LUMIERE AND THE DARKNESS

Indiana Jones and the Freaks

Flipaisimo — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:34:00 +02:00

Shops, films, magazines… and even a day in the calendar. Nowadays, the “freak” market is serious business. Last Sunday, International Freak Day took place, an incredibly important event for Europe’s weirdest inhabitants. It marked the end of the party for those characters who, with both the release of Indiana Jones and the Eurovision Song Contest (from now on referred to as Eurofreak), had an busy, strange and entertaining week.
On Thursday, the 22nd, the cinemas were flooded with people disguised as Indiana Jones. There were all sorts of people: mediocre freaks, who replaced their dog leads with whips and rescued the eighty-year old flasks that their mothers used to fill with water for school trips, and other more professional ones, who were reciting quotes from the famous archaeologist himself. But in this film blog we’re not going to talk about Indiana Jones in order for Spielberg to get even richer making shit films.

Europe is full of freaks, they’re in fashion and that’s what matters. Nowadays, everyone who is overly passionate about something is admitted into the ever less selective, urban tribe of weirdos. So many members of the public are captured that in Spain a great publication has now been created for those culture-obsessed freaks that listen to music made by broken glass, watch Moldovian films and read books backwards. It’s called FREEK! (a combination of “free”, because it’s free, and “freak”) and I recommend you read it. Perhaps it will help you to discover the stranger and more interesting aspects of your cultural side.

Of course, we also have the football freaks: for example, a couple from Cordoba, Spain, had their wedding photos taken in the stadium of their 3rd division team (I don’t think that anything can get freakier than that…); film freaks, like those who group together dressed as Golum or other movie characters, who can be heard talking when alone in their rooms, to their small plastic dolls.

But the freak of all freaks at the moment is the Internet freak. Perhaps you, yes, you who are reading this report, you may be one of them. Here’s an example that’s been going around Europe.

We are all Freaks!

Don’t laugh: We are all freaks. I too consider myself a freak, and I’m proud of it, although I wouldn’t know which group I’d belong to. I’d do anything for sliced bread sandwiches and pickled mussels, and I won’t travel anywhere without a can of those little creatures bathed in salsa in my backpack. So I could be a mussels freak, for example. To be freaky is good, even healthy. The connection between freaks and spotty, pus-ridden skin is seemingly just another myth; freaks are in enviable health, especially vegetable freaks, also known as “vegetarians”.

Let’s get back to films. In Tod Browning’s legendary film, “Freaks” (1932) you can find the true origin of the word “freak”. Things have changed a lot since then. At that time, weirdos were rejected by society. Nowadays they are a business. Don’t miss this scene; you’re going to love it:

Translation: Sarah Marshall

Pics: Dr Case/flickr

EuroTrash

Flipaisimo — Wed, 21 May 2008 18:35:00 +02:00

Italy’s waste disposal problem has extended further into the north of the country. Since May Day this year there has been one town in particular that stinks of donkey shit: Verona. A group of twenty-something Nazis savagely beat up a 29 year old man with long hair that refused to give them a cigarette. Nicola Tommasoli died after 5 days in a coma in hospital. Nicola Tommasoli is one victim more of Euro trash.

Truthfully, I don’t understand how this could have happened in such a town where the mayor, Flavio Tosi, is a man well known to promote completely opposite values. Take, for example, his actions in 2007, when he looked for some luxury apartments with an air-conditioned rubbish dump for the town’s gypsies, claiming that “they were disturbing the beauty of the historical centre”.

Unfortunately, the film industry is largely to blame for this. Not for the existence of such undesirable politicians, but for the fact that there still remains a large group of young people who haven’t understood the brutality of the Holocaust. Even though films which try to display the most extreme sides of the topic, like “Schindler’s List” (1993) or “The Pianist” (2002), are in abundance, they do it from a too historical perspective and not from a more intimate and personal point of view.

