9/23/12
It’s coming up on Sept 27 and here my recommendations. BARBARA is a great opening night film (I wrote about it on this blog a few pages down), the same about the closing night film THIS AIN’T CALIFORNIA (my recent comments are also on this website). Mario Adorf deserves to be honored. Yes. I would have liked to see him again in his break-through performance of THE DEVIL STRIKES AT NIGHT / Nachts wenn der Teufel kam (the PFA used to own a copy), and in ROSSINI (Bernd Eichinger wooing Patrick Süskind for the rights of DAS PARFÜM), however DAS TOTENSCHIFF and LOLA (shown recently at B&B) are powerful examples of Mario Adorf’s long and prolific career. – A few more recommendations: BATTLE OF THE QUEENS/Kampf der Königinnen, — I love cows and recently went to Switzerland where I ran into some of those queens; COMBAT GIRLS/Kriegerin, an impressive first feature about Neo-Nazis; and WESTWIND, in case you missed it at last January’s GERMAN GEMS. I’m curious to see THE WALL based on one of my favorite novels by Marlen Haushofer (Die Wand). A woman’s story taking place in the Austrian mountains and of course, with cows, playing an important role. And then there is Sokurov’s FAUST, partly filmed in Iceland, a dark jewel that I only recently discovered. Check it out.