were sent away to be work in the countryside and not allowed to study. This period lasted 10 yrs and effectively exiled a entire generation. <br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Rg98vxc9FJpBHVEPkpwxUXgiazlNm4DyXxQetn1D0YYhXm0rGbv_OojfN1rYWrIXdonuEVgVtB4dDKyJRc9yMFcnAAgTXxKKvKbhNpvwtwmeXA2ED8SJRhy7xtUdTJQUrpUdOQ/s1600-h/Balzac.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Rg98vxc9FJpBHVEPkpwxUXgiazlNm4DyXxQetn1D0YYhXm0rGbv_OojfN1rYWrIXdonuEVgVtB4dDKyJRc9yMFcnAAgTXxKKvKbhNpvwtwmeXA2ED8SJRhy7xtUdTJQUrpUdOQ/s320/Balzac.jpg" border="0" alt="image from Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5186928269410638674" /></a> This film only touches briefly on the horror and degradation inflicted upon people by the Cultural Revolution -- during a scene in which one of the boys breaks down and cries. Instead it is a coming of age story about two boys, well young men. Luo, the son of a dentist, is handsome and witty. Ma, the son of a surgeon, is quiet and an excellent violinist (who later escapes to France and becomes a violinist in real life). One funny scene occurs in the beginning when the villagers are examining the boys stuff. They find the violin and are about to burn it, when Luo saves it and offers that Ma will play Mozart for them. "Hmm, Mozart, that sounds reactionary", says the village chief. "No, the song is 'Mozart is Thinking of Chairman Mao'".<br />
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The film follows about a year of their four years in the mountains. During this time, they are saved from the intellectual poverty of village life by a suitcase full of illegal Western novels -- Stendhal, Kipling, Dostoevsky, and ... Balzac. Such books were destroyed by the communists so were very hard to come by and obviously would be a one-way ticket to jail if discovered. They boys acquire the suitcase by stealing it from another boy, the son of a poet, who is being re-educated in a nearby village. These books change their lives -- and the life of a young woman, the granddaughter of the local tailor. The boys fall in love with her and decide to educate her by reading the books to her. This has a series of unexpected consequences and one of the themes of the book and film is the power of education to change a person. Although in this case, it is not education per se, but rather opening one's eyes to the existence of a wider world.<br />
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The film follows the book quite closely, but diverges at the end by telling us what happened to the boys. Ma leaves China and emigrates to France where he becomes a somewhat successful violinist. Luo becomes a dentist like his father. The little seamstress left for the city and eventually emigrated to Hong Kong. This adds nice closure that the film was missing. <br />
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Overall I found the film entertaining. I had not intended to watch the whole thing in one sitting (it was after midnight when I started watching), but I ended up doing so as I was so engaged. <br />
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<hr>Watched on Netflix instant viewing. Subtitled.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-20489744542990441622008-02-25T12:34:00.001-08:002010-01-20T13:55:02.518-08:00Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)* * * *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002CR04A?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0002CR04A"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEfAEThC6xOmd1xYljpMo6sXwXFiQUl-9Pt0azx2oL4aRtBjD8XcZJCRFEidnZ3zrb_RnBasSwl9L36f1WeLWYV66ZQeUOdyt7KYT0e4UXLznRbYl9-4juDMWYCRV7fKBuD-dTSg/s320/judgment+at+nuremberg.jpg" border="0" alt="Judgment at Nuremberg, Spencer Tracey" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191102667399307826" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002CR04A?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0002CR04A">Judgment at Nuremberg (DVD at Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0002CR04A" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
It took me a really long time to watch this film, even though it was an Oscar winning film on a topic I'm fascinated by, namely the Nuremberg trials. It's 3 1/2 hours long and basically the whole thing is filmed in the courtroom. I just didn't see how it would not bore me to tears. But Kaja was visiting and was interested to have seen it too. Neither of us wanted to <span style="font-style:italic;">see</span> it; we wanted to have seen it as part of our filmatic education. So with a partner to bolster our courage in the face of boredom, a six-pack and a big bowl of popcorn, we decided to work our way through it over three nights and set the DVD rolling at 11pm one night. We were transfixed through whole film and ended up watching it straight through, not finishing until after 2am.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKmlxnS4Xmv1917xJ7Ym7mvbNZ_noO87yIkBF4SSel_Z1L_am_gzxjE_jhWvTIzZGLm77Ed2bO56X1_8VCDpI-mKlA9v5SN0iP3U2zFWBzhCwmHgck_LoG77eCxmP04RICbCpYRA/s1600-h/judgment+at+nuremberg_2.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKmlxnS4Xmv1917xJ7Ym7mvbNZ_noO87yIkBF4SSel_Z1L_am_gzxjE_jhWvTIzZGLm77Ed2bO56X1_8VCDpI-mKlA9v5SN0iP3U2zFWBzhCwmHgck_LoG77eCxmP04RICbCpYRA/s320/judgment+at+nuremberg_2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191102770478522946" /></a> Why is this such a good movie? Gosh, it's really hard to put your finger on. The acting is great. Spencer Tracy is very believable as a well meaning and thoughtful small-town judge, who is really trying to understand the German people and is trying to not pre-judge them. The German lawyer is played by Maximilian Schell, an Austrian-born actor. He is magnetic in the film, and he won an Oscar fo r Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance. The screenplay is also thoughtful and doesn't make any cheap shots (unlike the abysmal Taking Sides, which was on a similar topic). The screenplay also garnered an Oscar.<br />
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Oh, yes, the plot. There is a trial of three Nazi judges who are being charged with going along with the Nazis and thereby allowing the Nazis to pervert justice so that instead of communists, jews, disabled, etc being just summarily locked away, their persecution was given the patina of a proper and fair legal hearing. Two of the main cases being discussed have to do with forced sterilization. Mainly we (the viewer) are sitting in on the court cases and listening to the arguments by each side. There are a few scenes in prison with the three men on trial, a few scenes of parties, but by and large it's in a courtroom. But it is riveting commentary on the moral culpability of professionals within a terrible system. <br />
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I didn't feel like the film tried to tell me what to think and how to judge the men on trial. In the end, I sympathized with many of the arguments of the German lawyer, and I felt the American judge took a moral high-ground that is a bit unrealistic*. I think that was one of the points of the film, to make one think about these issues and show that it is not so cut-and-dried. The path to moral corruption is walked one little step at a time and at each turn, you may even be making what you think is the most moral choice in that situation. So in fact, when you finally do become an active participant in the actions of a corrupt State, it can be almost by surprise and without you ever really making a conscious choice to be such a participant.<br />
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*Kaja's comment: This was mostly likely requisite for the era in which it was released. It was a time where the US stood as an ultimate moral compass and empowered to pass judgment by being the victors. If we think about the how the nature of our politics and public has changed from then to now, I think that we would see our protagonist judge in a 2008 film tested and succumb to the human sympathies that we extend to other individuals in the middle of personal dilemmas.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-65598997286270239622008-02-25T11:34:00.001-08:002010-01-20T13:38:59.597-08:00Derzu Uzala (1975)* * *<img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitYrJt6Is9BmD9EyZxMM1KghbH8d5fKL_FJA-2zFSX-NLbu9tF7355u0JV5ADmUAjnbSZ1Emg7Fwh4xMgUY26oDD4yqidba8v5znKvIIY5Y1LNxSM1MbNA_HZQ5gbfpufi_PwMmQ/s320/dersu3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171015454976971842" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004Y7HL?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00004Y7HL">Dersu Uzala (link to DVD on Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00004Y7HL" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
Derzu Uzala (1975) is a film by the great Japenese director, Akira Kurosawa, that is set right around the turn of the century (1902 to 1910) in eastern Siberia. It is the story of a Russian surveyor who is mapping the far east and north and is based on the memoirs of a Russian explorer, Vladimir Arsenyev. During one expedition, the surveying group runs into a native hunter, Derzu, who becomes their guide. He is a gentle soul who has known hardship--his wife, son and daughter died from smallpox years ago. Since then he has become a hunter/trapper. <br />
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The movie follows the surveyor and Derzu through a series of trips and adventures through the wild Russian landscape--though dense dark forests, wild rivers, and the endless northern tundra. I watched it on a very small screen which was a shame; the landscapes deserve to be seen on a big screen. Derzu is quite old and after a number of years, he loses his keen eyesight and can no longer hunt. The surveyor takes him into his home with his wife and son in a the city, but Derzu is like a trapped bird in the city. Eventually he must return to the woods.<br />
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<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_xlQ0VASJ1hnq47HtOLNvh3h2UOWgV2kFXMnhNGWPpZJrS5WRO4vRNJxfXyOzBGdfMwRR_wMA582eQJs9hSZQW2fGW-mXnB4BEZqIkLmfmLSoSdgOOTegH06njdwcPxlZL9tz5w/s320/derzu2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171015605300827218" /><br />
To my eyes, the movie was mainly about grand nature and the smallness of man within it. The part of the film where Derzu and Arsenyev are in the tundra and get caught out after dark especially plays on this theme. The turn of the century was a time of enormous change in Russia--just before the 1914 revolution and the start of the industrial period. The death of Derzu can be seen as a metaphor for the death of nature that occurred at this time. That this is a surveyor team can also be seen as a metaphor--nature's mysteries are reduced to lines on a piece of paper.<br />