In my opinion, films that can help us to best understand the idiocy of Nazism are films like American History X (1998). In this scene, Edward Norton does it really well, he successfully leaves his own skin behind, and he could only convince complete idiots:

On the 9th of May it was the day of general European masturbation (or Europe Day, as it’s also known). As Europeans we all congratulated ourselves for being so happy and for getting through 50 years without warring. This is really good, but I’m proposing to celebrate Euro Trash Day, the following day, so that after patting ourselves on the back we can start to look for a solution to these problems that, on days like the day when Nicola Tommasoli died, turn our society into a rubbish dump.

Translation: Sarah Marshall

1 May: No working on International Worker’s Day

Flipaisimo — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:01:00 +02:00

Probably the most stupidest celebration that ever existed. I’m referring to International Worker’s Day, which is celebrated on 1 May by not working. I don’t get it, it’s as if we should therefore spend International Day of Sexual Violence assaulting women or driving like maniacs on the International Day Without Cars.

I leave you for a second time with one of my coolest non-work colleagues from cinema: “the Dude”

Translation: Nabeelah Shabbir

Gay people don’t exist

Flipaisimo — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:22:00 +02:00

They’ve had a funny turn over at the European commission. On 24 April, Brussels announced that they’ll be keeping a proposalto protect homosexuals in the face of any discrimination in the EU’s 27 member states firmly in the closet. Looks like it’s only cool to be gay in the movies, because in real life, evidently it’s not, unless you are being discriminated against in the workplace, which is where EU legislation protects the most at the moment.
Their excuse is: ‘why pledge something which at the end of the day wouldn’t be supported by the majority of European governments?’ Come on, as if they would waste their efforts in trying to convince countries like Germany to recognise the rights of this group of people.

The International Lesbian and Gay Association maintain that the German government wouldn’t support this proposal because of the pressures they re under from the business environment. Apparently, if a German company had to recognise gay rights, they would end up landing additional costs. What kind of costs? I mean, in case those gaylords use more toilet paper than normal? Ah, no. It would probably be that they are such asses, that after seeing the news that a man in the US fell pregnant , they would think that their offices would fill to the brim with men infected by this illness, which would end up saturating the demand for maternity leave.

Fake gays

It’s weird because it’s sometimes totally the opposite in cinema, where as we’ve said, there are more homosexuals than in real life. Some of the most memorable stupidities deserve a mention here, like when Batman gazes over Gotham City with Robin. Whoever got the idea for such a dumb thing? Sure, the Batmobile has ‘lost some of it’s oil’ (the literal translation for the saying‘perder aceite’ which means that you are gay in Spain), but no-one ever came up with a better idea than imagining a bat who little kids in disguise liked … does anyone know what the hell Robin is wearing, anyway?

Another memorably mismatched couple emerge at the end of “Casablanca” (1942) in Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains as the charming Captain Renault. Bogart, saddened by the departure of Ingrid Bergman, delivers the most romantic line of the film as he crosses the fog of the airport with Rains: I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Many think that he actually meant to say: As I can’t get into Ingrid’s pants anymore, I’ll have to give it a shot with you.

Anyway, I don’t know what’s the biggest piece of nonsense, this or the fact that in May 2007, the Polish government thought that Tinky Winky from the Teletubbies was a dangerous children’s character teaching little ‘uns to be gay with his swinging handbag and male voice. The only thing they manage to do is to confuse as, and its touched me deeply. Now I am imagining that I am Batman camouflaged in leather, showing off my tight bat-pack, super cool in my Batmobile riding alongside a striding Bogartand winking to him: Hey good-looking, jump in, and I’ll help you get out of that raincoat if you know what I mean. I mean, how confusing.

A huge list of partners which never existed. But maybe there are some who, faced with the discrimination of our governments, will enjoy reclaiming some of the attention that they should be given in the first place.

I leave you to go loopy with what I consider is the craziest gay in the entire history of cinema:

Translattion: Nabeelah Shabbir

Foto: Lesbian and Gay Pride: Philippe Leroyer

The Savages are your family

Flipaisimo — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:15:00 +02:00

Some people are afraid of ageing. But I think that there are loads of good points about getting old. I can’t deny that walking around without a nappy, having my own teeth and my own erections is not a huge advantage of being young, but equally I wouldn’t be disgusted at the thought of taking an early retirement.
Say, at around 35. I think it’s a good age to enjoy retirement. Not for visiting museums or sitting and enjoying the sun on a bench, but for doing many other things.

