Good Bye Lenin! / Гудбай Ленин

Good Bye, Lenin!is a 2003 German tragicomedy film, released internationally in 2003. Directed by Wolfgang Becker, the cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Sass, Chulpan Khamatova, and Maria Simon. Most of the scenes were shot at the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around Plattenbauten near Alexanderplatz.

Directed by Wolfgang Becker
Produced by Stefan Arndt
Written by Wolfgang Becker
Bernd Lichtenberg
Starring Daniel Brühl
Katrin Sass
Chulpan Khamatova
Maria Simon
Alexander Beyer
Music by Yann Tiersen
Claire Pichet
Cinematography Martin Kukula
Editing by Peter R. Adam
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics
Release date(s) February 27, 2004
Running time 121 min
Country Germany

In a prologue, Alex Kerner (Daniel Brühl) recalls as a child (in 1978) how proud he was along with his countrymen when the first German to enter space, Sigmund Jähn, came from the East.

The rest of the film is set in East Berlin, spanning from October 1989 to just after German unification a year later. Alex lives with his sister, Ariane (Maria Simon), his mother, Christiane (Katrin Sass), and Ariane's infant daughter, Paula. His father fled to the West in 1978, apparently abandoning the family. In his absence, Christiane has become an ardent idealist and supporter of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (the Party). When she sees Alex being arrested in an anti-government demonstration, she suffers a near-fatal heart attack and falls into a coma. The police ignore Alexander's plea to assist his mother, rather releasing him later that evening to go and see her.

Shortly afterward, the Berlin Wall falls. In that time, capitalism comes to East Berlin, and Alex loses his job before "winning" a new position in a ballot to install satellite dishes with West Berlin resident Dennis (an aspiring filmmaker) while Ariane leaves university to work at a Burger King drive-thru. After eight months, Christiane awakes, but is severely weakened both physically and mentally. Her doctor asserts that any shock might cause another, possibly fatal, heart attack. Alex realizes that the discovery of recent events would be too much for her to bear, and so sets out to maintain the illusion that things are as before in the German Democratic Republic. To this end, he and Ariane revert from the gaudy decor of the west to the previous decor to their bed-ridden mother's bedroom in the family apartment, dress in their old clothes, and feed Christiane new Western produce from old-labeled jars. Their deception is successful, albeit increasingly complicated and elaborate. Christiane occasionally witnesses strange occurrences, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola advertisement banner unfurling on a building outside the apartment. With Dennis, Alex edits old tapes of East German news broadcasts and creates fake reports on TV (played from a video machine hidden in an adjacent room) to explain these odd events. Since the old news shows were fairly predictable, and Christiane's memory is vague, she is initially fooled.>>>

BAFTA Awards

* Best Film not in the English Language (nominated – lost to In This World)

European Film Awards

* Best Actor (Brühl, won)
* Best Actress (Sass, nominated – lost to Charlotte Rampling, Swimming Pool)
* Best Director (Becker, nominated – lost to Lars von Trier, Dogville)
* Best Film (won)
* Best Screenwriter (Lichtenberg, won)

German Film Awards

* Outstanding Actor (Brühl, won)
* Outstanding Actress (Sass, nominated – lost to Hannelore Elsner, Mein letzter Film)
* Outstanding Direction (Becker, won)
* Outstanding Editing (Adam, won)
* Outstanding Film (won)
* Outstanding Music (Tiersen, won)
* Outstanding Production Design (Holler, won)
* Outstanding Supporting Actor (Lukas, won)
* Outstanding Supporting Actress (Simon, nominated – lost to Corinna Harfouch, Bibi Blocksberg)

Golden Globe Awards

* Best Foreign Language Film (nominated – lost to Osama)

Goya Awards

* Best European Film (Becker, won)

London Film Critics Circle

* Best Foreign Language Film (won)

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HOME PAGE (ENGLAND)

Wings of Desire/ Der Himmel über Berlin / Небо Над Берлином

Wings of Desire is a 1987 film by the German director Wim Wenders. Its original German title is Der Himmel über Berlin, which can be translated as The Sky (or Heaven) over Berlin. Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry partially inspired the movie; Wenders claimed angels seemed to dwell in Rilke's poetry. The director also employed Peter Handke, who wrote much of the dialogue, the poetic narrations, and the film's recurring poem "Song of Childhood." The film was followed by a sequel, Faraway, So Close!

