Day 4 - I've got a bag

 

So much shinier than normal bags.

Three years of Berlinale, and I finally worked out where you get the bags from. It is pictured above. It's the one on the right. It's got that rich, lovely new plastic smell of new plastic stuff from school, and has a range of useful inside pockets. 

Good thing: it lists every one of the 15,000 or so films ever shown at the Berlinale on it. Well, quite a lot of them.

One drawback: since the plastic is rather stiff, if you have the strap too short, it's hard not to slap yourself in the face when you open it.

Another drawback: when you walk around the city, everyone who sees you thinks: "You're a twat." It might as well just have "I'm a twat" written on it in big purple letters.

Day 3 - Gollum and I

Keep still Master Frodo, I think there's a Nazgul behind us.

Other kids had other unhealthy desperations, but I loved Middle Earth. Not only did I work my way through the Silmarillion, I read the Unfinished Tales, the Lost Tales, the Lays of Beleriand (no, don't ask) including all of Christopher I-love-my-dad-a-little-bit-too-much Tolkien's footnotes. Masturbation, an Atari ST, Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - I was a simple boy with simple pleasures.

The Lord of the Rings movies came several years too late for me, as did Jurassic Park, the Arctic Monkeys and blowjobs, and when they did, the movies did not measure up to my childhood visions, faithful though they were. But Gollum was brilliant - a conflicted character of Shakespearean power, riven with shame, addiction and guilt. Far more interesting than Frodo, portrayed by Peter Jackson merely as a repressed homosexual (I couldn't remember this from the books.) The scenes in which treacherous Gollum bullies loyal Gollum were easily the most instantly dramatic, darkly powerful and psychologically persuasive. Except maybe for the bit with the battle elephants. But then I'm a sucker for an armoured pachyderm.

And here he is! Andy Serkis himself, promoting another astounding performance as British punk/reggae legend Ian Dury, in the great movie Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. Serkis does it astutely, balancing the theatrical and the vulnerable. The original Blockheads also play all the backing music. If only someone outside the UK had heard of Ian Dury (who coined the titular phrase), we'd be onto a winner.

Day 3 - If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle

 

 We'll need to call the glazer again.

Things starting to pick up on the competition front. Just saw a Romanian film. Romanian films have started to attract more attention in the last few years, ever since that abortion drama that everyone says is amazing which I am too scared to see - the word "harrowing" frequently appears in connection with it. One of those words that have been invented by and for film critics, but how come the verb is never used? "This is going to harrow me." Or, "I felt very harrowed.")

But those Romanians, they are very good at harrowing people. This one, entitled If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle, was also very harrowing. It harrowed the willies out of me. It was a bit like one of my favourite movies, Cool Hand Luke, but set in an unbelievably dilapidated youth detention centre - with some very brittle windows - and with fewer funny bits. A young man is about to be released, but his mum wants to leave the country and take his little brother with him. He hates his mum, because he thinks she abandoned him. He allows himself to be bullied, fearing that his release will be deferred, but various provocations ensue, and a horrible sequence of unplanned and harrowing events unfold, fuelled by all of life's frustrations. It's really harrowing. And a heavy pressure of violence hangs over everything, but is rarely released, which only increases the overall harrowment factor.

Now for the new Scorcese, Shutter Island. Looks like I'm in for another right old harrowing.

Day 2 - Khan

 

Whatever you do, don't look!

Just saw another competition stinker - that's two onions from two. Although this one was one of those "out of competition" competition films, which I think means that they have a famous person in them, but are rubbish.

It was called My Name Is Khan, featuring Indian superstar Shahrukh Khan, whose star power was enough to bring squealing crowds as far as the Berlinale two years ago. In fact, in 2008, Newsweek magazine named Khan the 41st most powerful person in the world.

But this movie, sadly, is not an autobiography, which would, I suppose, have been interesting. It is a soft-centred 9/11 melodrama set in San Francisco. It turns out that Khan is also the 1st most unconvincing portrayer of mental illness in the world. His character has Asperger's Syndrome, the main symptoms of which are apparently a concentrated pout, looking in the opposite direction when anyone talks to you, and stumbling instead of walking. For the first hour I thought he was pretending to be blind.

