Deutsches Filmmuseum (Frankfurt)

Frankfurt is mainly known for two districts, the financial and the red light, but did you know the city also had a Museumsofer? On the two sides of the Main river, there’s a bundle of museums. One of them is the newly reopened film museum. On 14 August the doors opened for the public for the first time in a lot of months and the Avenue went to investigate what was behind them.

Enter the lobby and you’re already treated to a handful of teasers, like a page from the Casablanca script and a Golden Globe. The lobby is also there and allows you to enjoy a coffee while you’re watching some movie clips projected against the centre wall.

Up the stairs the exhibition begins at the very beginning, the lenses, zoetropes and cameras obscuras (surely “camerae obscurae”, ed.) pull you back to a time when images couldn’t move. True, they still don’t: we’re watching stills projected at such a speed our eyes are fooled, but this was a time when even thay couldn’t be achieved. The good news is you are allowed to play with a couple of the exhibits and the reporter for one definitely enjoyed that opportunity.
As you walk around the first floor and literally walk towards the invention of cinema the journey ends with a collection of the earliest films. Starting with the earliest works by the Lumière brothers and the arrival of Kaiser Wilhelm II in a town (which allegedly made him the first film star), it doesn’t take too long before you end up with film getting a more fictional feel. A lesser known Méliès (but one that shows his roots as a magician) and Booth are among the likely suspects. The “?” accident – yes, that is the actual title – is also present and remains an eclectic remix of cinema’s earliest hits: a chase scene, the car running over someone (hello Booth) and trip through the stars (hi Méliès) are featured, as are several other bits of trickery.
Most of the films shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise if you own a dvd with early classics (like my Kino collection) but it’s always nice to see them on a bigger screen. And the 1896 film of Frankfurt will probably be shown nowhere else.

Next to the early classics is a door and it seems like it’s the only option to proceed… one thing my trip to Frankfurt told me is that some of the museums are occasionally unclear for visitors without a guide. The German Film Museum is relatively straightforward: it isn’t too big and you’re walking past the different exhibits in a semicircle. The museum continues on the second floor.
Over there you’ll find a floor dedicated to the post-silent era. When the doors open you immediately see four screens in a semicircle. Feel free to sit down and enjoy the montage of movie clips: sometimes it’s one film being shown

One of the museum displays with Nightmare Before Christmas faces

randomly on the four screens (like Jungle Book), but most of the time there’s a theme that seems to connect the various movies. These themes vary from historical characters (like Queen Elizabeth or Hitler) to more abstract subjects (“shadows” places the original Scarface next to that heart-stealing moment from Nosferatu). The films feature anything from classics like Das Kabinett des Dr Caligari to Twilight 2: New Moon (hey, any chance to hear Lykke Li is welcomed here).
Note that this projection uses up a third of the room and you’ll understand that the Deutsches Film Museum isn’t the biggest museum in the world. It overcomes this by going for a more modern approach. The second floor may have a couple of traditional exhibits (like Darth Vader’s helmet from the second Star Wars film – yes, I still refuse to redub it the fifth one and feel free to get a life – or Murnau’s screenplay of Sunrise, complete with director’s notes), but next to these goodies the movie has small displays. Next to costume designs you’ll find a director or a costume designer talking about the look of a certain film. Most of those interviews take a couple of minutes and are subtitled in English.
Other displays opt for an interactive approach, something the museum seems to like. The museum also hosts a booth where you can watch yourself on screen and alter the mood of your image by changing the background: feeling like being in a horror scene or do you feel in a romantic mood? Click around and watches how a couple of lights massively influence a scene.

Speaking of scenes, another display allows you recut a German movie. You get to choose which of the four different points of views you prefer and this allows you to remix the film. Adjacent to this, another display shows you four scenes (going from the first Harry Potter to Citizen Kane) and you have to guess how many cuts the director made. Guessed incorrectly? Then you can watch the scene again, this time with clues.
One of the funnier displays can be found at the back of the room, next to the green screens: you see a couple of movies with a similar theme (like romance or road trips) and can alter the soundtrack for each movie. Speaking of which, Kirsten Dunst‘s kissing of an upside-down Spider Man did improve when I added the Collateral soundtrack.

