Old Window Sign

Taken on my way to a friend's art gallery show. The building attached to this doorway currently comprises doctor's offices on the lower level and upscale apartments above. So this sign must be from long ago. Translated, this was a factory (Fabrik) for brushes (Pinsel). My first attempt at black-and-white (via photo fixing); hope you like it.

A Stink Bomb And A Recommendation

B is back and currently fighting some bug she picked up in China-- I swear, that country is one big petri dish; every time she heads over there, she comes back worse for wear.

My second-to-final entry from the Cinematic Titanic film fest I threw is the craptacular Ishtar (1987). Of all the films I picked to see this past week, I was most suspicious about this one. In fact, the only thing that made me pull the trigger and watch it was the rumor that writer-director and noted film geek Quentin Tarantino actually owns one of the original projectionist reels (the kind shipped to theaters) of this film, and is a big fan. OK then, how bad could this be if Tarantino shows this to his friends? Answer: Indescribably bad. At least Heaven's Gate, for all its flaws, can be seen as the passion project of a visionary director and screenwriter. Ishtar on the other hand is just plain miserable. The attempt to make a wacky Hope-and-Crosby style "Road" picture about the 2 worst singer-songwriters in the world (Dustin Hoffman, miscast as the ladies' man and Warren Beatty as a complete dolt who doesn't get the girls) getting mixed up in Mideast politics fails on its most basic level: It simply is not funny. At all. For a comedy, that's all that matters. Throw in a blank check budget ($51M in 1987-- that's $95M in today's dollars) and an indecisive perfectionist writer/director trying to rein in some of the most mule-headed stars in the business and that spells disaster. If you have 15 minutes to spare, there is this wonderfully written piece in Vanity Fair about the making of Ishtar that is well worth your time, even you have no intention of seeing the film but want an insight as to how Hollywood works.

On a whim and a half-remembered 3-year old rave review, I did manage to find a small delight in a little-known movie called The Grand. If you are a fan of the "Mockumentary" style of movies like This is Spinal Tap, Best In Show or Waiting For Guffman, then this is for you. A lot of well-known comic actors (Woody Harrelson, David Cross, Ray Romano, Chris Parnell and many more) are in this tale of a fictional $10 Million dollar poker tournament, and it's definitely worth seeking out-- I don't even play poker (ask anyone I've lost money to), and don't know the terminology but I was pleasantly surprised with this little gem of a film that rewards repeated viewings. This was an excellent way to end my off kilter movie week, and almost singlehandedly washed the stench of Ishtar away. Almost.

Turkey Week

Continuing from last week's Wired, I'm trying to watch a feature film nightly. Again, these are films that have caught my interest for one reason or another, be it from the story, actors, director, or a recommendation. I've seen some solid films, some criminally underrated titles, a few that were as dopey as I'd imagined, and some titles that didn't make it into wide release, but are absolutely well worth watching. But really, this exercise was to watch those rubbernecker films; those unqualified disasters that bring Hollywood to its knees once in a while, and whose titles live on as shorthand for "bad movie," long after the film has been forgotten.

Into the breach, I finally cleared a full afternoon and watched Heaven's Gate (1980), arguably one of Tinseltown's most notorious failures, a film whose lessons singlehandedly changed how movies are made, ended the burgeoning "auteur" movement, killed the western as a genre, and bankrupted a major studio. In reality, I knew more about the legends surrounding the movie itself than I did about the plot, so I bit the bullet, and watched it-- all 3 hours and 29 minutes of it.

Director Michael Cimino was coming off the success and acclaim of The Deer Hunter and was itching to make his script about the little-known Johnson County Wars in 1890's Wyoming. United Artists bankrolled him for $7.5 million dollars ($19.3M in today's dollars), about average for the time. The finished product ended up well past schedule (it was written that by day 6 of shooting, they were already 5 days behind), and cost the studio an unheard of $40 million (almost $103M today). More than a million feet of raw film was shot, and the original length edit given to the studio bosses came in at over 5 hours-- the battle scenes alone allegedly ran for well over 90 minutes. When it was trimmed down to its current 209 minute (3 hours 29 minute) length, the critics savaged it, and the public stayed away. Cimino then re-edited the film further down to "only" 149 minutes but by then the damage was done. Heaven's Gate grossed less than $3.9M in the States upon its release, by far the biggest money loser to date in Hollywood history. The fallout was immediate and predictable: Transamerica Corporation sold off its interest in United Artists Pictures, closing it down. For film buffs, this also signaled the end of a heady time, the Director-driven picture. This was how the giants made their bones-- Scorsese, Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg-- all flourished during this time of calculated risk-taking, and big payoffs for the studio's support (compare that to today, where there exist 6!! Beethoven the Saint Bernard movies). Michael Cimino's reputation never recovered and he has directed only 4 movies in the intervening 30 years.