A steady stream of people left the press screening, from around the 4th minute. My moment came when the movie decided to bring African American culture into its sentimental mix, leapt back 150 years, to around the era of Gone With The Wind. It was all barefooted children running around and hearty, big-busted women eating chicken and going to gospel churches. I suppose this is the Indian film industry getting its own back for Slumdog Millionaire.

Day 2 - Howl

 

What a howler!

The first competition movie, always disadvantaged like the first entrant in a talent show, also went and started at the impossible hour of 8:30. On top of that it was in that most difficult of genres, the Poetry Film. In this semi-biopic of Allen Ginsberg, culminating in one of those quaint 'obscenity trials' they used to have in the olden days, they solve the poetry on screen problem by the old trick of animation. Ginsberg's epic, and epically dated, poem 'Howl' becomes a stream-of-consciousness cartoons that look a bit like a mobile phone advert.

Charming though the Ben-Whishaw-type main actor is, (he's called James Franco), this movie was not crying out to be made. The struggles of the 'beat' people, now seem so irrelevant to us, and with Ginsberg it seems as if it was fairly irrelevant then too - the obscenity charge against Howl was thrown out! So much for the big us vs. them moment. People knew what a poem was in the sixties too, even if they didn't like them.

But what the film does show really well, and what is kind of an insight, is what a hit 'Howl' was - the kids loved it as much as they did the Stones. And the scenes depicting Ginsberg's early readings in San Francisco are exactly like a successful poetry slam in Berlin in 2010. People all wrapped up in it, or cheering and laughing. But a period piece is still a period piece.

DAY 1 - Snow causes chaos in the north

 

The Opening of the 60th Berlin film festival, 2010

It's the snowiest Berlinale in living memory. At least in my living memory, which lasts about six months, then it lies down weeping in the cold. Jesus, it's snowy. I stumbled around, blinded alternately by big white lights and snow, was molested by a Filipino doorman in the Hyatt, scrambled past some photographers on the red carpet - briefly coming within clutching distance of Joschka Fischer, of all people (he was with a fit bird) and saw one of the SS officers from Inglourious Basterds (the one who notices the wrong three fingers) - tried to work out which of the other Germans milling around might be famous (it's so hard isn't it? They all look equally beautiful/neurotic) - and singularly failed to blag my way into the opening film, which was the Chinese movie TUAN YUAN - "Apart Together." (Isn't it poetic that the words for 'Apart' and 'Together' apparently rhyme in Mandarin? Or maybe that's one of those false film titles like they do in Germany, when they think translating the actual film title would be too dificult, as in The Holy Grail being Ritter des Kokusnuss or Airplane! being Die Unglaubliche Reise in einem verrückten Flugzeug, which really is explaining too much or like Avatar, which in German is Avatar - Aufbruch nach Pandora, as in Avatar - Going To Pandora. Imagine if that were the English title. Hello, I'm an Avatar, and fuck me it looks like I'm going to Pandora. I don't think it would've broken any all-time records then. That would've wiped that smug look off James Cameron's shiny face. So maybe TUAN YUAN just means 'Spaghetti Lego' or something.) But I did see the trailer for Tuan Yuan, because I was near the big screen outside. It had a car in it. And some people laughing. Looks brilliant.

Berlinale Hits 60

Ahoy there, you people, and welcome to the EXBERLINER's annual Berlinale blog!

Yes, sail with me, your own EXB correspondent, in the fluctuating, desperate, crazy world of the 60th film festival. Take temporary leave from your job, tell your family you will be home by Christmas, and dip into the silver magic forest full of colourful bears.

So the festival is turning 60 this month. But 60 is no age. Just ask my mum.

So what's good this year? Well, if you need recommendations, this is a good place to start. The EXB's very own interviews with its favourite film-makers at this year's festival.

In the competition, I'm looking forward to Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer, mainly because my mate Stuart is in it. You can see him in the trailer and everything (left of Pierce Brosnan's head at the airport.)

Then there's Howl, all about Allen Ginsberg, not be confused with Greenberg, by the indie director Noah Baumbach, the man who made The Squid and the Whale, which everyone says is really good.

Obviously, I haven't seen any of these films yet. But that's the whole point, right?

By the way, if you're interested in the history of the festival, why not read this very informative and entertainingly written whistle-stop tour. It covers all the major scandals and features a picture of a woman smoking and balancing on a load of men.