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Most of the outdoor filming occurs in the Russian far east (just west of Japan) in the Primorsky Kray region. This is interesting to see. Filming also occurs in Siberia, although I could not find out exactly where. Kurosawa really captures the vastness of Siberian tundra.<br />
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Why 3 stars? This is considered a classic film by a great director. However, my own take was that the cinematography was super but the acting and story was nothing special. I would watch it again but this time with a projector so I could enjoy the shots of the vast Russian landscape.<br />
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This clip from the film will give you a sense of the film:<br />
<object width="320" height="265"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lAP-IEPSwhk&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lAP-IEPSwhk&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-34095816233143437742008-02-07T18:42:00.000-08:002008-03-24T10:02:25.099-07:00The Greatest Czech: Jara Cimrman<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmBHPEfhXsJZewZRG1EvpRYt6eADczOTcQXTG2Z16QgjHyI4EZpUbuKGbuttjrOqOXy-rIZcyVGvOBIlAbUCrnZEjd3oKAkCb2hdNn7ZH3UmZ3jeJI9Z8TDQrv2IQ1iJT3310WXQ/s1600-h/cimrman-akt1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmBHPEfhXsJZewZRG1EvpRYt6eADczOTcQXTG2Z16QgjHyI4EZpUbuKGbuttjrOqOXy-rIZcyVGvOBIlAbUCrnZEjd3oKAkCb2hdNn7ZH3UmZ3jeJI9Z8TDQrv2IQ1iJT3310WXQ/s320/cimrman-akt1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5164439294537537058" /></a>Commentary by Kaja<br /><br />In the heat of an early and humid summer, I had my first encounter with the famed Jara Cimrman, the Czech Genius. I’d heard the tales and only seen the dents in the sofa left by Cimrman’s fame before, but last night I went to a production of one of his plays, AKT.<br /><br />I emerged from the show, but this elusive Bigfoot of great minds remained as ephemeral as before. The reason? The persona of Cimrman is a creation of the great Czech actors Zdeněk Svěrák and Ladislav Smoljak. They created the character during an era of satirical self-reflection and the transitional post-WWII era. While originally intended as a caricature of Czech people, history, and culture, he became and remains an immensely popular national hero. This is most evident when considers that Jara Cimrman would have won the Czech Television contest to choose THE GREATEST CZECH. Including candidates from pop-singers, kings, and other national heroes, Cimrman was disqualified from the competition only because he never truly existed. The prize went to the runner up, King Charles IV, founder of the Charles University and Charles Bridge in Prague during the 1300s.<br /><br />The story goes that Cimrman was ridiculed and eschewed throughout his life. Thus, he passed into and out of this life understated and with only a bang or two. However, as with many great geniuses, Cimrman rose to glory only after his death when, in 1966, Dr. Evzen Hedvabny (Dr. Silky) discovered a locked chest containing many of Cimrman’s works. The brilliance of these works were instantly recognizable—needing little more than a glance at a title—and Cimrman became recognized as one of the world’s most accomplished men (certainly the greatest for the Czechs) as a poet, a composer, playwright, not to mention a philosopher and inventor.<br /><br />In order to further expound and present Cimrman’s greatness to society, a panel of experts (in each field) was assembled to lecture on these accomplishments. Thus, the composition of the performance was as follows: lecture, intermission, and performance. Most likely needless to say, the panel of experts was composed of the actors. This first section was perhaps the most interesting and entertaining. Playing on inter-discipline tensions and differences, the academic territoriality became increasingly evident with each presentation. Of course, each performance was replete with stereotypes; most notably, the spacey engineer.<br /><br />The second half was a performance of one of Cimrman’s discovered plays—contextualized, of course, by the preceding lecture. AKT, as the play is named, presents an elderly couple in a painter’s loft atelier. In one corner is a covered painting. The couple is anxious. Mind you, this is a seasoned and well-respected, all-male ensemble. From here on out, imagine all events saturated with cross-gender humor.<br /><br />Much waiting and three guests later, the plot thickens. The first guest is a teacher with a touch of pedophilia. The second, a fat realtor. And the last, a sex-crazed psychoanalytic. Each believes that their invitation is related to their field and that they have arrived at this mysterious place, on some mysterious day, at some mysterious time to make a little extra money under the table.<br /><br />The rest of the play revolves around an uncompleted painting of a nude woman: the elderly wife as a young woman. The elderly artist states, that each time he set out to finish the painting he was seized by a fit of passion and that one of the three guests was the result of these “artistic” sessions. And there we have it! The plot: gentleman, I am your father. She is your mother.<br /><br />I am not averse to sexual insinuation and lowbrow humor. However, when juxtaposing the two halves, I find the turn of phrase and intellectual foray more interesting than the latter. An example of the intellectual texture is the layers of meaning captured by the name "Cimrman". The name conveys a duality of heritage that is representative of the Czech nation. Jara Cimrman was the son of an Austrian mother, Marlen Jelinek (a Czech name meaning young stag) and a Czech father, Leopold Zimmerman (a German name meaning carpenter). The name “Cimrman” is the Czech phonetic version of his father's German name. While considering himself Czech and associating most with his Czech heritage, he is so confused by his ancestry and education that he speaks German with Czech-isms and Czech with German-isms, supported by a fair number of quotations on a number of topics. This linguistic word play persists throughout, even in the text of AKT itself. This first part, I believe, most fully engenders Czech people, history, and zeitgeist.<br /><br />The most striking part of the performance was realizing a connection between Cimrman and another Czech folk hero: the good soldier Svejk. Both characters are created personas supposedly representative of the Czech nation. Yet, Svejk and Cimrman are antithetical. One is the greatest Czech in accomplishment and societal contribution. The other is a bumbling good-natured fool who, despite his repeated screw-ups, always manages to survive and escape harsh consequences. Cimrman’s success is his active and intellectual engagement with the world and its events. Svejk’s success stems from his complete disengagement from anything beyond his immediate surroundings. I have puzzled over this ostensible contradiction since the performance. I have yet to reconcile how both can stand shoulder-to-shoulder, filling the same role in modern Czech folklore.<br /><br />I recommend that everyone read Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Svejk. I would also recommend that you visit the Theater of Jara Cimrman, but unfortunately this is limited to those who understand Czech (or Slovak).Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-73879182579433538522008-02-01T11:45:00.001-08:002010-01-20T11:28:14.794-08:00Zerophilia *<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000M2E372?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000M2E372">Zerophilia (DVD on Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000M2E372" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
This is a peculiar movie about a young man with a rare genetic disease that causes him to begin to turn into a female (large busted) when he becomes aroused. An orgasm causes him to stay female, until his(now her) next orgasm when he, I mean she, turns back into a male. What on earth brought me to this movie? Kaja suggested it. He, it turns out, had never seen it and I believe his suggestion was meant as a practical joke of some sort. I couldn't believe I watched the whole thing, but the premise is quite funny and I was hoping that something interesting would happen and the movie would develop a plot. It doesn't; the premise is the whole movie.<br />
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The trailer implies that it might be racy. It's not. Nothing racy happens and, except for a brief scene when the zerophiliac fellow rips off his shirt and discovers he has grown silicon enhanced breasts, all the skin (and action) you'll see in the movie is what you see in the trailer:<br />
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If despite this tepid review, you decide to watch it. Come prepared with ample libations to make it more interesting.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-38453078511736275522008-02-01T11:43:00.003-08:002021-09-24T15:11:22.960-07:00Taking Sides *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCSEyp7BO9U8MRX7940qjyWRYBIg-n4TWxFrPtG1-6U2fXmlosHlat6CHtSJ2QFj7Qi3cDkb0jjFbBsqlgXm_QsjN6IQtFP3iNCsH2XLdnmD9Gyic92IigGSEre8Svqc76_lF_0w/s1600-h/taking_sides_dvd.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCSEyp7BO9U8MRX7940qjyWRYBIg-n4TWxFrPtG1-6U2fXmlosHlat6CHtSJ2QFj7Qi3cDkb0jjFbBsqlgXm_QsjN6IQtFP3iNCsH2XLdnmD9Gyic92IigGSEre8Svqc76_lF_0w/s320/taking_sides_dvd.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194809732645788130" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001DCR0M?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0001DCR0M">Taking Sides (link to DVD at Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0001DCR0M" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
<span style="font-weight:bold;"> Eli</span>: I was really looking forward to this film. It is by Istvan Szabo who is one is one of my favorite directors, and it is on a topic that I find fascinating, the culpability of the artist or intellectual within a totalitarian system. It's also about the trials in Germany after WWII and that's really interesting to me. But this film sucked. The characters were one-dimensional and the acting was flat. The American officer, who was trying to catch and punish Germans who had 'collaborated' with the Nazis, was a complete caricature and totally unbelievable. Watching this was torture. What a different experience than the 1950s film <a href="http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com/2008/02/judgment-at-nuremberg.html">Judgment at Nuremberg</a>! Kaja, what was your take on this?<br />