Over the years, a bit of a cult has formed around Heaven's Gate, and modern day critics have not been nearly as nasty-- it seems that all the contemporary accounts at the time of the 1980 release were obsessed with the budget, and the stories about Cimino's perfectionism (50 takes for a single scene was not uncommon, and I've even read accounts where he held up shooting for hours just because he was waiting for a certain far away cloud formation to come into the frame). In fact most modern day critics reviewing the DVD releases actually have put this in a good light. So I decided to roll the dice and check it out. In the end, it came off as a sloppy and unfocused mess some of the time, but had moments of genuine brilliance. And as far as that bloated budget, every single penny was there on the screen. The look of the film is gorgeous-- every frame looks like a postcard. But... hanging two thin storylines (the real life story of the powerful and connected cattleman's association hiring killers to remove the immigrant population from Johnson County with the tacit support of the Wyoming Governor and President of the US is mixed with the tale of the local sheriff and one of the hired killers competing for the affections of the local bordello madam) in the space of an epic-length film is a lot to ask. But overall, I liked it, and I don't feel like I wasted my time at all. Worst film of all time? Hardly. Misunderstood, flawed masterpiece? Not quite. Cimino had a lot of huevos to bully the studios into acquiescing to his every whim, and there was little market for a bleak "anti-western" with no discernible good guy and a surprising amount of bloodshed. But it does stand as a unique film, and I'm glad I finally watched it.

I Can Do Anything, I Just Need A Coffee

Here's a bit of nostalgia for everybody, 2 back-to-back commercials from the National Coffee Association circa 1984:



Yes indeedy, I can cut hit records, avoid a safety blitz and learn how to slap a guy without actually hitting him through the magic power of coffee. Inadvertent comedy comes at the :30 mark, with the voice-over talking about the "New American society," while the video shows Englishman David Bowie, and the uncomfortably long (roughly from :08 through :23, an eternity in a 30-second commercial) shot of the band Heart "in the studio." Yeah, I'm sure that's just coffee they're drinking too.

I do recall these commercials, and if you actually believe it they were made specifically because coffee was rapidly losing its already minuscule market share of teens and 20-somethings in the mid 1980's to things like soda, and the coffee growers were desperate to hip up this drink, long associated with lousy Maxwell House and instant crystals ("just add hot water"), served in greasy spoon diners to truck drivers. For a bit of perspective, the first Starbucks as we know it did not appear until 1987 in Seattle, and had "only" 165 locations in 1992 (it's over 17,000 locations in 50 or so countries now). To say that the drink has come back from the brink is a bit of an understatement. Looking back, I doubt that these commercials did much though. I don't think many people trundled down to the store and bought a can of Chock Full O' Nuts just because Kurt Vonnegut was hailed as a member of the "movers and shakers."

Scratch That Itch Movie Theater

With B off to tropic locales (seriously, it was 88 degrees Fahrenheit when she switched planes on Sunday; the weatherman is talking about snow here within the week), I'm letting my rubbernecker curiosity run free by checking out a number of films that always held a fascination with me, sort-of looked interesting, or were notorious in their day. Thanks to the wonders of quasi-legal movie sharing sites that are proliferating on the web these days, I've found that most of these films-- even the hard to find ones-- are out there.

While I'd just as soon not talk about this weekend's cinema oddity Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (review: amiable enough family film, but totally empty calories), last night's movie was Wired (1989), an itch I had to scratch. The story behind this biopic of the rise and fall of legendary comic actor John Belushi makes for a better tale than the film itself: The Bob Woodward book this film was (very loosely) based on named a lot of names (I did not know that both Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro hung out and did drugs with Belushi the night he died), and laid fault squarely at the feet of the studios and entertainment industrial complex that kept its stars both supplied & heavily medicated and largely protected from any blowback. When this movie was coming into being, a lot of Hollywood power brokers (Michael Ovitz, known as the most powerful man in Hollywood, for one) called in their favors and let it be known far and wide that anyone associated with this film would be essentially blackballed for life. So no major studios touched it; no major actors, directors or writers came near it, and the script was so heavily revised as to steer clear of the multiple threatened lawsuits that major persons in this story were rolled into watered-down unnamed "composite characters." So what we have is an extremely tame, made-for-TV movie-feeling film that relied on an awkward framing device (dead Belushi wakes up in the morgue and is driven around key events in his life in a cab driven by his guardian angel), paralleling the other narrative of Bob Woodward doing an investigation of the cause of Belushi's death. Could have been decent and edgy, but it was pretty toothless. To his credit, actor Michael Chiklis (who had exactly 2 TV show episodes to his resume) did a great job playing Belushi-- that's him singing on the soundtrack CD!-- given the constraints he had. True to the threats, a lot of people in this film had difficulties working in showbiz after-- for example, the screenwriter never wrote another movie, and the director helmed only one more feature film (which went straight to video). Indeed, the distribution of this movie was so poor that it only played in half the theaters of a normal release, guaranteeing (along with the savage reviews) a bomb. To this day, Wired has never been released on DVD. Thanks to his persistence and talent, Michael Chiklis has found steady work however, first as the star of TV's The Commish, then as anti-hero Vic Mackey in the late, great The Shield. He was the best thing in an otherwise disappointing picture.