Anna Maria Mühe by Jim Rakete

Enough tomfoolery? Then there’s always room for the temporary exhibition. For the relaunch, the Deutsches Filmmuseum opted for Jim Rakete: Stand der Dinge, a retrospective of a German photographer’s collection of celebrity portraits. If you’re not German, you might as well think Jim Rakete made a series of portraits of unknown members of the public, though you may recognize some of them: Wim Wenders, Moritz Bleibtrau or possibly even people like Alexandra Maria Lara from the Ian Curtis biopic Control. Photographer Rakete doesn’t just go for a normal portrait: he likes the celebrity to hold an object, often related to the film. To promote Lola Rennt, director Tom Tykwer was placed next to a clock. (“All you need to make a movie is a girl and a clock” – Tom Tykwer) Some of those objects, like Tykwer’s clock, are also displayed in a room. Given that the temporary exhibition costs more than the permanent pieces, non-Germans may want to think twice about watching this current exhibition. Unless, of course, you want to tell your grandchildren you went to Frankfurt and saw the actual white ribbon from Das Weisse Band.

If you look at all the displays and movie montages, it won’t be hard to spend more than two hours at this museum. This, of course, is nothing like Frankfurt’s Museum of Modern Art MMK, which celebrated its twentieth birthday by renting another building as well a room on the other side of the street (so a dance adaptation of a Thomas Beckett text could be displayed). Who’d anticipated you could spend five hours in a museum? People should be warned!

You won’t spend five hours at the Deutsches Filmmuseum, but if you’re into movies, you’ll spend a lovely two hours here. One negative afterthought was that the digital revolution seemed to be somewhat overlooked. Then again, you are able to digitally play with movies, so subconsciously, it’s there.

(all images copyright of Deutsches Filmmuseum except photograph of Anna Maria Mühe by Jim Rakete, copyright: Jim Rakete – all images were used for a better visual representation of the museum, no commercial infringement intended)

New Marina for the Diamonds

(oh… drafts don’t get published, do they? Well, excuse me for not noticing I’d put my next post down as a draft, rather than an actual article… it’s been, like, only my 350th post on the Avenue, you can’t expect us newbies to know that sort of stuff – anyway, as one of the pictures for my 25 August post has appeared to gone missing between the day I wrote it and now, I’ll go and look for another picture. This means this article will now be postponed for the second time and in the meantime, here’s a replacement post.)

A couple of weeks ago Marina (of Marina and the Diamonds) posted a comment on her site that fans shouldn’t comment on or ask about the leaked demo tracks. Because they were only demo versions and, if anything, the comments would slow down any new releases. And because of that, it was rather unexpected that suddenly, out of the blue, there appeared two new tracks, a part one and two.

Marina’s love-and-hate relationship with Hollywood has been widely documented (not in the least in her single Hollywood – see also this post) and for her new single (EP?) the obsession seems to continue. Marina has put on a silver wig and is no longer Marina, but Electra Heart. The two-parter release exists of “Fear and Loathing” and ‘Radioactive” and the first song explains itself in the liner notes:

Electra Heart embodies the lies, illusions and death of an American Dream.

The second part, “Radioactive”, sounds and looks quite different from the first one: the text rages like the beats it’s been produced with (in stark contrast to the acoustic version that’ll be one of the extra tracks on the single – which will be released in the UK on 3 October).

As for the wig, this is explained on Marina’s site where you can find a picture with part of a poem

We must

We must bring
our own light
to the
darkness.

and underneath just two simple words:

silver wig

Pukkelpop 2011

Another update was scheduled for today, but I’ve postponed that review to 25 August. It felt inappropriate not to dedicate a few words to the disaster that struck the Pukkelpop festival on Thursday. Regular readers may remember I’ve written several festival reviews of this particular festival. Thirteen years I’ve been to Pukkelpop, only 25 km away from the village I grew up in. At the time of the disaster I was still in Germany and noticed how Cologne was swallowed by dark clouds. I was unaware the storm had chosen of all places a music festival to let loose its worse demons. It lasted no longer than 15 minutes, but the magnitude was beyond description. Hail, the size of bullets, fell down on the crowds and chased Skunk Anansie away in the midst of their concert. Thousands of people looked desperately for shelter as the winds played with anything that wasn’t cemented in the ground. The DJ at the dance hall was told to get everyone out of the place, something not everyone seemed willing to do. Meanwhile, some festivalgoers managed to get backstage – probably because some fences had been knocked down – and hid in the back of a truck. Some seeked shelter in the backstage area of the dance hall and yelled like cowboys who’d just caught a wild bull because they’d arrived in a dry shelter and because the heavy rain had felt like a cooling shower after a scorchingly hot afternoon. At that point, people didn’t realize what was happening elsewhere.

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world? (Melancholia)

That’s it… I have to leave this town. I can’t risk walking past those Melancholia film posters spread all over my town any longer: they do unspeakable things to my body! Before I start obsessing about a marriage to Kirsten Dunst, I’m off to Frankfurt for a couple of days. By the time I’m back the poster people will have replaced “my” Kirsten (see… it’s starting already!) with some harmless blockbuster I won’t even bother watching.