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Kaja</span>: Absolutely right, Eli. I couldn't agree more. The central motive of this movie seems to be to remake the classic, Judgment at Nuremberg, but with a different type of intelligentsia: the musician. Hey, they'd have a great soundtrack to boot. BUT, the film in essence rehashes an age old argument similar to the one about Wagner being a Nazi supporter, despite his inability to control how his music was manipulated. Rather, it was his sister who promoted him in the public eye. While she was an avid Hitler supporter, how can we begrudge her initial overtures (pun intended) to the public to support the brilliant work of her brother? Holding Wagner accountable is like holding Nietzsche accountable for the fact that his writings were disseminated to German recruits as they marched off to the frontier. <br />
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It's not possible, however, to completely dismiss the case that the movie is describing: it happened and is about very real people. But the manner in which the movie, and the characters within it, attempt to twist music's connection to mean so much more in supporting a regime than it did is rather sad and misguided. It overlooks the fact that music both inspires and heals, much more than it incites people to battle (those are simple fanfares). I guess I am mainly left guessing why Szabo portrayed his characters the way he did. The American is an abrasive, self-righteous fellow that makes me wretch; his obsession is to humiliate a dignified and brilliant maestro. Okay... spot on. Bravo, Szabo, you're very perceptive indeed. The Germans are two young people, a boy and a girl, who fall in love. Aw, how sweet. BUT they harbor secret sympathies with the poor conductor. Hmmm... thus they are two-faced, secretive and can't be trusted. So, who is the viewer to look toward for inspiration? Not the tyrannical and ignorant American, of course. Certainly not the weak, secretive and feeble German couple. No, we look to the solid dignity and pride of a musician being humiliated. So we have a black-and-white situation: artist=good; judgmental American=bad. The transparent way that Szabo manipulates the sympathies of his audience, is cheap and doesn't admit that it is a messy moral situation. Really, while this movie was beautiful to look at, it had me squirming in my seat (and not in the good way). I see no redeeming value that it may have. Even the music was cliche.<br />
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So there you have it. Don't bother with this one.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-90727982653183930452008-02-01T11:43:00.001-08:002010-01-20T11:42:19.326-08:00Mysterious Skin * * * *<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj11VBSmiZ2DjgmIv6twUOZfJKRy1EtAgtnY79NB5CFOQ-wiz3OaC4NwAALn7Q8yqV5YqofzQXcPy08v4RMy3NTwAX4hpdmpVTKXVudSBNKXmI1VK6GnoeLRtz-ysP4Bh_-8QuugQ/s1600-h/mysterious_skin.jpg"><img style="float:center; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj11VBSmiZ2DjgmIv6twUOZfJKRy1EtAgtnY79NB5CFOQ-wiz3OaC4NwAALn7Q8yqV5YqofzQXcPy08v4RMy3NTwAX4hpdmpVTKXVudSBNKXmI1VK6GnoeLRtz-ysP4Bh_-8QuugQ/s320/mysterious_skin.jpg" border="0" alt="Mysterious Skin film" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5162466805037045010" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000F6II1M?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000F6II1M">Mysterious Skin (link to DVD on Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000F6II1M" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
Mysterious Skin tells the story of the ramifications of the sexual abuse of two eight-year old boys by their Little League coach. The coach grooms one of the boys and has a summer of 'encounters' with the boy, Neil. Neil seems to enjoy and embrace the experience (this is admittedly distressing to watch) and he even becomes the man's accomplice in luring other boys into the coach's apartment and them helping groom those boys. The other boy, Brian, is one of those boys whom Neil helps lure into the coach's apartment. Brian is no less traumatized by the experience, but in a completely different way than Neil.<br />
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The movie focuses mostly on Neil as an 18-year old and the fateful summer with the coach is shown in flashbacks. As a young man, Neil looks back on this summer as his dearest and most important childhood experience. During a conversation with a close friend, Neil says that the coach was the only one who has truly loved him. Neil's friend objects that Neil was 8-years old and is about to point out that this was abuse not love. Neil aggressively defends the experience and says "that it is a huge, huge part of who he is." The latter statement is indeed the truth, and through watching Neil as a young man we see the how true and tragic is this abuse masquerading as 'love' (ug). Neil becomes a male-prostitute and it becomes clear that by doing tricks with middle-aged men he is trying to recapture that summer. Indeed, Neil's whole life seems to revolve in some way around his obsession with that summer. It is only at the very end that Neil begins to gain some perspective -- this by meeting Brian and seeing how Brian was traumatized by what happened. Neil was an accomplice to that and he becomes critical in helping Brian remember and thus begin to heal.<br />
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This was one of the best movies I saw in 2007 (Kaja agreed that it was great too). The acting is phenomenal and the script is nuanced and excellent. As a parent, I normally would never watch a movie about child molestation -- there are some images you do not want in your head. However, Kaja picked out the movie; it was highly recommended by his friends although he did not know what it was about. As he sat down on the couch with the popcorn, he turned to me and said, "By the way, most people say this is a little disturbing." But by then the DVD was already spinning. Yes, the movie is a little disturbing. In case you are wondering, there are no images of crying children getting raped -- Neil is a willing participant. Yes, yes, the coach grooms and manipulates Neil so that he is willing. This is disturbing, but I found this more watchable than what happened to Brian. Fortunately, we do not actually see what happens to Brian (it is described). BUT, the film is NOT about child-molestation; it is about how two fascinating young men and how something in their youth made them who they are.<br />
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This is a great film and I recommend it highly with caveats. The first caveat is that you need to like difficult films about difficult topics, such as Trainspotting, Boys Don't Cry, or Monster. If you avoid films like that, then you'll want to avoid this one too. The second caveat is you need know that this film is sexually graphic. Neil is a male prostitute and about 25% of the film involves him during his tricks. There is no full-frontal nudity (though plenty backside), but you know exactly what he is doing and what is being done to him. It is not titillating; most of his clients seem to be overweight used-car salesmen types. The actual sexual encounters between the coach and Neil are shown by clever editing -- the child actors are never actually in the same shot as the coach except when they are talking early on. Instead the abuse is graphically described by Neil (at age 18).<br />
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You might want also check out other reviews...:<br />
<a href="http://www1.epinions.com/content_249858854532">epinions</a><br />
<a href="http://www.henrysheehan.com/reviews/mno/mysterious-skin.html">henrysheehan.com</a><br />
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Clip from the film (nothing bad besides some salty language):<br />
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Rented from NetflixUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-75647941255669546262008-01-28T14:02:00.000-08:002010-01-20T13:33:49.399-08:00Családi tüzfészek (Family Nest, 1979) * *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgivmuY-quIvUCYXtFc1zBeDiO5QAWLQ0o-117PI9EVDCKRIkOhAVLiz4W0SIm9l52lu01rEUxXzfQ2tnXWXEgkm5FCssS3LlPgUsBkduaB6JhmoM198n2CUF3m5MYPyA1QwZwEDA/s1600-h/FamilyNest.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgivmuY-quIvUCYXtFc1zBeDiO5QAWLQ0o-117PI9EVDCKRIkOhAVLiz4W0SIm9l52lu01rEUxXzfQ2tnXWXEgkm5FCssS3LlPgUsBkduaB6JhmoM198n2CUF3m5MYPyA1QwZwEDA/s320/FamilyNest.jpg" border="0" alt="Bela Tarr, Family Nest" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160651721792983170" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009HLBYS?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0009HLBYS">Family Nest (link to DVD on Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0009HLBYS" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
Bela Tarr is one of the most renown -- albeit unknown -- Hungarian directors of avant-garde film (the other more famous Hungarian director of this ilk is Miklos Jansco). I had seen Tarr's film <a href="http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com/2005/10/krhozat-damnation.html">Kárhozat (Damnation)</a> a couple years ago, and that ranks as one of the most striking films that I have ever seen. I would try to describe it but others have already done it eloquently enough: <a href="http://www.marksanchez.info/onlinewritings/tarr.html" target=_blank>a link to a blog entry on Tarr's Satantango</a>.<br />
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The films, Satantango, Damnation and Werckmeister Harmonies, are famous art films which explore the metaphysical and mystical using bleak black-and-white cinamatography. But before these films, Tarr made a series of <i>social realism</i> films while he was still in his 20s. These are very different and were shot in a kind of film-verite style with handheld cameras and small filming spaces. I had never seen his early work, and Kaja agreed to watch it with me although I warned that it would <span style="font-style:italic;">not</span> be a feel-good film. Well, Family Nest was an experience. Kaja and I sat on the couch in a daze after it was over. It was like we had been psychologically beaten upon for an hour. Oy.<br />
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The movie is set mostly in one small apartment where, because of the housing shortage in Hungary in the 1970s, three families are crammed together. Imagine the worst kind of family dynamics possible, that it what Family Nest, aka Family Cesspool, makes you an intimate part of for a little over an hour. The filming and directing is masterful -- you really feel like you are there; I even felt like I could smell it. <br />