A Letter From China

B has been in China for the last few days and has taken time out of her impossibly busy schedule to write a few impressions. Take it away!
_____________

B here, blogging to you from the south of China. As G mentioned earlier, the reason we are in Germany in the first place is because of my company. And because of my job I travel to Asia at least twice a year. Not to lovely places like this, but to places like Qing Yuan, China. There are worse places to be sure. I'm just glad I like my team and that we travel well together because there is not much to do while here except work long hours and hang out in the hotel bar at night. Today my brain is a little on the fritz and it's only day 2. It feels like it's been a week already. A normal day will have the team picked up early at the hotel and brought directly to the factory where we set up shop. The work rooms are set up with pullovers, samples, shell patterns and we all sit around a table with computers and all our work gear. It's crowded and it's rare for me as a Product Developer to sit for very long at my computer. Normally I'm running around talking to Factory Developers, Tooling and Pattern room people answering all sorts of questions both hard and easy. Later this afternoon I'll be heading into the production line to review a really complicated item I developed. Specifically, I'm told I need to see how complicated the process is. Seeing how this is made always gives me a good appreciation for the workmanship that goes into it and in the end helps me to do my job better.

Empty House And A Guest Blogger

B is off to Asia today-- China to be precise-- and will be there for almost 2 full weeks. You see, the reason we're in Deutschland in the first place is due to B's job for a Well Known German Company, and because manufacturing operations for the Company are in Asia she goes there a couple times a year. So while I joke about a pizza and beer fest around the house (in reality, it's more like a Döner kebab-- think Middle Eastern burritos and you're on the right track-- pizza and beer fest), I'll be keeping busy.

Due to highly restricted access to the internets in China, it's not a certainty but B will attempt to send a few blog posts from there herself with her take on things. She'll be far away from the glamor and hubbub of major Chinese cities like Hong Kong and Beijing, and in the massive city of Qing Yuan (population 4 million), whose sole purpose seems to be manufacturing. We'll see about the ease and frequency of her posts-- it's not like she has a lot of downtime, and as I mentioned, internet usage is highly controlled and restricted. Stay tuned (hopefully!) for Chinese impressions and photos.

Lots O' Stuff

Let's see, a bunch of things happening today:

Veteran's Day in the States today: To all my relatives who served in the armed forces: Thank you, and bravo. You'll never get enough thanks or praise for what you did.

Karneval (or Carnival) begins in Cologne, Germany at 11:11 PM.

Saint Martin's Day, a Catholic holiday primarily geared towards children also happens today in Germany-- a celebration of St. Martin of Tours, a former Roman soldier who became a monk (image above comes from the story of St. Martin who as a soldier cut his cloak in half to give to a freezing beggar). Children walk the streets with paper lanterns and sing songs this evening.

Armistice Day (also known as Remembrance Day), which actually ties into St. Martin's Day and Veteran's Day is celebrated in much of Europe. It commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany to end World War I.

Happy November 11th, wherever you are.

Two Things That Are Easier To Find Than A Good German Red Wine

I've said it before: I'm not a wine snob-- while we like wine a lot and one day aspire to be snobs, we don't have the palate, patience or wallet to pull it off. But I know what I like. As I sit here sipping my heretofore unknown Colle Moresco wine from the Italian island of Sardinia which I purchased at my local metzgerei (butcher's shop) of all places for a cheap €6.69 (about $9.25), it goes to underscore a couple of basic truths about European wine drinking: (1.) You can buy quality daily drinkers for astonishingly cheap, and (2.) German red wines are pretty lousy.

While I have always relied on the steady hand and good advice of my wine guy in Portland who counseled "If it tastes good, drink it," we found that a decent daily drinker/ spaghetti red in the States would generally start around $10.00, (+/- $2.00) and go upwards from there. But here in Europe the playing field has changed, and we need to rethink everything. B found a great summer Rosé for €2.99 (?!) at the local grocery store, and now we're back to checking out wines that are €8 and below as our daily drinkers. Obviously, part of this has to do with location-- when Italy and France are just a couple hours' drive away, transport costs are significantly lower, as are the number of middlemen between the grower and the consumer. Chalk one up for the good guys.