I enjoyed The Savages (2007) because it’s a humorous take on what to do with our parents as they get older. The story centres on two siblings who are debating whether to look after their father themselves or ‘abandon’ him in a nursing home. Director Tamara Jenkins almost obliges us to take the side of either the pragmatic brother, who thinks it’s best to put his father in an old people’s home, or of his idealist sister, who is drugged up on medicine and doesn’t want to be separated from her father.

Nevertheless, the movie itself somewhat leaves aside the character of the moribund father, who is completely lost and who we meet after he has written on his bathroom wall in his own faeces.

I actually identified with the character of the little father played by Philip Busco in the movie. I imagine that when I’m older I’d love to be in a nursing home where should I not be able to look after myself, a twenty-something, curvaceous nurse would be there to lovingly soap my little balls and behind. My dinner would be propped in front of me everyday, and it would definitely be much tastier than what I could whip up for myself at that age, I wouldn’t need to clean nor make my bed, and I could play cards, playstation or watch football with my friends. We’d swap all kinds of pills, and after eating I would never dare to miss my little cup of sherry, nor a good siesta. We’d be so happy…

We could all be Mr. Savage

Whether we like it or not, we have no choice but to accept our fates and think that growing old without a family could also be pleasant. Current statistics show that in our ageing society we’d turn out to be a bunch of horny oldies itching to have fun.

For the moment it’s true that we turn to our children to look after us. It’s what Tamara Jenkins keeps coming back to in her film. She did well to count on the help of two of the best performances of 2007, with thrice Oscar-nominated actress Laura Linney, and with probably the best actor in the States nowadays, Philip Seymour Hoffman , in probably his best role since “Happiness “ (1998), Todd Solondz’s moving film in which he managed to depict the most pitiful pervert in the history of cinema. Below is a video where the actors describe shooting The Savages.

Talking about oldies – on 5 April Charles Heston, a mediocre actor and worse human being, went to heaven. A Republican and weapon-lover, director Michael Moore already tried to expose his more patriotic gun-wielding Yankee side in the excellent documentary Bowling for Columbine (2002), for those who still haven’t glimpsed Heston’s more ‘human’ side. Probably best I don’t mention him further; I prefer that his name be erased from everyone’s mind. He’s worthy of being remembered for the characters he played than for how he was in real life. Suffer in peace.

Translation: Nabeelah Shabbir

Pic trio: Ottonnassar/flickr

Pic Old man: Susana de la calle/flickr

Rafael Azcona leaves this ‘Belle Epoque’

Flipaisimo — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:24:00 +02:00

The best screenplayer in Spanish cinema of all time decided to go on strike this week in Madrid forever. With 95 screenplays under his belt, he probably died of one last laughing fit, the likes of which many of us have enjoyed thanks to his genius dialogues. After a battle with lung cancer, he leaves us as he was always in the habit of doing, with stealth and grandeur.

The 81-year-old also leaves us with some of the most memorable stories from Spanish and European cinema. It would be boring to list his collaborations with some of the best Spanish directors such as Jose Luis Berlanga or Fernando Trueba, and also with some of the worst, like Carlos Saura and the Catalan Bigas ‘Tits’ Luna. It would also be lame to speak about the movies that he made outside of Spain, especially with Italian director Marco Ferreri, for whom he wrote many great sequences of black humour.

They say that Azcona really represented traditional Spain, his sense of humour being so realist that it became surreal, like this country of madmen. What they don’t say though is that in all that writing about Spain, Spain ended up resembling his scripts.

It’s not funny

But still, it’s no fun to talk about this; it’s not what the former novelist from Logroño in northern Spain would have wanted. He was the one who was always sat at the back of the class so that he wouldn’t catch anyone’s attention. He was the student who would whip out a joke to a select few of the school friends sitting around him, making sure he generally went unnoticed. And sitting at the back in church inspired his catholic-bashing in his screenplays, especially (ironically) during the period that Franco was dictator.