But, while I wait on my train, why don’t I fill you in on my views on probably the most controversial film of the year… why bother about genital mutilation (Antichrist) or being banned in the UK (The Human Centipede 2) when all you need to do is stumble your way out of a ill-received comment? Whether Cannes did the right thing by banning von Trier, is a debate we won’t stir up here, but at least they did the decent thing by leaving the actress in competition and honouring her by awarding her Best Actress. Rightfully so, Kirsten Dunst stands above this film (which stands above any of the director’s comments). Near the end of the credits, you’ll see Penelope Cruz being thanked. Von Trier originally wrote this film for her, but Cruz chose to give priority to Pirates of the Caribbean 4. Best decision ever. And you can read that sentence both as a snotty remark as well as a genuine statement: here’s a rare example of a film improving by giving the role to another actress. This film fits Dunst like a wedding dress. (And one can only wonder how Cruz would’ve sat next to von Trier during the notorious press conference – check Dunst’s reactions here.)

Easy A

My busy work schedule of the past months has one advantage: by the time a movies is finally reviewed, I’m able to incorporate the DVD review. Today Easy A, branded as just another modern version of classic literature – a genre which really took off with Amy Heckerling‘s Clueless and is now so old it’s allowed to have sex in lots of countries.

Talking about sex, that’s the big issue in Easy A, with an “A” referring to Nathaniel Hawthorne‘s classic novel The Scarlet Letter. The book has been filmed before, with a good silent version and a lacklustre adaptation starring Demi Moore. And for once, you don’t need me to tell you this: protagonist Olive (Emma Stone) reviews them for me. And they are not the only movies mentioned in the film: Olive – and, let’s be honest, director Will Gluck, have a soft spot for the romantic teen movies of the 80s, the John Hughes era.

Ned and Stacey and Sideways star Thomas Haden Church teaches Olive and her classmates about the classic book where a scarlet “A” indicates the adultery of a woman. Soon thereafter, Olive saves a gay boy who isn’t ready to come out of the closet by fooling everyone into thinking he’s her boyfriend. Sadly, one good deed leaves to another and soon the outcasts line up to be her boyfriend. By this time, Olive’s reputation has gone from being invisible to being the school slut and Olive chooses to wallow in her new reputation: she pins up a giant red “A” on her chest and “sluttifies” her wardrobe. The new Olive has been born.

Sadly, that’s the most credible part of the film: girls still can’t do a fourth of what boys do before being labelled a slut. Then again, Easy A doesn’t aim for credibility: it’s a moral play rather than a documentary. The biggest proof of this is by having someone who’s over 25 portraying a pupil. Before the movie was released, the film received a lot of criticism for this, by people who didn’t realize the film was actually satirizing the tons of movies and shows where 30-year-olds still pretend to be students.

It’s just one of the things you can learn by listening to the commentary track on the dvd, done by Will Gluck and Emma Stone. Easy A is one of the few examples where the commentary track is better than the film. Gluck and Stone don’t take the commentary too seriously and seem to have a lot of fun. Too much fun for the censorship committee, who occasionally stop the recording and tell the duo to start again. In the track this means you’ll hear a short pause, followed by the duo’s announcement that they are “back again”. Emma Stone occasionally jokes about the real and uncut commentary they’ll also record, which is why someone purchased this domain name. The duo also mention the many fights they had on the set: apparently the best way to communicate was by calling each other names. A bit like the “leaked” tantrum by Emma Stone in this clip then:

Listen carefully and you’ll hear Emma Stone laugh.
The commentary also singles out goofs and Gluck’s obsession with oranges (there’s apparently one in every scene) and makes it an easy task to sit through the film again.

Which is oddly enough not always how I felt during my initial viewing of the film as some of Easy A feels too artificial. Maybe it would’ve helped if I’d known the film wants to be a moral commentary rather than a modern comedy version of a classic novel. Keep that in mind if you want to watch it and there’s no reason why not to. It even allows you to access the bonus treat: the commentary track.

7.5/10 (My initial score was 7, but time and the commentary track have forced me to be more kind. Now there’s a first…)

Episode 1: an idea is copied

Exterior sounds enter the apartment. Two men are in the room. One of them is typing onto a netbook.

JONES: What are you doing?

KURTODROME: I’m writing today’s article for the Avenue.

JONES: Wasn’t that due yesterday?

KURTODROME: I know. I tried, though. But for some reason I couldn’t access the WordPress site on my Linux computer.

JONES: You’ve switched to Linux?