Germany is known for its white wines, and its star grape is Riesling. German Reds on the other hand are pretty hard to find outside of the country, and for good reason: they are simply not that good, and what you can find here is actually pretty pricey. The big dog has to be the grape known as Spätburgunder here (aka Pinot Noir), which makes for almost 12% of all grapes planted in the country (Riesling accounts for 20%). Pinot is known as a fairly fickle wine to grow (I know this because I saw Sideways, and not from personal experience), but the stuff I've had here-- and I'm talking all German reds-- barely... just barely makes the lower end of the "drinkable" scale. This is actually a bit frustrating to me-- I'm all for supporting local and national business, and I really really want to like the stuff here (let the record show I'm a fan of German beer and a lot of German food), but... the red wine comes in just a shade over plonk. I've heard rumors and read reports (like this one) that sing the praises about the red wines of the Ahr Valley in Northwest Germany. Based on the one bottle of Ahr red I had though, I paid €16.00 ($22.00 US) for something that was roughly the equivalent of 2 Buck Chuck-- I mean, I had a Greek red (?!) last week that totally smoked this at half the price. While my search continues in earnest, I have come to the conclusion that with all of the genuinely great Italian-French-Spanish wines at fantastic prices to be found-- why bother? Sorry Germany, but you have lost my wine business.

Movember Madness

In honor of the month of Movember, we have this curious sign, advertising a very old school barber shop on Jobsterstrasse outside the Altstadt. Movember is a month-long mustache growing contest that takes place in much of the Western world seeking to bring attention and charity contest funds to men's health issues. So as not to scare the locals, and also as not to give a 4-week impression that I somehow always have dirt on my upper lip (blonde guys really should tread lightly with the facial hair), I'm sitting this one out. For more information on this curious ritual and worthy cause-- it's not too late to register!!-- click here.

German Lesson

Took a picture of this one while at a recent flohmarkt (flea market), and this is as good an example as any to talk about the German language. If you break it down word for word, this says "The With The Wolf Dancing." Now movie titles get routinely switched around in foreign markets for marketing/clarity reasons (the recent film Get Him To The Greek was was called, after translation, Men's Trip here), but this poster really does mean "Dances With Wolves," due to the German language's differences from English. Having the verb as the last word in a sentence is pretty standard, and I really don't want to get into deeper levels of confusion discussing esoterica like "dative case prepositions." But trust me, the title is a carry-over; it's just the language that routinely stymies me despite my continuing efforts.

Song In My Head Today

Today's song is the Four Tet remix of Pole's "Heim" (got that?). Pole is the nom de guerre of a German named Stefan Betke, and his early music is really hard to pin down-- sort of like dub (an offshoot of reggae) made by a bunch of flickering ghosts. Four Tet (aka Kieran Hebden) is a musician and popular remixer (a guy who interprets and puts his own spin on other folk's music) who's worked with everybody from experimental electronic bands to pop stars to old school jazz drummers. It shouldn't work but it does, and this piece is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard and one of my personal favorites. Once you get past the skittering drums for the first 1:10, you're golden. If this doesn't move you in some way, you're either deaf or dead. Oh yes, I went there. Enjoy.

Heilig-Geist-Spital

the Hopsice of the Holy Spirit was built between 1332-1339 with funds from a wealthy patrician. The wing you see here over the Pegnitz river was built after 1500. The Heilig-Geist-Spital was the building where the jewels of the Roman Empire were stored between 1424 and 1796. While the area behind this structure still remains true to its roots as a senior citizen's home, the pictured building is currently a very popular restaurant.

Ghost Buildings

This weekend I helped my neighbor and buddy Jason out with transporting and hanging his solo show at a local art gallery. Jason's studio is in one of the neater corners of town, a funky, re-purposed complex of manufacturing buildings formerly used by German electronic/electrical and consumer products giant AEG (similar in scope and product range to General Electric in the States-- they made everything from light bulbs to power tools to locomotives to nuclear reactors). While AEG is just a shell of its former self-- the company was effectively liquidated, but the name continues to be used by Electrolux for its consumer products-- the buildings remain, and are now used to house things like a local brewery, a car importer (old school American muscle cars a specialty), and a stage fabrication company.

Jason's building is exclusively rented out to artists (and a local magazine), and the offices are all now small studios, with some of the larger buildings in the complex being used for gallery shows. Being a fan of old repurposed buildings, I think this place is a gas, and it's kind of cool to walk around the empty floors and guess what used to be there.

Vote.

Living as we do on the far side of the world from the USA we get exposed to world news that Americans don't normally see. There are people who are willing to die for the simple right and privilege to vote. All we are nicely requested to do as Americans is to spend an hour or so every 2 years to go to the polling station or fill out a mail-in ballot. People, let me be clear: that's the greatest bargain a free society could ever ask for. So no matter which side of the political spectrum you may fall on, just do yourself and your country a favor: vote on Tuesday.