It’s surprising to appreciate how his ecclesiastic critics managed to escape Franco’s censorship. To top it all off he left us with a Sunday of resurrection. What a bastard, sardonic until his last breath. Unsurpassable.

At the end of his career, Azcona achieved a recognition which he never flaunted, instead accepting it without a hoo-hah. He won five Goyas and his story of romantic liasions and various capers in the young Penélope Cruz- starring ”Belle Epoque earned him an Oscar for ‘best foreign film’ in 1993. Without realising it, he excelled in being a screenwriter, which has become so mechanised today in being subject to the demands of the market.

A real comedian leaves us behind. He was the last independent artist who laughed at life until his last day, until the last tears, until the last scene of his film.

Translation: Nabeelah Shabbir

Chaplin and co strike with the rest of Europe

Flipaisimo — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:49:00 +01:00

Relax… (Foto: Rasso)

In the first weeks of March, almost half of Europe exercised their right to strike. Seems terrible; not because people have to strike to fight for their rights, but because I am convinced that being human means that we shouldn’t have to work. The famous saying “El trabajo dignifica al hombre” seems to have expired. Welcome to the era of contemplation, my friends.

Perhaps those people who don’t work are less deserving? If that is so, then man needn’t work ever again. Governments should be capable of organising our lives so that technology could produce and organise them for us, so that we could all have the same access to the basic necessities.

For many years the human species sacrificed their lives in coal mines, cotton fields, laboratories and libraries, and all this should be compensated for today with the simple pleasure of contemplation.

Germany and Spain currently have the highest unemployment rates in Europe (at 8.1% and 8.6% respectively). In the former, the transport system has collapsed. How easy life would be if buses and trams could drive themselves (this is not a utopic notion). In Madrid, cleaning services were halted alongside transport strikes – even the funeral services called it a day! Yet all of these services could be done by machines – from harvesting food to constructing buildings.

Modern times

Cinema provides some clear examples of figures averse to work. With his 1936 masterpiece “Modern Times”, Charlie Chaplin filmed a great argument in favour of the workers during the Great Depression. But in reality, without his even realising it, he was enhancing a notion of leisure in its purest state.

From the film’s opening scene, where the blue-dungareed Charlie is used as a guinea pig to test out a machine designed to feed workers whilst they work, up until the protest scenes, his character is always out of place, disturbed. The character suffers during these moments of the film. On the other hand, he is at his happiest when he is banged up in prison, lying on the ground where he has tripped and fallen or living in a dirty old house full of humidity.

Cinema critics hail this film, where Chaplin’s ‘The Tramp’ character makes his final appearance, one of the best about workers. Of course there is also Sergei M. Eisenstein’s 1924 offering Strike (1924), which I still haven’t seen. But I have to insist that Chaplin, a communist fighting for class equality, was in reality someone who just wanted all the classes to do well.

Chaplin goes life with a smile on his face. He lives happily ever after, bothering no-one, his only perversions being his satisfaction with life and buying flowers for his lover and co-star, Paulette Goddard. His performance is wonderful and his modern face surprises us still, even seventy years on.

He’s the complete opposite to the decadent protagonist of Spanish movie “Los lunes al sol” (‘Mondays in the Sun’, 2002, another great film about unemployment and disillusion set in a shipyard crisis in Galicia). Spanish Oscar-winner Javier Bardem puts in an excellent performance, crawling through his days instead of living out a normal existence.

So, whilst I head off to crap on Sarkozy’s concept of an early-rising hard-working society, I’ll leave you one of the best scenes from Modern Times. Enjoy, you obscene men and women of leisure!