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The self-created hell in the family nest is oppressive. Everyone is crammed altogether, and they argue non-stop. When the lights go out, the arguments finally stop but then other joys continue. The father-in-law is a slimy man who is constantly pressuring his daughter-in-law for sex and slips into his daughter-in-law's bed next to the sleeping 2-yr old granddaughter. Finally, the daughter-in-law's husband comes back from the army, which will hopefully put the brakes on the nightly visits. The daughter-in-law has a woman-friend over that evening and a couple hours after his return, the husband and his brother walk the woman home. They rape her and then the husband comes home and has sex with his wife. Awful.<br />
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The movie ends with a epilogue. The husband and wife have separated -- the relationship was strained for some reason (hmm, I wonder why?). We get close-ups monologues of each bemoaning the loss of the relationship. There is a sense that life is only getting worse.<br />
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I gave it 2 stars just because it was so painful to watch. Both Kaja and I have family in Eastern Europe and this struck a little close to home -- not the abuse and rape bits, but rather the negative effects that social upheaval and communism had on families and the tendency of the strain to bring out the worst in people. A friend who grew up in Romania during the communist era put it this way -- she felt like people during this era had all their compassion sucked out them simply because life was so hard and the system pitted everyone against each other even against your own family. The system made people ugly and cruel to each other and this movie captures that. But I do think, Family Nest is a <span style="font-style:italic;">must-see</span> for Iron Curtain-era filmmaking. The directing is masterful. <br />
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Background on Bela Tarr from KinoEye<br />
<a href="http://http://www.kinoeye.org/01/01/hames01.php">Review of the films of Bela Tarr</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-69175749074302293502007-12-07T11:58:00.002-08:002010-01-21T12:50:17.286-08:00Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams (2005)* *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibQHO4H7MBe49sIhl5dZOE6RBucwYnQyw3H7ny44bssbXtwrc7vUO6YSBL71Lgny8rZ7ymLxryNpXr5dP_RKeNWZBKQuUWE2xRx3RtEB8GU6CyssBQj82lYQawdY5YVijXn14dzw/s1600-h/grbavica.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibQHO4H7MBe49sIhl5dZOE6RBucwYnQyw3H7ny44bssbXtwrc7vUO6YSBL71Lgny8rZ7ymLxryNpXr5dP_RKeNWZBKQuUWE2xRx3RtEB8GU6CyssBQj82lYQawdY5YVijXn14dzw/s320/grbavica.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160644506247925874" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000OHZKHM?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000OHZKHM">Grbavica (link to DVD at Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000OHZKHM" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
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****warning: this review is going to reveal the main plot twist****<br />
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I have yet to see a movie concerning the Bosnian War that is not flat out depressing. This one is no exception. The film starts with a meeting of a women's support group for women traumatized by the war. Mainly the women just sit there silently -- they get paid to come whether or not they speak. But their faces are frozen pictures of depression and brokenness. The camera zooms in on one middle aged woman -- like the others, her face is numb and her eyes dull. <br />
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Over the next hour, we see her difficult life as the single parent of a rebellious teenager. As we watch the ho-hum drama of daily life, the scars of the war are everywhere. The mother, Esma, takes on a job as a waitress to make extra money for a field trip for her daughter, Sara. There she meets a man who recognizes her. Turns out they had both been visiting the morgue to look at the exhumed bodies in search of their fathers. He is now a body-guard but had been a medical student before the war changed everything. At school, the kids whose fathers were killed in the war get a discount on the field trip. On and on, the signs of the war are everywhere.<br />
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Esma has always told Sara that her father was killed in the war. Sara is beginning to question this story. Sara and Esma argue incessantly about this and that. In one particularly ugly argument, Sara challenges her mother about her father. In her anger, Esma tells Sara the truth. She is the unwanted bastard child of the camps. The result of the nightly rapes that her mother suffered while at the camp. Once Esma tells the truth, the dam has been breached and the rest spills forth. How she would beat her belly to try to kill the baby...how she wanted to abandon Sara at the hospital, but her milk came in and to relieve it she nursed Sara and then could not abandon her.<br />
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Ug. To the movie's credit, it does not end predictably with the daughter blowing her brains out. What has happened has happened and life simply goes on. The truth is cathartic in the end for both, and the film ends on the happiest note possible, I suppose. Meaning life goes on. Happiness is perhaps no longer in the cards for the characters, but the weight of the terrible past is lifted slightly.<br />
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I gave the movie 2 stars since it was really painful to watch and Kaja would have berated me if I gave it more stars (he hated the movie). The acting however is good. Watched on Netflix Instant Viewing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-78726573664290046082007-12-07T11:58:00.001-08:002010-01-20T13:42:40.751-08:00Eroica (1958)* * *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiEIQ0o_PRLsMP8oS7O6D1zFLDbT3iYdOcTxqhplOohZP6YjA1BALOjQfI_toT68DSLw0Pg60B0KL039PIpVK_8f6YzFOa-4wJDa0JzkWkRn6cU52BcVDb-LVMg_G5D_vOU1CfhA/s1600-h/Eroica.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiEIQ0o_PRLsMP8oS7O6D1zFLDbT3iYdOcTxqhplOohZP6YjA1BALOjQfI_toT68DSLw0Pg60B0KL039PIpVK_8f6YzFOa-4wJDa0JzkWkRn6cU52BcVDb-LVMg_G5D_vOU1CfhA/s320/Eroica.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5141691087389515442" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007LBLZK?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0007LBLZK">Eroica (link to DVD at Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0007LBLZK" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
The very title of this film, Eroica (English title: Heroism), seems to be a sarcastic play on the meaning of heroism. The protagonists in the two short stories in this film are hardly what one would call heroes. The two stories are set during WWII. The movie was made in 1957, so just after Stalin died but Poland was still in the grips of communist censorship. The director is Andrzej Munk, who is apparently one of the Polish great directors although I don't know his work and he died in 1961. The film was meant to be a trilogy but ended up as a bilogy.<br />
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The first film (Scherzo alla Polacca) tells the story of a self-centered man who gets disenchanted with the idea of being a volunteer soldier in the Warsaw Uprising against the Germans in 1944. He sneaks off during basic training and goes back to his wife -- who it turns out has taken in a Hungarian officer as a lover. Ah so much for the myth of the brave partisan and his steadfast girl waiting for him at home. He is a coward, but perhaps that is sign of his sanity. Unwillingly, he is pressed into being a courier between a Hungarian brigade that wants to sneak weapons to the Polish partisans. Ultimately, the effort is futile. Unfortunately at the very end of the movie, the man makes a sappy turn-around in character and abandons his self-centered ways and goes to help the the uprising. It would have been more in character with the movie if the man remained cynical and flipped his finger at the uprising. I got the feeling that a censor prohibited such a cynical ending.<br />
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The second film (Ostinato Lugubre) tells the story of a group of Polish Officers who <br />
are prisoners of war in a German camp. Most of them have been there about 5 years and they are all now missing a few marbles. The are treated well and eat enough, but the constant confinement, lack of privacy, and resulting "submarine fever" lead to depression and other mental illnesses. One man can no longer deal with the lack of privacy and "escapes" -- into some ductwork above the toilets. The others think he has really escaped and he becomes a symbol of hope and pride for the entire camp. Two men who know of it steal food for him and protect his secret, a secret that must be kept for the sake of the morale of the camp. All the while the escapee is slowly sinking into complete depression and insanity in his little hole. There is something deeply cynical and bitter about this story and I wonder if it was not meant as an allegory for life in communist Poland in the 1950s. This was the Stalinist period and life was very hard. People were not starving, but rather they were in a prison of the mind not unlike that in the POW camp depicted here.<br />
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This movie features prominently in The Red and the White: The Cinema of People’s Poland by Paul Coates, a book on the post-war cinema in Poland.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-26818359643812786672007-12-07T11:57:00.002-08:002021-09-24T15:01:30.736-07:00Ivanovo detstvo (Ivan's Childhood, 1962)* * * *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1_UJfW1hbA3cP51RZsKfVsAZIFk1kwK7cndNubBhlsnlpgnloCDPmAIrUNRtlWx3i5QED83C2GQP7l6v4dZXPUDY7WaL6jHLR_at8A1g8BY_a84XX9cFlZvMM6UWTZY8IJTDrAw/s1600-h/ivanschildhood_1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1_UJfW1hbA3cP51RZsKfVsAZIFk1kwK7cndNubBhlsnlpgnloCDPmAIrUNRtlWx3i5QED83C2GQP7l6v4dZXPUDY7WaL6jHLR_at8A1g8BY_a84XX9cFlZvMM6UWTZY8IJTDrAw/s320/ivanschildhood_1.jpg" border="0" alt="DVD cover for Tarkovsky Ivan's Childhood" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191084585586991634" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000PKG6OO?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000PKG6OO">Ivan's Childhood (link to DVD at Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000PKG6OO" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