Directed by Wim Wenders
Produced by Wim Wenders
Anatole Dauman
Written by Wim Wenders
Peter Handke
Starring Bruno Ganz
Solveig Dommartin
Otto Sander
Curt Bois
Peter Falk
Music by Jürgen Knieper
Cinematography Henri Alekan
Distributed by Orion Classics (U.S. only)
Release date(s) 23 September 1987
Running time 127 minutes
Country Germany
France
Language German, English, French and Italian


Set in West Berlin in the late 1980s, toward the end of the Cold War, it follows two angels, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander), as they roam the city, unseen and unheard by the people, observing and listening to the diverse thoughts of Berliners: a pregnant woman, a painter, a broken man who thinks his girlfriend no longer loves him. Their raison d'être is not that of the stereotypical angel, but as Cassiel says, to "assemble, testify, preserve" reality. In addition to the story of two angels, the film also is a meditation on Berlin's past, present, and future. Damiel and Cassiel have always existed as angels; they existed in Berlin before it was a city, and in fact before there were even any humans.

Among the Berliners they encounter in their meanderings is an old man named Homer (Curt Bois), who, unlike the Greek poet of war Homer, dreams of an "epic of peace." The angel Cassiel follows the old man as he looks for the then-demolished Potsdamer Platz in an open field, where all he finds is the graffiti-covered Berlin Wall.

Although Damiel and Cassiel are pure observers, invisible to all but children, and incapable of any physical interaction with our world, Damiel begins to fall in love with a circus trapeze artist named Marion (Solveig Dommartin), who is talented, lovely, but profoundly lonely. Marion lives alone in a trailer, dances alone to the music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and drifts through the city.

A subpart of the film follows Peter Falk, cast as himself, who has arrived in Berlin to make a film about Berlin's Nazi past. As the movie progresses, it turns out that Peter Falk was also once an angel, who renounced his immortality to become a mortal participant in the world after he grew tired of always observing and never experiencing.

Eventually, Damiel too longs for physicality, and to become human. When he sheds his immortal existence, he experiences life for the first time: he bleeds, sees colors for the first time (the movie up until now is filmed in a sepia toned monochrome, except for brief moments when the angels are not present or looking), tastes food and drinks coffee. Meanwhile, Cassiel inadvertently taps into the mind of a young man just before he commits suicide by jumping off a building; Cassiel tries to save the young man but is unable to do so, and he is left haunted and tormented by the experience. Eventually, Damiel meets the trapeze artist Marion at a bar, and they greet each other with familiarity as if they had long known each other. In the end, Damiel is united with the woman he had desired for so long. The film ends with the message: "To be continued."

The story is concluded in Wenders' 1993 sequel, In weiter Ferne, so nah! (Faraway, So Close!).(WIKI)


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Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

"Where the Wild Things Are is a 2009 American fantasy drama film directed by Spike Jonze and adapted from Maurice Sendak's 1963 children's book Where the Wild Things Are. It combines live action, performers in costumes, animatronics, and computer-generated imagery (CGI). The film stars Max Records, Catherine Keener, and Mark Ruffalo, and features the voices of James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Lauren Ambrose, and Forest Whitaker. The film centers around a lonely 9-year-old boy named Max who sails away to an island inhabited by creatures known as the "wild things", who declare Max their king.

In the early 1980s Disney considered adapting the film as a blend of traditionally animated characters and computer-generated settings, but development did not go past a test film to see how the animation hybridizing would work out"

"The film begins with Max (Max Records), who is a lonely eight-year-old boy[4] with an active imagination, wearing a wolf costume and chasing his dog. His older sister, Claire (Pepita Emmerichs) does nothing when her friends crush Max's snow fort (with him inside) during a snowball fight. Out of frustration, Max messes up her bedroom, specifically destroying a special frame that he had made for her. As he lies in bed, he stares at a globe he was given by his father (who is gone because of a divorce). Max's teacher Mr. Elliot (Steve Mouzakis) teaches him and his classmates about the eventual death of the sun in school. His mother, Connie (Catherine Keener), invites her boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) to dinner. Max gets upset with his mom for not coming to the fort he made in his room. He wears his wolf costume, acts like an animal, and demands to be fed. When his mother gets upset, he throws a tantrum and bites her on the shoulder. She yells at him and he runs away, scared by what just transpired. Max finds a small boat in a pond, which he gets into and departs.