Translation: Nabeelah Shabbir

Pic Modern Times: “Just in case someone…” (flickr)

Thieving sausages in European parliament

Flipaisimo — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:07:00 +01:00

Thieves and Polices (Pic: Dukal)

Brussels are going classic in their fashion collection this spring. Whilst eighties styles are currently screaming out of all high street windows, the European parliament seems to have opted for something a little more out of the middle ages. On 27 February a secret audit was leaked, revealing that MEPs dispense of their salaries rather suspiciously. But no need to spread panic – they themselves decided not to make this public, via a democratic vote. Seems the juror and his court have become the same person – in beautiful ‘vintage’ fashion.
It was a Danish MEP who apparently made this move; being the most modern person in the parliamentary commission, he asked his colleagues to vote in favour of publishing the confidential report. The latter details how some of this money has gone to saving lumber yards or citizen centres for the elderly. How generous our MEPs are, putting themselves out so that our aged don’t feel alone, stressing about our forests and European fauna …

The report also confirms that our representatives are so splendid that at least one gave his or her assistant a special ‘Christmas bonus’ which was nineteen times the official salary allowance (to give you an idea, an assistant can earn up to 17, 000 euros per month). But how strange – the report also details that some of the salaries of said assistants are debited directly from the MEPs own bank accounts.

Not very classy is it…we’re not feeling a general indignation that our politicians are robbing us, I mean, we’re beginning to get used to that. But at least do it with a bit more elegance! I’d ask them to leave all voting and transparency aside and rob us directly, slip off those masks. Or even better, I’d recommend they watch the film below and take notes. I’ll start by offering them just the opening credits, so that they can be taken away by the sound of the deceitful piano.

Cinema has provided us with many resourceful heroes of the crime caper genre. Some of my favourites include the shameless conmen played by Ricardo Darín and Gastón Pauls in Buenos Aires-set 9 Queens (‘Nueve Reinas’, 2000), Alfred Hitchcock’s beautiful but compulsive Marnie (1964) played by Tippi Hedren, or the strategic, swank Ocean’s Eleven (2001) team, with George Clooney at their head, inspired by Frank Sinatra’s original crowd from 1960.

But if I had to choose one iconic thief, it would without a doubt have to be the charismatic coupling of Robert Redford and Paul Newman in The Sting (1973). The suited and booted twosome - Redford with his flowers and Newman with his cigars and sombreros - have much more style than our own euro-diddlers. But the latter are so damned good at their EU-sting that you start to love them for it, like we love our chorizos (in Spain we call thieves ‘chorizos’, after the spicy Spanish pork sausage which sounds like the Spanish gypsy word chorar, meaning ‘to steal’). Of course, in fiction, we shouldn’t forget the undesirables from Brussels.

”I just wanted my souvenir”

Seems like the week has been full of pilfering, some cases funnier than others. Take British mayoral candidate, the shock-headed conservative MP Boris Johnson . On 29 February, he confessed to having nicked a red leather cigar case from Saddam Hussein’s former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, after the latter’s house was bombed in May 2003 in Iraq. ‘To take the cigar case of the deposed number two of a deposed tyrant was hardly the same as swiping a 2, 300BC bronze statue of a squatting Akkadian king,’ Johnson later scribbled in a national newspaper , after British police wrote to him asking him to return the cigar case to its owner, currently in US custody.

Come on Boris. You probably didn’t make away with that statue yourself because it wouldn’t fit in your pocket, clever clogs. Allegedly Johnson had written about his ‘little souvenir’ in The Daily Telegraph back when he committed the crime. Seems he couldn’t make do with a standard postcard from the Iraqi city – you know, the one depicting the misery in the streets, the destroyed houses and the bodies adorning the ground. Mr. Johnson is now piping on about the coincidence of this police enquiry-cum-political conspiracy coming about five years later and three months before he could be elected London’s next mayor. In any case, if you’re passing through the British capital, watch your bags!

Such golden moments pass us by. But too much entertainment on this level can’t be good. I leave you and your good mood with the worst thief in the history of cinema; after all, it’s a wise idea to enjoy fictional characters than follow real-life thieves.

