During the last days of World War II, a woman in Berlin kept a diary. She wrote of the daily struggles of existence in an utterly destroyed city. Of days spent hiding in cellars. Of starvation and sickness. Of mass rape and sexual assault of German women by occupying Soviet soldiers. Of surviving by any …
Quite honestly, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas is a book I probably never would have read, had it not been for all the attention that’s been paid to the recent film adaptation. The New Yorker’s interview with the filmmakers (Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings) about the process of translating this complicated book into film is what first …
Despite some challenges (e.g., getting tickets, a U-Bahn, tram and bus strike on Saturday), we were able to attend two films from the Berlinale this past weekend — one on Saturday at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and one on Sunday at the Cinestar at Potsdamer Platz. Thanks to a tip from Jen, we arrived nice …
(or How We Almost Couldn’t Get Tickets to the Berlinale) Some of the reasons I always avoided the Tribeca Film Festival in New York had to do with the unbelievable amount of time and effort required just to buy a ticket. For some reason, I was under the mistaken illusion that the Berlinale (also known …