Sailing across the ocean, Max eventually reaches an island. Still in his wolf costume, he explores the island and stumbles upon a group of six large creatures. One of them, Carol, is in the middle of a destructive tantrum while the others attempt to stop him. As Carol wreaks havoc Max tries to join in on the mayhem but soon finds himself facing the suspicious anger of the wild things. When they contemplate eating him, Max convinces them with a lie that he is a "great king with magical powers" capable of bringing harmony to the distraught group. They promptly crown him as their new king and introduce themselves:

* Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), the most impulsive of the Wild Things.
* Ira and Judith (voiced by Forest Whitaker and Catherine O'Hara), a gentle-speaking pushover and his aggressive "downer" girlfriend.
* Alexander (voiced by Paul Dano), a goat-like wild thing who is constantly ignored, belittled, and mistreated.
* Douglas (voiced by Chris Cooper), a bird-like peace-keeper who is Carol's best friend.
* Bernard the Bull (voiced by Michael Berry Jr.), a quiet and intimidating beast who mostly keeps to himself and doesn't speak until the end of the movie.
* K.W. (voiced by Lauren Ambrose), the loner of the group whose constant departures irritate Carol greatly as he wants all of the Wild Things to stay together. (MORE ON WIKI>>>>>>)

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Jim Jarmusch. Mystery Train (1989)

Mystery Train is a 1989 independent anthology film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch and set in Memphis, Tennessee. The film comprises a triptych of stories involving foreign protagonists unfolding over the course of the same night. "Far From Yokohama" features a Japanese couple (played by Youki Kudoh and Masatoshi Nagase) on a blues pilgrimage, "A Ghost" focuses on an Italian widow (Nicoletta Braschi) stranded in the city overnight, and "Lost In Space" follows the misadventure of a newly single and unemployed Englishman (Joe Strummer) and his companions (Rick Aviles and Steve Buscemi). They are linked by a run-down flophouse overseen by a night clerk (played by Screamin' Jay Hawkins) and his dishevelled bellboy (Cinqué Lee), a scene featuring Elvis Presley's "Blue Moon",[3] and a gunshot.

The starting point for the script was the ensemble cast of friends and previous collaborators Jarmusch had conceived characters for, while the tripartite formal structure of the film was inspired by his study of literary forms. Cinematographer Robby Müller and musician John Lurie were among the many contributors who had been involved in earlier Jarmusch projects and returned to work on the film. Mystery Train's US$2.8 million budget (financed by Japanese conglomerate JVC) was considerable compared to what the director had enjoyed before, and allowed him the freedom to rehearse many unscripted background scenes. It was the first of Jarmusch's feature films to depart from his trademark black-and-white photography, though the use of color was tightly controlled to conform with the director's intuitive sense of the film's aesthetic.

Mystery Train was released theatrically by Orion Classics under a restricted rating in the United States, where it grossed over $1.5 million. It enjoyed critical acclaim on the film festival circuit, and like the director's earlier films premiered at the New York Film Festival and was shown in competition at Cannes, where Jarmusch was awarded the Best Artistic Achievement Award. The film was also shown in the Edinburgh, London, Midnight Sun, Telluride, and Toronto film festivals, and was nominated in six categories at the Independent Spirit Awards. Critical reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising the structure, humor, and characters of the film, though there were discontented rumblings that the director had not been sufficiently adventurous.

The film consists of three stories that take place on the same night in downtown Memphis. The three stories are linked together by the Arcade Hotel, a run-down flophouse presided over by the night clerk (Screamin' Jay Hawkins) and bellboy (Cinqué Lee), where the principal characters in each story spend a part of the night. Every room in the hotel is adorned with a portrait of Elvis.