Translation: Nabeelah Shabbir

Razzies 2008: The ‘anti-Oscars’

Flipaisimo — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:20:00 +01:00

Golden Raspberry (Foto:alexajbully)

Whilst the whole world was dazzled by the lights of the 80th Oscar ceremony (http://www.cafebabel.com/en/article.asp?T=T&Id=13952) on 24 February, the awards which really celebrated American cinema had already taken place. The night before the Oscars, the Golden Raspberry (‘Razzies’ to friends) took place, honouring the worst American films of the year. A funny, honest act which merits your attention far more than the wanker fashion parade that takes place on the red carpet in LA’s Kodak Theatre.
28 years ago, a resigned man with a sense of humour, critic and cinema writer John Wilson, had the brilliant idea of awarding the worst actors and actresses, directors, screenplay writers and films of the American cinematographic industry. Obviously, few have popped along to pick up the prizes recognising them for their lack of talent. But the ceremony is always much more amusing than the Oscars themselves. For example, some people with a sense of humour, like Halle Berry, have given us some memorable moments. I am talking about the memorable 2005 Razzies ceremony where she picked up her Razzie for Catwoman with her Oscar in the other hand, that she had won for best actress in ”Monster’s Ball” in 2004.

This year, the nominees were at the same level as the prize itself (the trophy is a gold spray-painted plastic blackberry about the same size as a golfball, which cost about £2.48 (or 3.50 euros). Worst picture award went to Lindsay Lohan vehicle I Know Who Killed Me. I haven’t seen not one of fellow nominees ”Bratz”, “Daddy Day Camp”, “Norbit” and ”I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry” (many of which haven’t even hit Europe yet). But I had a lazy trawl through the internet to pick up the trailer from Eddie Murphy-starring Norbit, so that you get an idea.

Murphy was crowned worst actor of 2007 for this flick. But I have to say I’d have voted for the pathetic Adam Sandler (who was up for ”I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry”).

Linday Lohan had the privilege of being ‘worst actress’ in 2007, and also ran away with the Razzie for ‘worst screen couple’ in a scene where she plays opposite herself in ”I Know Who Killed Me”. Elisha Cuthbert and Diane Keaton were fellow nominees, but they couldn’t compete with Lohan. The pregnant Jessica Alba gets a mention from me for her outstanding non-performance as the invisible woman in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which Cafebabel.com itself crowned worst film of 2007 in this blog.

The new category and most original award was ‘worst excuse for a horror movie’, which went to Lohan’s ”I Know Who Killed Me” me again, although I was gunning for Alien vs. Predator.

But don’t be embarrassed if you liked one of these films. I am proud to say I will be a fan until I die of such flash in the pans such as Con Air (1997) or Little Nicky (2000). We’re all allowed a stupid day. Perhaps that’s one of the things that our ever far-off Yankeeland neighbours need to learn.

Translation: Nabeelah Shabbir

Superheroes or villains?

Flipaisimo — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 21:29:00 +01:00

Every year I wonder the same thing. What was worse? Was it 2007 itself, or the fact that it was a year in which I had the bad luck to come across certain rubbish films? I decide on the latter - these bad films unabashedly formed part of 2007's successes and failures.

Maybe it was that blood-curdling sequence on that rainy Sunday at the cinema, which made us realise that things could be a lot worse. Or perhaps that comedy of misfortunes we saw the day after, which brightened a bad day. Or even that dialogue on the beach at sunset, between the main characters, which yanked us out of our sleepy mode.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was the worst film of 2007. An honest example of this symbiosis I speak of at the beginning. Sorry, but I want them to suffer like I suffered, and here is a short summary (crap music included) of the most disastrous piece of cinema ever done in the year gone by (RIP). Look at it on the bright side; we're not subjecting you to watching the entire thing.

The parallels between the Fantastic Four's superhero protagonists and reality are shudder-inducing. Without a doubt, the patheric 'Human Torch' character played by Chris Evans (who can burst into flame at will), is the spitting image of the best cowboy in the west: George W. Bush, who with his own secret selection of pyromaniac superpowers sets fire to everything he touches. Afghanistan in flames, Iraq in chars. We hope that the American people don't vote for a Republican sequel in the next presidential elections in early 2009, to hit Iran or Syria for example.

The 'Invisible Woman' character played by Jessica Alba most resembles UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon. Both are commendable for their capacity to disappear when they most need to be not seen. Where was the short South Korean during the Bali conference on climate change, between 3 – 14 December 2007? To cite a recent example, nor did he make any much-needed international appearances after the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on 27 December 2007.