In college, I watched Tarkovsky's films Solaris and Stalker, but since then I have avoided his films. I have always felt that I needed a film degree to be properly qualified to watch his films. People write long analyses of the shots, the sense or lack-thereof of time, the shadows, the strange mysticisms, the meaning of snow falling through an open roof, etc, etc. Ivan's Childhood, Tarkovsky's first feature length, is no exception. A simple search on the web will turn up in-depth analyses of the "psycho-pragmatic links between dream and reality" and their representation in Ivan's Childhood. Ok...think I'll watch that another day... So it was probably a good thing that I didn't notice that this was a Tarkovsky film. It was a Russian film on a boy's experience in WWII based on a memoir and it was made in 1962, during a relaxation of artistic censorship that occurred after Stalin's death. For these reasons, I was curious to see it. <br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKlDq8xFwGWiPJDrY9zpqoSjoGA3EGrja7lP1w9VdL-APv_SQ5SeZ6ehzb51uR9Hqi5haj6AvLPpMGAXZhHP1_2iLABxxWboC143b82EFAxNA00jYgV4YdVLUm9boK2ky_wzI8lA/s1600-h/ivanschildhood.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKlDq8xFwGWiPJDrY9zpqoSjoGA3EGrja7lP1w9VdL-APv_SQ5SeZ6ehzb51uR9Hqi5haj6AvLPpMGAXZhHP1_2iLABxxWboC143b82EFAxNA00jYgV4YdVLUm9boK2ky_wzI8lA/s320/ivanschildhood.jpg" border="0" alt="image from Tarkovsky Ivan's Childhood" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191084757385683490" /></a>Young Ivan is a boy of 12. His family has been killed in the war and he working as scout for the army. He slips across the frontlines into German territory and collects information on troop locations. He then slips back across the lines and reports in. The work is extremely dangerous and gruesome. As the film opens Ivan is hiding near the shores of the Dnieper River. It is night and he is waiting for his pick-up which will take him back to the Russian side. But something has delayed him, and he misses the pickup. He finds a log and swims the swirling river in the moonlight. He is picked up by a group of Soviet soldiers who do not know who he is. Ivan insists on seeing the military commander. Ivan is brash and rough and seems a little demented, but utterly fixated on his job. He gets pen and paper and immediately begins writing a report. He is a hardened soldier. But then we watch as he strips to take a bath -- his scrawny chest is bruised and we can see his ribs. He looks like a featherless bird. The image is powerful. He is child who war has been turned into something very wrong.<br />
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In the late 1940s, socialist-realist war propaganda films showed the heroic Red Army soldier defeating the Nazi hordes -- and the glorification of Stalin. These were films like The Oath, The Fall of Berlin, and The Battle of Stalingrad. But then in the late-1950s, after Stalin died and Khrushchev came into power, there was brief period of more artistic freedom known as "the Thaw" 1953-1967. During this period, there were films that "moved away from combat and focused instead on the individual ordeals and suffering of those whose lives are irretrievably crippled by war". Important films from this era include: The Cranes Are Flying (1957), Ballad of a Soldier (1959), Fate of a Man (1959), Father of the Soldier (1964) and Commisar (1968). <br />
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Ivan's Childhood (1962) falls into this period of thawing, and it certainly doesn't paint a pretty picture of war. Nonetheless it is a beautiful and visually striking film. Well worth watching especially given that it is a rare flower that bloomed during a brief thaw in a long artistic winter (couldn't resist making that metaphor...). With Khrushchev's forced resignation in the fall of 1964, spring ended and an early fall arrived. Dissidents were arrested. Things got progressively worse until the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia brought back a deep freeze -- that was to last until the late-1980s and the fall of communism.<br />
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Some links<br />
A book on this interesting period of Russian film:<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Real-Images-Soviet-Cinemas-Russian/dp/186064550X">Soviet Cinema</a><br />
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A review of Russian film post 1920s<br />
<a href="http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue09/features/russia2/">http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue09/features/russia2/</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-74134400357907646932007-11-15T09:36:00.000-08:002010-01-20T13:57:10.737-08:00Berlin Diary (1941)* * * *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq97YGcWJcJGjJZxNfI3Gp8lpMBY-A6TqaSW5IdkHsBe3_zprGk9LDsHnYtCip1Vd1MiPZSjzsuHybmncQXsZZFCTtf9Ckxr7aT6Pieo6JikbdSTtnkScpDJwnXX70eZZlHHDD9Q/s1600-h/berlin_diary.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq97YGcWJcJGjJZxNfI3Gp8lpMBY-A6TqaSW5IdkHsBe3_zprGk9LDsHnYtCip1Vd1MiPZSjzsuHybmncQXsZZFCTtf9Ckxr7aT6Pieo6JikbdSTtnkScpDJwnXX70eZZlHHDD9Q/s320/berlin_diary.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5133134621606869538" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801870569?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0801870569">Berlin Diary (link to book at Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0801870569" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
At 21 in 1925, William Shirer left the States to work as a foreign journalist in India and Europe. 1933 he took off a year to be a beach bum in a little village in Spain with his wife, but the dollar took a hammering, their saving took a beating, and Shirer had to quickly get a job. He worked in Paris for a few months, at a reporting job that bored him to tears, but then in early 1934, he landed a better job in Berlin. Thus it came to be that he spent 7 years in Berlin covering the rise of Hilter and the early years of WWII when Germany was celebrating one incredible victory after another. This 'diary' is not about himself, but his commentary on the events around him and on which he was reporting. As a foreign correspondent of a major U.S. radio company, he reported at the center of the major events happening at the time. Later Shirer would write many books about Nazi Germany, the most famous being The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. But Berlin Diary is before all that, written in the moment and full of the uncertainty and tension that comes with not knowing how things will turn out and not knowing exactly what is happening (each side, Axis and Allies, are putting their spin on their news and official reports).<br />
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This inside-American view of the rise of Hitler and Germany would be fascinating on its own sake. But what was really gripping about this book is that is was published in April 1941 -- at the height of German power. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Holland, Belgium, France have all fallen to Germany. Britain is being bombed and it is not at all clear that she can win against the superior German army and air force. Shirer did not know how it would all turn out when he published this shortly after his return from Berlin in December 1940. It is easy when thinking about WWII to think that 'oh, yeah, Germany took over Austria and then invaded Poland..yada..yada' as if it were obvious this would happen and that Germany would be so successful. But from reading Shirer's journal, you are reminded how incredible and NOT clear these events were. Hitler was playing a game of bluff -- threatening war to get countries to just roll over and play dead. As each piece of territory was taken over, the German war machine gained strength until Hitler no longer had to bluff but could just drop the hammer.<br />
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Reading this diary, I felt like it was all happening right now. Each evening I was eager to read to find out what had happened that day. My husband and step-son were amused when I would shuffle down-hearted into the kitchen; 'What's wrong?' they would ask. 'Poland has been invaded. They are getting slaughtered.' I would reply in all seriousness. The funny thing is that while reading Shirer's book it did feel real -- well, it is real though it happened 75 years ago. By reading his diary, I experienced in a small way the emotions and shock that Shirer felt watching these incredible events unfold.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-34164091116076976412007-10-26T00:15:00.000-07:002010-01-21T12:45:58.504-08:00Planet Earth: Fresh water * * *<img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsa9iInIIwFzmuyJAt186pYAuHeVu7H8GbF2C650jOypVBZQxYkMzujHt0uDbvlECYvN3ldC4jNjPwDgg12PQNlAjkTPPk9y4Jmq1MI55C7e-KynnHrgkHu7vhLuNDv7qnJ5bbFw/s320/planet_earth.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171350118828676194" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012YYZYA?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0012YYZYA">Planet Earth: Fresh Water (link to DVD at Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0012YYZYA" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
Planet Earth is a famous series of 6 DVDs of nature and animal photography that is renown for its remarkable cinematography and rare footage. Episode 3 is called “Fresh water” and it shows footage of a variety of fresh water systems from around the world. I’m not sure this particular unifying theme really works, but whatever.<br />
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We start in at Angel Falls in Venezuela. Then off to Alaska where we watch some underwater footage of grizzly bears foraging on abundant salmon. Zip, off to India to watch superb underwater footage of smooth coated otters hunting fish. They work in packs and share their catch. A 4-meter crocodile comes along and the otters harass it as a pack and chase it away (no joke, it’s cool). Zip, off to the Mara River in east Africa. The wildebeest must cross in one particular place and here the Nile crocodiles wait. These beasts grow up to 5 meters and they show one taking a full grown wildebeest. Zip, off to Malawi Lake in Africa. These lakes are home to a huge diversity of cichlids. They show some night time footage of dolphin fish hunting for cichlids. The best part is the segment on the emergence of the midges. Zip, off to eastern Russian and Lake Baikal, the largest lake in the world. The lake is full of wacky and one-of-a-kind animals, such as the world’s only fresh water seal. But we don’t stay long at Lake Baikal. Zip, we are off to the Amazon River. Here we have a cool clip of fresh water dolphins, bofeo, hunting fish and performing mating ceremonies. Zip, off to Iguezu falls in Brazil and then to the largest wetland in the world. A short clip follows on some of the fish of this region, including piranhas. Short clip of a crocodile taking a pretty bird. Zip off to India and the largest mangrove forest in the world. Here we have some cool footage of crab-eating macaques that swim and forage under water. Zip, of to the Hudson River delta and some footage of huge snow geese flocks.<br />