The first story, "Far From Yokohama", features Mitsuko (Youki Kudoh) and Jun (Masatoshi Nagase), a teenage couple from Yokohama making a pilgrimage to Memphis during a trip across America. Mitsuko is obsessed with Elvis to the point where she believes that there is a mystical connection between Elvis, Madonna and the Statue of Liberty. The film follows the couple as they travel from the train station, through downtown Memphis and an exhausting tour of Sun Records, to the Arcade hotel.

The second story, "A Ghost", is about an Italian widow, Luisa (Nicoletta Braschi), who is stranded in Memphis while escorting her husband's coffin back to Italy. Luisa, who has been conned twice and stuck with armfuls of magazines, is forced to share a room at the hotel with Dee Dee (Elizabeth Bracco), a young woman who has just left her husband and who plans to leave the city in the morning. Luisa is kept awake by Dee Dee's constant talking, and when the young woman finally does go to sleep, visited by an apparition of Memphis' most famous icon – Elvis Presley.

In the final story, "Lost In Space", Dee Dee's husband Johnny (Joe Strummer) is introduced. Having gotten drunk after losing his job, Johnny – known, much to his chagrin, as Elvis – drives around the city along with his friend Will Robinson (Rick Aviles) and brother-in-law Charlie (Steve Buscemi). They stop at a liquor store, which Johnny attempts to rob using the gun and severely wounds the owner in the process. Fearing the consequences of the incident, Johnny, Will and Charlie retire to the hotel to hide out for the night; there, Johnny gets further drunk. Charlie realizes that Will shares the same name as the character Will Robinson from the television show Lost in Space, which Johnny has never heard of. Charlie and Will proceed to tell him about the show, and Will comments that that is how he feels then with Charlie and Johnny; lost in space. The next morning Charlie discovers that Johnny isn't really his brother-in-law, which angers him because of what they've been through. Johnny attempts to shoot himself, and while struggling to prevent him, Charlie is shot in the leg. Leaving the hotel, the three escape a police car that isn't even looking for them. The closing credits show the train, the airport and the final views of the characters from the first two stories.(WIKI)

Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Produced by Rudd Simmons
Jim Stark
Written by Jim Jarmusch
Starring Youki Kudoh
Masatoshi Nagase
Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Cinqué Lee
Nicoletta Braschi
Elizabeth Bracco
Rick Aviles
Joe Strummer
Steve Buscemi
Music by John Lurie
Cinematography Robby Müller
Editing by Melody London

Book/Film: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

This article is about the 1997 book. For the 2007 film, see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (film).
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Jean-Dominique Bauby.jpg
Author Jean-Dominique Bauby
Country France
Language French
Genre(s) Autobiography, Memoir
Publication date March 6, 1997


The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a translation of the French memoir Le scaphandre et le papillon by journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby. It describes what his life is like after suffering a massive stroke that left him with a condition called locked-in syndrome. It also details what his life was like before the stroke.

On December 8, 1995, Bauby, the editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. He awoke 20 days later, mentally aware of his surroundings but physically paralyzed with the exception of some movement in his head and eyes (one of which had to be sewn up due to an irrigation problem). The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid, which took ten months (four hours a day). A transcriber repeatedly recited a French language frequency-ordered alphabet (E, S, A, R, I, N, T, U, L, etc.), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and an average word took approximately two minutes. The book also chronicles everyday events for a person with locked-in syndrome. These events include playing at the beach with his family, getting a bath, and meeting visitors.