Then, there's no denying that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is not the carbon copy of 'The Thing' (gruffly played by Michael Chiklis). Just look at that rock squared head they share. Chavez's socialist dreams rub up against dangerous friendships, be it with a homophobic Iranian or a weird Nicaraguan. And the character played by lead protagonist Ioan Gruffudd , Mr. Fantastic, resembles no more and no less than French president Nicolas Sarkozy himself.

With his elastic superpowers, Supersarko is capable of raising those stretchy arms and saving humanity, freeing political prisoners (be they in Chad or Colombia), at the same time as liberating his country from the remora of its 1968 past, and making love to (http://www.cafebabel.com/en/article.asp?T=T&Id=13433) Italian singer-songwriter Carla Bruni . A real superman, whose personal life (like all the French people's), appears to be directed from up on high by a group of American directors on strike .

Such artists, those politicians! They're born actors, and even without a script have been capable of making a film ten times as devastating as any you'd be able to find on last year's cinema screens. Unfortunately, this is the film of our life at the moment - and we've had to pay a whopper of an entry fee to get in and watch it.

Ironically, the protagonist of my favourite film of the year, Persepolis, is far from being a flesh and blood character. The cartoon heroine is refreshingly black and white and fights for happiness amidst the bombs of the 1979 Iranian revolution, childhood friends, Iranian – French immigration, rejection and the love of her family.

Hopefully 2008 will provide us with more black and white stories, and less wannabe superhero shenanigans.

Translation: Nabeelah Shabbir

Sun gone down on Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival?

Flipaisimo — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:33:00 +01:00

On 17 January 2008, far away in a hidden resort town in the mountains of Utah, the 24th annual edition of the Sundance Film Festival started. For many it's a cinematographic oasis in a creative American desert, a light in the murk of those events in American cinema (i.e. Oscars, Golden Globes and other run-of-the-board ceremonies

For others, the festival isn't what it used to be. Many think that frustrated attempts at independent film will be shown during its ten days, kicking off with selected festival opener In Bruges. It's the first feature film by 2005 Oscar-winner Martin McDonagh, starring Ralph Fiennes and Colin Farrell as two London hitmen sent to the Belgian Flemish city by their boss to 'cool down' after a manic job. Here's a short demonstration of why this festival has lost its edge:

In 2008, more than 3, 600 films competed to be shown in Sundance, adding to the opinion that the festival is missing that essence of independence with which it was born in 1978. Film historian Peter Biskind, author of Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), recently told the press: ''I don't enjoy the festival any more, it's just too big.'

The festival is famed for having discovered talents such as current jury member Quentin Tarantino, who premiered his incredible Reservoir Dogs there in 1992. Here's one of the best scenes from the film – compare it to the previous one we selected for you above:

2007 Sundance winner was Mexican-immigrant saga Padre Nuestro ('Our Father'). Can the level be upped this year?

I want to know more about the festival

www.sundance.org

Translation: Nabeelah Shabbir

Garapos for human rights

Flipaisimo — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:53:00 +01:00

On the eve of the International Day for Human Rights on 10 December, the Castro brothers decided to arrest all those who protested in favour of the freedom of expression on the streets of the Cuban capital. Curious celebration for such an important date, especially when it took place on the same day that Cuba announced the ratification of two pacts to protect those rights.

Seems that the Cubans have original ways to celebrate in general, like Christmas in swimming costumes, or carnivals during the summer. But someone should ask ailing leader Fidel Castro to put a brake in that tropical originality and understand that the right to equality does not mean that everyone has to think the same. Blinded in his praiseworthy task of cutting short with social differences, he ordered the arrests of any protestors as well as kicking out all those Europeans (Spaniards, Swedes and Bosniacs) who took part in the march.

Cuba should follow the lead of their dearest Yankee neighbours. Their president is so consumed by the freedom of expression that he prefers to imprison a photographer and four journalists who worked in Guantanamo too to learn how to express themselves.

To help them exercise their rights, last 17 October a law was passed authorising the use of torture against prisoners, so that they wouldn’t be frightened and be able to speak with total freedom. Mr. Bush’s efforts are so good that he won’t censor internet on his territory but support American companies which aid repressed countries such as Burma or Tunisia to filter their internet.

