Free Donuts: Catch The Wave -- Part One

My friend Roy went on the Catch The Wave Cruise... and shot this.

Net Neutrality? What's that?

Believe it or not but the current internet boom is soon likely to have it's wings clipped.

If you havent heard about the issue of Net Neutrality please watch this film.

Colin's Crusade

I'm experimenting with adding video to my blog.

This is a crazy little film I helped make with my good friend Roy Petersen a couple of years back called 'Colin's Crusade'.

Co-written by Ian T. Cowell who stars as Colin, its about a bunch of unsuspecting suspected terrorists who get attacked by a bunch of self-appointed anti-terror warriors. See what happens when we take justice into our own hands!

Enjoy!



Colin's Crusade - video powered by Metacafe

Snow Drift

We have had masses of snow since Wednesday, which means that I've been getting up around 5am to clear away a path so that the parents can get access to the kindergarten where I work.



I haven't been very active with my camera but thanks to Neils, my colleague at Alme Skole you get to enjoy some really fun pics after all. Click on the main link above (ie Snow Drift) and enjoy!

Berlinale

During the winter holidays I went to Berlin to the 57th Berlinale Film Festival.
I got a dead cheap flight with Sterling Airways for 400 kroner (under 40 quid).

I was only there for a day and a half (such were the restrictions on the ticket and my wallet) but I still managed to see 7 films - 3 features and 4 shorts.

Here's what I saw:

Wednesday 14th Feb

10:30 El Camino de los Ingleses | Summer Rain
D: Antonio Banderas
Spain, United Kingdom 2006

14:00 Generation Kplus Short Films 1
Ville och Vilda Kanin | Willy and Wild Rabbit
D: Lennart & Ylva-Li Gustafsson
Sweden 2006

Drengen i kufferten | Having a Brother
D: Esben Toft Jacobsen
Denmark 2006

Zhiharka | Zhiharka and the Fox
D: Oleg Uzhinov
Russian Federation 2006

Pilgiftsgrodorna | Poison Arrow Frogs
D: Johan Hagelbäck
Sweden 2007

16:30 Press Screening of '300'
D: Zack Snyder
USA 2006

21:00 The Walker
D: Paul Schrader
USA, United Kingdom 2007
C: Woody Harrelson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall, Moritz Bleibtreu, Lily Tomlin, Willem Dafoe

The film I was most anticipating was 300 but it ended up being the film I was most disappointed by. It was visually very interesting, having been a graphic novel by the same guy who gave us Sin City. The problem with it was that it was really weak story wise. Its downfall were its main characters who because of their Spartan 'strength', show no emotion, which in my opinion disempowered the writers from developing the characters so you were not able to empathise with them.

Best of all was the first movie I saw which Antonio Banderas directed. The fact that he was there afterwards with the cast to talk about the film was a real bonus. The film is about the hopes and dreams we have in our youth and deals with how life has a tendency to squash our dreams. The film is set in Banderas' hometown in Mexico who says that he deliberately decided to make a non-commercial film. He saw this film as a chance to go back to his roots, to the place where for him it all started, a place where he said he doesn’t have good memories. He says he always wanted to act but it was a place and time where one wasn’t allowed to dream. The cast spoke a little also. One of them said about Banderas 'He is a brave-heart', and another said 'He is a generous man'.

Frustratingly, I found out as I was packing to go home that Arin and Susan from Foureyedmonsters.com were giving a talk at one of the venues. As yet, I haven’t managed to track them down for an interview, but I haven’t given up hope yet!

"Reading is to the mind what aerobic exercise is to the body"

You know for a long time I thought "I'm not very good at reading" but this book is convincing me otherwise.

Its very liberating. This guys claims you can 'learn' to speed read up to 1000 words per minute!! The average he says is around 200-240 wpm.

It's worth a look.

God pulls some 'strings'

This is Sven Wichmann. He is a 75yr old, retired production designer who also happens to have a strong Christian faith.

God pulled some strings last week through my friend Trish in the UK, and so he came to visit me at my home today and we had an amazing time together talking about God and film.

Most recently he worked on a Danish film called 'Strings'. This is a fantastic film using marionettes, which surprisingly works very well. Unfortunately it hasn’t reached many English-speaking countries yet. This is a shame, Sven says, because the English-speaking version is much better than the Danish one.



The film is about two tribes that are at war with one other. It starts with the suicide of one of the tribe leaders who confesses in a letter to his son to having many regrets about the war, and so charges him with bringing about peace after he is dead... only the son never gets the letter and ends up going to war against the other tribe in revenge for the 'murder' of his father (as he sees it). I wont tell you what happens because it will ruin the film's twist, but try to see it!

I told Sven about how I had applied to the film school and not having been successful. I showed him the films that I sent in about India and he appeared to be quite moved by them. He is largely involved in the state church here in Denmark, and he says there’s not much spirit-led life in that church, and so it was refreshing for him to see young people so fired up.

That may have been one of the reasons why my films failed to get noticed by the school. More to the point they were probably misunderstood. Sven told me that Denmark is very 'secular' and the film school were probably 'afraid' of what they saw. He said the film was clearly very genuine, and perhaps the film school didn’t know what to do with it?

Before he left Sven gave me some ideas about what I could do now to progress my film career and I look forward to seeing how this relationship progresses....