In 2007 the book was adapted into a feature film of the same name, directed by Julian Schnabel, written by Ronald Harwood and starring Mathieu Amalric as Bauby. Julian Schnabel won best director that year at the Cannes Film Festival.[3] The film was nominated for four Academy Awards in 2008 for directing, cinematography, editing and writing.[4] It would go on to win numerous international awards, including a BAFTA for adapted screenplay, and Golden Globes for best foreign language film and best director.[5][6]

Since the film's release, a number of Bauby's friends have gone on record saying that several aspects of Bauby's personal life were fictionalized in Schnabel's film, most notably his relationships with the mother of his children and his girlfriend.[7]

While Bauby was still alive, French director Jean-Jacques Beineix made a 25-minute film, "Assigné à résidence" (or "House Arrest"), that captured Bauby in his paralysed state, and the process of the book's composition (WIKI)

Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny, Patrick Chesnais

Director(s)
Julian Schnabel

Distributor(s)
Miramax

Still Life/Sānxiá hǎorén/Натюрморт

Still Life (Chinese: 三峡好人; pinyin: Sānxiá hǎorén; literally "Good people of the Three Gorges") is a 2006 Chinese film directed by Jia Zhangke. Shot in the old village of Fengjie, a small town on the Yangtze River which is slowly being destroyed by the building of the Three Gorges Dam, Still Life tells the story of two people in search of their spouses. Still Life is a co-production between the Shanghai Film Studio and Hong Kong-based Xstream Pictures
The film premiered at the 2006 Venice Film Festival and was a surprise winner of the Golden Lion Award for Best Film.[2] The film premiered at a handful of other film festivals, and received a limited commercial release in the United States on January 18, 2008 in New York City.

Like The World, Jia Zhangke's previous film, Still Life was accepted by Chinese authorities and was shown uncensored in both mainland China and abroad.
Still Life takes place in the city of Fengjie, a city upstream of the massive Three Gorges Dam. Now marked for flooding, the city undergoes a process of self-deconstruction. Into this dying town comes Han Sanming, a coal-miner from the province of Shanxi who has returned in search of a wife that ran away sixteen years ago. Upon arriving, he asks a local motorcyclist to drive him to his former address on "Granite Street." The driver takes him to the river bank, revealing that his entire neighborhood has been flooded since the building of the dam. After a failed attempt to obtain his wife's information from the local municipal office, Han Sanming settles into a local hotel. Sanming's next stop is a rickety boat owned by his wife's elder brother. The brother informs Sanming that his wife and daughter (the real reason for his return) work downriver in Yichang but that if he remains in the city, they will eventually return.

Sanming then befriends a local teen (and a fan of the actor Chow Yun-Fat), Brother Mark who helps him with a job with his demolition crew. Together the two spend their days tearing down buildings.

The film then cuts to a second story with the arrival of Shen Hong, a nurse. Shen Hong's husband, Guo Bing had left their home in Shanxi two years earlier and had made only superficial attempts to keep in contact. She eventually enlists the help of one of her husband's friends, Wang Dongming, who allows her to stay at his home as the two seek Guo Bin. The two discover that Guo Bin had become a fairly successful businessman in Fengjie though Dongming refuses to answer whether he has found a girl on the side. Shen Hong later found out her husband is indeed having an affair with his wealthy investor. When Guo Bin and Shen Hong at last meet, she simply walks away. As her husband pursues her, she reveals to him that she has fallen in love with someone else and wishes to divorce. When he asks with whom and when she had fallen in love, she responds, "Does it really matter?"

The film then cuts back to Sanming for the final third. Sanming has been working at demolishing buildings for sometime when Brother Mark is fatally injured in a collapse of a wall, or perhaps he was murdered during a "job" contracted out by Guo Bin to gather a gang of youths to intimidate the inhabitants of a rival piece of real estate. Soon afterwards, his brother-in-law calls informing him that his wife, Missy Ma has returned. Sanming and Missy then meet, where she tells him that their daughter works further south, and that she works for a boat-owner essentially as an indentured servant due to her brothers debt. Sanming attempts to take his ex-wife with him, but is informed that he will have to pay 30,000 RMB to cover the debt. He promises to do so, and makes the decision to head back to Shanxi to work in the mines. His new friends and coworkers announce that they will be following, but Sanming reminds them of the intensely dangerous nature of the work. The film ends as Sanming prepares to depart. A man walking across a tight-rope appears in the background...(WIKI)

Directed by Jia Zhangke
Produced by Xu Pengle
Wang Tianyun
Zhu Jiong
Written by Jia Zhangke
Sun Jianming
Guan Na
Starring Zhao Tao
Han Sanming
Music by Lim Giong
Cinematography Yu Lik-wai
CHINA