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Overall, this episode has a few rare clips of rare animals and some cool waterfall shots. The cinematography is ok, but the format of a multi-location theme, in this case ‘fresh water’, leads to disjointed clips and the lack of a unifying story. This one is probably hard for kids to follow; it is very disjointed. You might want to have a globe handy and plan to pause to show where the footage is taken. Or maybe just use it if your kids are doing a report on one of the regions and would like to see some footage of the animals there.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com/2007/10/planet-earth-pole-to-pole.html">Planet Earth: Pole to Pole</a><br />
<a href="http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com/2007/10/planet-earth-mountains.html">Planet Earth: Mountains</a><br />
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Rented from NetflixUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-26273090904080439892007-10-25T23:23:00.000-07:002010-01-21T12:46:24.209-08:00Planet Earth: Mountains * * * *<img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsa9iInIIwFzmuyJAt186pYAuHeVu7H8GbF2C650jOypVBZQxYkMzujHt0uDbvlECYvN3ldC4jNjPwDgg12PQNlAjkTPPk9y4Jmq1MI55C7e-KynnHrgkHu7vhLuNDv7qnJ5bbFw/s320/planet_earth.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171350118828676194" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012YYZYA?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0012YYZYA">Planet Earth: Mountains (link to DVD at Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0012YYZYA" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
Planet Earth is a famous series of 6 DVDs of nature and animal photography that is renown for its remarkable cinematography and rare footage. Episode 2 is called “Mountains” and it shows footage of animals from a variety of mountain ranges around the world.<br />
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We start in Ethiopia where we get see a day in the life of high elevation Ethiopian monkeys. Then off to the Andes where we see some nice night footage of pumas hunting guanacos. This is quite unusual; I’ve never seen this kind of night footage of pumas before. Then we are off to the Canadian Rockies with their striking mountain geology. We see a mama grizzly bear emerge from her den with two cubs. Later we see bears going after moths that hide under the high elevation boulders – a curious foraging behavior. Then in a very abrupt bit of editing, we move to the Alps and their glaciers. Then bam, off to the Karakorum mountains of Pakistan which have the largest glaciers on earth. In this region of earth also lie the largest mountains on earth. We get to see a few Himalayan animals. There is some rare and exciting footage of a snow leopard mother during a chase on the cliffs. We also see Himalayan wolves. Next we are off to the Chinese mountains (not sure which). We get a short clip of pandas which is later followed by cool footage of a mother panda raising her cub. These shots are followed by very short clips of some monkeys and the red panda. We get brief glimpses of some interesting birds and a musk deer with its fangs. We then get a long segment on the migration of Demoiselle cranes over the Himalayas to India. This is quite unusual since it shows how a pair of Golden eagles hunts down a young crane and we see how the birds struggle to cross over Mt. Everest.<br />
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Following the main episode, there is the diary about the photographers. These give you an idea of just how hard some of this footage was to get. The diary on this segment shows the photographer who captured the snow leopard on film. This fellow sat for 7 weeks and saw nothing. Finally they moved to a new location in steeper terrain with terrorists and lots of flying rocks. <br />
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Overall, this episode again has some very rare footage of rare animals. The cinematography is great, but the format of a multi-location theme, in this case ‘mountains’, leads to disjointed clips and the lack of any unifying story. Nonetheless, it is a must see if you like footage of wild animals as some of this is ‘first ever’ footage.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com/2007/10/planet-earth-fresh-water.html">Planet Earth: Fresh Water</a><br />
<a href="http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com/2007/10/planet-earth-mountains.html">Planet Earth: Mountains</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-34331451183646346962007-10-25T22:26:00.000-07:002010-01-21T12:46:45.703-08:00Planet Earth: Pole to Pole * * *<img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsa9iInIIwFzmuyJAt186pYAuHeVu7H8GbF2C650jOypVBZQxYkMzujHt0uDbvlECYvN3ldC4jNjPwDgg12PQNlAjkTPPk9y4Jmq1MI55C7e-KynnHrgkHu7vhLuNDv7qnJ5bbFw/s320/planet_earth.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171350118828676194" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012YYZYA?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0012YYZYA">Planet Earth: Pole to Pole (link to DVD at Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0012YYZYA" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
Planet Earth is a famous series of nature and animal photography that is renown for its remarkable cinematography and rare footage. . DVD #1 is called “Pole to Pole” and does just that – goes north pole to south pole with some great cinematography. To appreciate this movie, you might want to watch the DVD extras so you know how hard and rare some of the footage is – like that of the Amur leopard, birds of paradise and African wild dogs.<br />
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This episode begins in the Antarctic with the, now much photographed, emperor penguin males and then switches somewhat incongruously to the Arctic. Here we see a mother polar bear emerging from a den on a steep slope. The scenes of the little cubs trying to traverse the steep snow is impressive and humorous. Then we move a bit south to the Arctic tundra and see the migration of the immense arctic caribou herds – the herds number 3 million strong. These animals make the longest land migration of any animal, and they are followed by packs of arctic wolves who hunt the newborn calves. Then we travel 500 miles south to the boreal forest that circles the globe and where 30% of the worlds forests are located. Then a little further south to the temperate forests of the Russian Far East where we see footage of the Amur leopard, the most endangered of the big cats. Only 40 of these cats are left. Then a bit further south to Japan, where we watch the cherry trees bloom is fast motion. Spring passes in the north, summer is skipped over, and we jump into fall. We see briefly the huge flocks of Baikal duck as they prepare to migrate south.<br />
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We head then to the equator and see some never before recorded footage of a male bird of paradise displaying for a female. It is very cute. So it is kind of shocking that we next move to South Africa and watch huge great white sharks lunching on seals. Then we head over to the Kalahari desert to watch herds of elephants as they migrate to find water during the dry season. We watch as the first rains comes to the Okavango delta which is formed from rains 1400 km away. This is a regular Noah’s art of animals – birds, ungulates, fish, wild dogs and hyenas. There is some especially unusual photography elephants swimming underwater. <br />
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Then we end back in Antarctica with the emperor penguins. Unfortunately it’s hard not to tune out at this part. After seeing March of the Penguins, I’ve seen enough footage of emperor penguins to last a lifetime.<br />
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Overall, I found episode 1, Pole to Pole, beautiful but not jaw-dropping. It was not like Deep Blue for example. Also the film has no “plot” at all since it is a sequence of cool shots taken from one latitude after another.<br />
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<a href="http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com/2007/10/planet-earth-fresh-water.html">Planet Earth: Fresh Water</a><br />
<a href="http://sunnysidekitchen.blogspot.com/2007/10/planet-earth-mountains.html">Planet Earth: Mountains</a><br />
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Rented from NetflixUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-75842535835070353982007-10-16T10:36:00.000-07:002010-01-20T13:49:08.681-08:00Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006)* * * *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgl22T_2Uc73Sk4prsytpH3nHtqmu6WOCCXSwxYzJTpIRrFHxV6dPbTa-7ubewIEAvqqzSK-CaJ6HP2RMFc9nc8XHsLnzvsLfj54e3y2Nc_a78e0FgSOzU7g0ZDhQCtwW054V4BQ/s1600-h/lives_of_others.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgl22T_2Uc73Sk4prsytpH3nHtqmu6WOCCXSwxYzJTpIRrFHxV6dPbTa-7ubewIEAvqqzSK-CaJ6HP2RMFc9nc8XHsLnzvsLfj54e3y2Nc_a78e0FgSOzU7g0ZDhQCtwW054V4BQ/s320/lives_of_others.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137960876357385714" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000OVLBGC?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000OVLBGC">The Lives of Others (link to DVD on Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000OVLBGC" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
Of all the communist states, East Germany had the most elaborate and insidious secret service. It is said (by wikipedia) that 1 in every 50 East German citizens was collaborating with the Stasi (the East German secret police). It was a world in which people had to be afraid of everyone -- even their friends, family and children. The most innocuous comment or joke could land you in trouble -- not necessarily prison, no in this world the hammer was more subtle. A black mark on your folder affected your ability to work in a non-menial job, to get a decent apartment, to get your children into school. <br />