From time to time, it’s cinema which allows us to see signs of this. An example (it’s old, but things haven’t improved much since then), is the 2005 movie Good Night and Good Luck, written and directed by George Clooney. We see how ‘easy’ it is for main protagonist, broadcast journalist Edward R. Morrow played by David Strathairn, to denounce the witchhunt brought about by senator Joseph McCarthy.

Yes, after fifty years, not much has changed. The US comes in at prestigious number 58 in the Reporters Without Borders 2007 report, the same spot as those great defenders of freedom of expression – Botswana, Togo...

In the Islamic world, freedom of expression is a tricky theme, and that’s why the most the smallest mistake is not permitted. Better not to use the name Mohammed, which European newspapers know all too well. Better not to mention Russia, where 21 journalists have died since 2000 – the year Vladimir Putin came to power, and where investigative journalist Anna Politkóvskaya was murdered on 7 October 2006, cleaned off the map for her protests against the systematic violence against human rights that the Chechens suffered. The internet connection in China is a joke...and the list goes on.

In Europe, although we’re a bit better off in the classification (the first three classifieds are Europeans), we still have many things to improve. In November 2007, in Spain, two journalists were fined 3, 000 euros for their caricatures of Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia having sex. In September 2006 in Germany, French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker was obliged to cancel his opera production of Mozart’s Idomenea amidst criticism about his treatment of Islam. Who can be free of sin, who draws the first stone. During all this, let’s raise a cup of tasty garapo, made in Cuba, for human rights!

Translation: Nabeelah Shabbir

EU Oscars: happy birthday, European cinema!

Flipaisimo — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 08:43:00 +01:00

Romania, Germany, Britain and France go neck-to-neck in the best film award category at the European Film Awards this December

Next Saturday 1 December, the European Film Academy marks its twentieth anniversary in the city of Berlin, muse of Wim Wenders, the German director who is also an academy founder. In this edition of the annual 'European Oscars' (where the films are of a much higher quality than those from America), French cinema dominates nominations. British and German cinema are also well represented. Romania is in the running to take the award for best film whilst Spanish cinema, however, makes a notable absence.
A pre-party aperitive of some of the best film nominations – go and see them!

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days, Cristian Mungiu

(Mungius' 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days; Photo: London Film Festival)

The film narrates the crude story of a young student who forced to have a secret abortion and the terrible price which she and a friend have to pay for it. Directed by Romanian Cristian Mungiu, also nominated as best director and best scriptwriter, the film stands tall with a total of four nominations. It has already sweeped 'Best Film of the Year' in the 2007 Cannes Palme d'Or and the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) prize

The Edge of Heaven', Fatih Akin

(Photo: Kerstin Stelter; corazón international)

The latest film from the 'Head-On' director is perhaps the most European of all the nominations. It's a story of the fragile lives and deaths of six people over six emotional journeys until they reach forgiveness and the reconciliation between Germany and Turkey, the director's homelands

The Last King of Scotland, Kevin MacDonald

The third film nominated for the prize traces the adventure of a young Scot medicine graduate, who goes to Uganda and ends up becoming the personal doctor of the unbalanced and genocide dictator Idi Amin, who terrorised his country for many years. A true journey into the heart of man

La Vie En Rose, Olivier Dahan

The touching story of French singer Edith Piaf, famous for her warbling 'La Vie En Rose', and how she became the voice of France. The film is sensitive and heart-rending, touching the same notes as her voice did.

Persepolis

The second French film in the nominations for this category is miles apart from the first. The much more original 'Persepolis' is one of the favourites to win, telling the story of a young Iranian rebel who listens to Iron Maiden whilst the Islamic regime takes over her country and suppresses her people. Sent to Europe, the young girl discoveres freedom for herself. It could be the first animated film to sweep this prize and it deserves it – don't miss it

The Queen, Stephen Frears

The final nomination is perhaps the best production in terms of team-players. The 'High-Fidelity' director reflects the absurd world of protocol, tradition and the behaviour of the English royal family after Princess Diana was killed in 1997

Translated by: Nabeelah Shabbir