As I said I visited the festival of short movies again on Friday. The cinema was full of eager students and I realized how much I miss atmosphere of festivals.  We organized a big international theater festival Encounter every year at Uni and the festival week was always such a exciting time. So on Friday I felt student-ish again and it felt good.

Selection of the movies was more versatile this time, from funny, sweet to dark and depressing.

We´ve seen:

• Edgar – Very sweet german movie about a retired widower who doesn´t know what to do with his life when he has no hobbies and no one needs him. He’s bored. But Edgar finds an unexpected solution to his problem in the supermarket.                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
•  Echo – very weird and depressing polish movie about two boys who have murdered a young girl. Through crime reconstruction and meeting the family of the victim they now have to relive the brutal crime they committed and confront the feelings they felt and still feel.                                                                                                                                                                                                        
•  The History of Aviation – this hungarian movie felt really random to me. It was set in 1905 in Normandy. It´s end of picnic and the whole family is looking for a little girl. The director was in the cinema and introduced the movie himself.
   
•  Moon’s Palace – very interesting spanish movie. A dark story about a mother writing a letter about how her son jumped of off the window. It had an interesting camera.                                                                                                                                                                           
•  Tenner – story about difficult teenager who´s killing his time by vandalizing the corner store. He lives with his eccentric, pot-smoking grandpa. But things may be more complicated after all. Interesting change of the story at the end.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
•  Good Advice – sweet story with funny ending.  It is the early 1980’s. Ten-year-old Rasmus is tired of his parents never listening to him and decides to run away from home. His mother is pregnant again so  before he leaves he records a cassette tape for his unborn broader with different advice on how to handle life with his parents.

 There was an award ceremony on Saturday. No movie I´ve seen won an award.

• Of Best Intentions – A movie from Ireland. It was a story about five people, whose best intentions had disastrous consequences. They introduced us all 5 characters very quickly and then led them all together in one big smash. The camera and music, the whole atmoshpere of the movie was so cool. Loved it.                                                                                                                                                           
• Edward´s Turmoil – a movie about 13 years old boy who gets kind of an epilepsy attack every time someone around him says a swear word. He´s stuck with his foul mouthed grandpa for a day and he forces him to swear. It has a pretty funny and morbid end. Loved this short movie.                                                                                              
• City Paradise – this one was half animated and half acted. Very interesting atmosphere. It´s about a Japan girl who arrives to London to learn english. She accidentally discovers a mysterious, secret underground city, inhabited by friendly little aliens.                                                                                                                                                                                                       
• Caporal Crevette – a movie about a boy who played with his soldiers toys really believing it´s the real thing. The courageous Caporal Crevette is parachuted in the middle of the jungle to carry out a vital and extremely dangerous mission – take control of a fiercely defended Soviet stronghold.                                                                                                                                                                                            
• Instead of Abracadabra – this one was hilarious sweden movie about a loser magician in his 20s who lives with his parents and who always injures his volunteers. I think this movie was the longest. It ended with a big magician show at his father 60th birthday party and the parents are afraid who he will injure now. Very funny.                                                                                                      
• King Crab Attack – this one was drawn as a hollywood trailer, full of cliches and exaggeration. How the hero saves the world from mutated king crabs. Funny.

New year, new movies and it all started with Sherlock Holmes. I really like Sherlock, I had a period a few years back when I read all his books and stories. I still remember how scared I was while reading The Hound of the Baskervilles, all the dark, misty marhslands. That´s my favorite one.
Also I grew up watching lots of british adaptations which were kind of slow and dry and always followed the original. Sherlock for me is a classic british gentleman with just weird hobbies. And now you enter the new hollywood movie. After I saw the trailer a few weeks back I was little taken aback, it really wasn´t what I was expecting but was curious to see it.

 My friend stated that the important thing for people to enjoy this movie was to forget the fact that they were watching Sherlock Holmes and I think she couldn´t say it better. It´s so true. It´s kind of funny action movie with jovial, cute, manic lead character. But Sherlock Holmes? Not really.
I wish they didn´t choose to tell a story about black magic. I guess they wanted to bring some mysteriousness in to it but I don´t think it worked. The whole story was explained very quickly in one sentence at the end and good luck in understanding the movie if you missed it.

Last week I went to see Slumdog millionaire, finally. I read about it on internet like 4 months ago and then almost missed it in our cinema cos of the stupid translation of its title. And the online recommendations were accurate, really a great movie. Well, it won Oscar in the meantime but I would go see it even if it didn´t.

I didn´t know what to expect from the movie at first then I read a short description that it´s about a guy from slum in India who won 10 mil. in Who wants to be a millionaire contest and they question him about how it is possible that he knew all the answers. It caught my interest, the material sounded original enough. And it was really interesting to see life in India. It´s sad that even in modern times some people live in conditions like that. The slums were really horrifying. I can´t even imagine living like that. The movie really made you feel the atmosphere of it. The story was great, liked the parts where they were kids more then the later years. but the last Millionaire question for 20 mil. was so predictable.lol. But I thought it was very easy, it would be one of the first questions here for sure.

Movie about India with very Hollywood end.lol but after the quite traumatized story I really wished for happy end too. Haha. But well, the dance on the station at the end was little too much.
Oh and the music in this movie was wonderful.