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In 1985, I was studying in West Berlin and I spent my free weekends in East Berlin. If you were never in the eastern bloc during this period, it is perhaps hard to imagine what it was like. Grey oppression. That was the overwhelming feeling and look of the place. One night, I stayed past the curfew for foreigners and rode the subway through the night and into the next morning. I watched the other riders, who stared fixedly at the floor. They could tell that I was a foreigner. Then around 2am, the subway thinned out and it was just me and one other man. He looked like he was maybe a writer or a university professor. He came over and sat next to me. He clearly wanted to talk but was very nervous. Of all my many trips to East Germany, this was the only time someone had the nerve to say anything to me. He leaned close and asked where I was from. I told him I was an American studying in West Berlin. He asked to look at my passport. I handed it to him and watched as he fingered the stamps showing everywhere I had traveled. I knew he was forbidden to travel and I felt self-conscious. He looked to be in his 50s so he would have been in his early twenties when the Berlin Wall was built. Did he have friends or family from whom he was separated in West Berlin? Probably. He glanced again over his shoulder, leaned forward and whispered in my ear, "Don't believe what they tell you about East Germany. We are not free and this isn't a Socialist utopia." I had no idea what to say to this completely unexpected remark. The moment was like a scene out of some art movie -- the florescent lights of the subway flickering, the sound of the subway rushing through the underground, and a gray-coated German intellectual trying to educate a young naive American student. Thing was that my first visit to East Berlin had banished any question about the eastern bloc being a Socialist utopia from my young, liberal mind. This was a world where posters proclaimed things like “To do everything for the welfare of the people – that is the meaning of Socialism!”, next to these really depressing looking factories and next to shops that held nothing of value. It was a world where I was reminded forcibly of the cliche "A lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth". I waited for him to say more. Was he serious? But just whispering this heresy seemed to have terrified him. He handed back my passport and got off the subway.<br />
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This world of fear is the one in which Lives of Others is set. Lives of Others begins, appropriately, in 1984. The premise is simple: surveillance of possible dissidents or defectors. Our protagonist, Captain Gerd Wiesler, is an expert on surveillance, interrogation, and reading the body language of others. From a series of scenes exemplifying his proficiency in each area, it becomes clear that with a life devoid of vibrancy, Wiesler lives vicariously through his subjects. We meet Wielser in a university classroom. Approached by an old classmate, Lt. Colonel, Wiesler is assigned to monitor the playwright Georg Dreyman. Once again, the next several steps are straight forward. The Stasi execute a sting operation in which Dreyman's apartment is given the complete works: microphones in the light switches and electrical sockets. Setting up a roost in the attic of the apartment complex, Wiesler and his assistant (Udo) monitor the activity below, typing by the light of a solitary, metal lamp. With lighting from the below and to the side, Wieslers face is cast into long shadows of what is, perhaps, obsession. In the interest of not giving too much away (as the plot is rather unremarkable), suffice it to say that as Wiesler roosts in the attic, the drama unfolds below. The differece between love and sex are at the heart of this drama. Dreyman is in love with the actress Christa-Maria, but a high ranking minister, Hempf, lusts after her as well. Using what can only be described as oozing charm and his political position, he forces her to engage in demeaning and compromising positions. Thus, Christa-Maria is suspended between her allegiance to Dreyman and herself and the malignant interests of the minister. All the while, Wiesler sits and listens as tensions come to a head, waffling in his sympathies for one party or the other, like a vapid viewer of some tv soap-opera. His sympathies take him so far as to physically reach out to Christa-Maria. The remainder of the film plays out this initial setup. The big question is, will Wiesler be caught--by his superiors or Dreyman. With love, sex, betrayal, and compassion what more could any lover of psychological spy thrillers want? Certainly, this was one of the most engrossing films that I watched in 2007 and is further validated having won the 2007 Oscar for Best Foreign Film.<br />
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<hr>Written jointly by EEH and Kaja<br />
Rented on Netflix.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-53850074539256568162007-10-16T10:12:00.000-07:002010-01-20T13:59:16.501-08:00Svjedoci (Witnesses, 2004)* * *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgzMmGlEFqvee6c7VoCDDgPTueSxK_owc84M6rtHW6n_3wxaCWgXDOS-JenNSCFJ6Zl_n_9jVKeXYzXptKBu3HWGhnXNdwLhBVL0dek0TSQnhFBafCKO3Tcy-K57dmCIGjRGUFNg/s1600-h/svjedoci.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgzMmGlEFqvee6c7VoCDDgPTueSxK_owc84M6rtHW6n_3wxaCWgXDOS-JenNSCFJ6Zl_n_9jVKeXYzXptKBu3HWGhnXNdwLhBVL0dek0TSQnhFBafCKO3Tcy-K57dmCIGjRGUFNg/s320/svjedoci.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5141320998647553666" /></a>Set in a Croatian village during the Balkans war. Three soldiers come in the dead of night, open the door to a house and mow down a civilian with their machine guns. They retreat to a nearby home with a recent war widow -- her husband is laying in the coffin in the living room. The men are nervous, all conversations are conducted in whispers. The woman hovers like a witch. What is her relationship to the young soldiers? Did she order the killing? Or are have they taken her hostage? Thus begins Svejdoci (Witnesses) a murder mystery set in a small Croatian village during the the Balkan war.<br />
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The mystery is unraveled by retelling the same critical hours from the perspective of different characters at the center of the mystery. Color is slowly added to the picture and we begin to understand each character better. It is an interesting technique. One by one, each character become 3-dimensional and eventually when the last story is told, the pieces of the mystery fall together<br />
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I thought the movie was interesting and I like the unusual cinematography and the greenish light in most of the shots. I was sucked in by the stories and enjoyed trying to solve the mystery. Kaja found the movie a bore. <br />
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Watched via "Instant viewing" on Netflix. <a href="http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Witnesses/70032912?strkid=1811049458_0_0">Svejdoci on Netflix</a>. The nice thing about instant viewing on Netflix is that you can try out movies. So if you are curious you can watch the first 15 minutes of Svejdoci and see if you are like me, and get intrigued, or like Kaja, and get bored.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-62409169345144798812007-10-06T09:45:00.000-07:002010-01-21T12:54:14.019-08:00The Italian (2005)* * *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjqVq4CmEPBEyoxxp0JzlVtoANct4S9pn7rZoY48a3AXSdROWN9PgVcFmHMiIU7BhdshBmzMX79gTegAnizyOhxic4IllEVsgTDEplIGJwZ0pumEzKHs1xdERXD_WnW7wvidLY_Q/s1600-h/the_italian.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjqVq4CmEPBEyoxxp0JzlVtoANct4S9pn7rZoY48a3AXSdROWN9PgVcFmHMiIU7BhdshBmzMX79gTegAnizyOhxic4IllEVsgTDEplIGJwZ0pumEzKHs1xdERXD_WnW7wvidLY_Q/s320/the_italian.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5118268539263443970" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NQRDZG?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000NQRDZG">The Italian (link to DVD at Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000NQRDZG" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
The name notwithstanding, this is a Russian film about the journey of a young boy in an decrepit orphanage to find his birth mother who abandoned him as a baby. That's it. The name of the movie comes from his nickname -- which he gets because he is about to be adopted by a couple from Italy.<br />
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This movie is great if you like rainy depressing movies about cute kids in rags. The movie is deliciously Russian -- nobody can do hopelessness and misery like the Russians. It looks rainy and cold. Grey, grey everywhere. Life is unimaginably hard, and the orphanage is the kind of place that will make any parent cringe. Early on a woman comes to look for the son (another kid, not the protagonist) she abandoned and finding that he has been adopted, she hurls herself under a train. How Russian is that? But this is not a bad movie. The acting is good -- the little kid who is the main character is great, the cinematography is good -- especially if you like blue-lit rainy eastern European rundown village-scapes, and the plot moves well and never drags. I liked the movie and would recommend it if you are in the mood for a Russian version of "My Life As A Dog". The movie is not depressing; this isn't a movie about a kid getting emotionally traumatized, rather it is a movie about a kid overcoming hardship and the bond between a child and their birth parents.<br />
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However I should also say that I watched this with two friends and I was the only one who sat through the whole movie.<br />
Here is an entertaining review: <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/film-reviews/the-italian/2007/04/25/1177459750655.html">Italian review</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-91601825893059079222007-10-06T08:58:00.000-07:002010-01-21T13:02:32.506-08:00Vers le Sud (Heading South, 2005) * * *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixHtWTEzijJPljRt79aNsxMv5rEU5pvXYOHOFxNoSnBbEDSZhWCC7bYov-ub-s2fTthMK-tlTZ8Jx5H0B5uRVqiGvUkZqn6eKmhB_yldRH4mT4NNrjeEbvHeci4EErwX_QYhuCEw/s1600-h/heading_south.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixHtWTEzijJPljRt79aNsxMv5rEU5pvXYOHOFxNoSnBbEDSZhWCC7bYov-ub-s2fTthMK-tlTZ8Jx5H0B5uRVqiGvUkZqn6eKmhB_yldRH4mT4NNrjeEbvHeci4EErwX_QYhuCEw/s320/heading_south.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5118256186937500658" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SAMMJ2?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B002SAMMJ2">Heading South (link to DVD at Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B002SAMMJ2" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
Heading South is a French and Canadian co-production movie about middle age women (1 ex-pat Brit living in Boston, 1 divorced housewife from Atlanta, and 1 Canadian) who go to Haiti to live at a 'resort' at the beach and hook up with young, as in 15 to 19-yr old, young men who work as gigolos. The press for the movie features pictures of the women in bathing suits locked in an embrace with jet-black, nude men. Well, they are not really nude, they have speedos on. Anyhow you get the idea. So this movie would seem to be a lust-fest for middle-age woman to fulfill taboo fantasies involving black men. Ok, just for the record, I want you to know that I had read reviews of this movie and I knew that this is not what the movie is about. Even though I did watch this at a hotel while on a business trip, I want to make clear that I would never watch vacuous lust-films targeted at middle-age women, ever, really. Of course, when I tell you what this movie IS about, you will probably wonder why on earth I would watch it. Well, all I can say is that I didn't think it would be quite as preachy as the reviews implied it would be. But then given the history of Haiti and the role of the U.S. in Haiti's history, I should have known the moment I saw that this movie was a French production. <br />
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So what is this movie really about. It is about how North America -- especially the United States -- degrades and pollutes South America. Usually movies like this focus on the United States government. This movie is more personal. It is about how the people of North America degrade the people of South America. Here they degrade not by intent, but because they think the world revolves around them, because they are blind and uninterested in the poverty around them and because they don't see the people as real but rather convenient caricatures who love to do their bidding. Ug, where have I heard this all before -- oh yeah the 1970s. Yawn.<br />
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The movie is set in the early 1970s during the brutal and corrupt dictatorship of 'Baby Doc' (his father was the previous dictator and was a doctor). Haiti was originally a slave colony of the French. In the late 1790s, Haitian slaves mounted a slave rebellion and in 1804 Haiti declared its independence. Haiti was the first colony in the Americas to declare its independence and the only case of a successful slave rebellion. In 1915, the U.S. invaded Haiti. In 1934, the U.S. left and left the Haitian Army in control. After lots of turmoil, Dr. Duvalier becomes president and later dictator. He is quite ruthless and his paramilitary is infamous. When he dies in 1971, he leaves his son 'Baby Doc' in power.<br />
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This is part of the message of this film: these women who come down to Haiti do not know or care about world outside their hotel grounds, and they see no connection between their personal egoistic attitudes and foreign policies of the north. (I'm not sure I see such a connection either, but clearly the movie makers do). The women care that Haiti is cheap and there are nice young men who will pamper them and have sex with them. The women are sympathetic -- they are not portrayed as monsters or caricatures -- yet if you think about it, they are monstrous. They fall in love with these men and are desperate about the young mens' well-being, but they really don't care about Haiti or about these men as Haitians. "Come away with me. Get away from all this. I can get you a passport," they beg to their lovers. They don't understand why the men have no interest in leaving and becoming their lap dog. Ug.<br />
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So the movie is shrill in its message, but on the positive side, the boys are pretty and scantily clad.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18338372.post-40619803285645980182007-07-18T10:25:00.000-07:002010-01-21T13:09:33.867-08:00Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1998) * * *<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqdIhV5RTZxDYNL_6PHkotI1g6uQcv6xV9_61rp5C6B6a14CAzTCEm9-JC4EV_qF6g_1tTOQaWuHcFo6Rbqk8d5rLoNSX4hF2QdySWSYINpVKDlfrHM5MfD0R5fRabL-NZZeMy_g/s1600-h/Littledieter1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqdIhV5RTZxDYNL_6PHkotI1g6uQcv6xV9_61rp5C6B6a14CAzTCEm9-JC4EV_qF6g_1tTOQaWuHcFo6Rbqk8d5rLoNSX4hF2QdySWSYINpVKDlfrHM5MfD0R5fRabL-NZZeMy_g/s320/Littledieter1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5088592069522548690" border="0" /></a><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000M7FO0M?ie=UTF8&tag=sunnykitch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000M7FO0M">Little Dieter Needs to Fly (link to DVD on Amazon)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=sunnykitch-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000M7FO0M" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
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This is a documentary about Dieter Dengler, who was born in Germany shortly after WWII started who grew up to be a bomber pilot in Vietnam.<span style=""> </span>As a young boy, he watched the Allied airplanes bombing his village and flying in low to the ground to strafe the houses.<span style=""> </span>Watching the planes inspired in him a strong and life-long desire to become a pilot.<span style=""> </span>At 18 he managed to emigrate to the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> and immediately joined the Air Force, where he peeled potatoes for 2 years but never got close to an airplane.<span style=""> </span>He realized that he needed to go to college to become a military pilot, and so he went to <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>, lived on the beach in his VW van with his surf board, went to college, and joined the Navy R.O.T.C.<span style=""> </span>He finally got his wings shortly after the Vietnam war started, and he was sent to war to fly a bomber plane.<span style=""> </span>After a few months, he was shot down over <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nZYFdoPVB5Ptj2O-vCBdivNRjWV8plMDOy173sxjTEIsW-e3__yQ927BuyOA_RSEISAQ_e6V1W39UhoFYvIb9VObdF-SaGgvits2OEiST7ztuF7-MBTnVZJ6wSCOK_sBWgXxTg/s1600-h/Littledieter4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nZYFdoPVB5Ptj2O-vCBdivNRjWV8plMDOy173sxjTEIsW-e3__yQ927BuyOA_RSEISAQ_e6V1W39UhoFYvIb9VObdF-SaGgvits2OEiST7ztuF7-MBTnVZJ6wSCOK_sBWgXxTg/s320/Littledieter4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5088592413119932386" border="0" /></a><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Laos</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<span style=""> </span>He spent 6 harrowing months as a prisoner.<span style=""> </span>First he was marched across <st1:country-region st="on">Laos</st1:country-region> to a prison camp in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region> and was tortured repeatedly.<span style=""> </span>Then in the prison camp, he met 2 other American and 4 Thai pilots.<span style=""> </span>The camp was pure hell and after a few months the men staged a break-out.<span style=""> </span>Of the 7 men that escaped, he was the only one that miraculously was rescued—after many days struggling barefoot through the jungle towards <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Thailand</st1:country-region></st1:place>.<span style=""> </span> <p class="MsoNormal">When the film was made, Dieter Dengler was in his early 60s.<span style=""> He narrates the film and is</span> an engaging and charismatic story-teller of his incredible life. He tells the story of his imprisonment without emotion or self-pity.<span style=""> </span>He recounts how they would torture him with a tone of voice that suggests admiration for the inventiveness of his tormentors.<span style=""> </span>He voice carries no ill-will towards them.<span style=""> </span>Part of the film is reenactment.<span style=""> </span>With a group of young, heavily-armed, Laotians, he reenacts how the drove him through the jungle.<span style=""> </span>He lets himself be hand-cuffed or tied to the ground to show how they restrained him.<span style=""> </span>At the camp, he shows how they would shackle their legs to the ground, and describes the torture.<span style=""> </span>All in the same voice of ‘wow, isn’t this an incredible story’.<span style=""> </span>His descriptions of his mental state after his rescue tell better the true horror of the experience.<span style=""> </span>For many years, he would be unable to sleep and could only sleep in the cockpit of his airplane.<span style=""> </span>When he built his house in <st1:place st="on"><st1:state st="on">California</st1:state></st1:place>, he made a bunker for food and stored 6 months of staples there.<span style=""> </span>I sleep better knowing I will never be hungry again, he said.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmgLvzZwDmwRKccghq0NhOIM7pN8JG_zF5XWObP7F2Oui0HUEbNs0SkCPjkLW8J52B-v8QKX2bZiktREYEeSA8ThE-DOPmyzz_0s9M3vKvg0f-KceVPWetpUku7H26hJpfXIBSxw/s1600-h/Littledieter3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmgLvzZwDmwRKccghq0NhOIM7pN8JG_zF5XWObP7F2Oui0HUEbNs0SkCPjkLW8J52B-v8QKX2bZiktREYEeSA8ThE-DOPmyzz_0s9M3vKvg0f-KceVPWetpUku7H26hJpfXIBSxw/s320/Littledieter3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5088592481839409138" border="0" /></a><br />
My overall impression of the film was that this was an interesting and entertaining documentary of a remarkable but in some ways contradictory life.<span style=""> </span>It was amazing to me that someone could come through this kind of experience mentally unscathed.<span style=""> </span>That is if you don’t count his various obsessions, like open and closing doors multiple times and that he was reminded of the experience every day even 40 years after the experience.<span style=""> </span>It was also strange that he grew up seeing the destruction and horror brought by Allied bombs, and yet he grew up to be a bomber himself.<span style=""> </span>He says early on that when he was bombing, he saw the landscape as a map and did not connect the explosions on the ground to real suffering.<span style=""> </span>The images from the sky he could not quite imagine from the ground.<span style=""> </span>It was only after he was a prisoner and was on the ground that he appreciated the horror that the bombs brought.<span style=""> </span>This seemed an odd thing to say given his childhood.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com