St Valentin 2012

The squirrel in Berry

This is a short film taken by one of my family members - Jean-Luc Lami - depicting the squirrel 'living with' my wife's aunt. Not actually 'with' her of course but in one of her loop-holes (windows).
She feeds it with nuts everyday and the squirrel doesn't refuse eating them!

the fire snake enters the year of the water dragon

Gunnar wrote most of the posts here these latest months because I was too busy with my own staff.
So let me explain why.

Tomorrow starts the Year of the Dragon with my first client for 2012.

What? Do I need clients now?

Well, that's no surprise I have been wanting to freelance for many years without doing it - no money syndrom. Since I

♥ films

am technique friendly

and speak 3 languages- did I mention that I kick ass on Wordfeud in Norwegian?

I entered a business incubator last october.


It means that I presented a solid business plan, attended some exciting bookkeeping course and trained my skills as a salesperson - definitely the toughest point.

What do I do?

I write to engage people, meaning that I combine copywriting, community management and web redaction.


My first two contacts are companies involved with... cinema - which is basically perfect.


I am still waiting for the answer of the second one, a BIG client - the kind of company which is older than my four grand parents - and if it worked out, this means I would promote the company that released the first movie I ever saw on a silver screen [a clue: it's not Disney and the year was 1982]

I know that I am among the last four candidates that were picked up and am really eager to know how my professional life will look like next month. In the worst case scenario, I will have enriched my mainstream film culture these latest weeks (which is a great point for any cinephile).

Now, let's go back to a normal life!


Happy New Year!

To Be Or Not To Be

This film is not a story about Hamlet although the story about Hamlet appear in the film or rather his famous soliloquy and other phrases from Shakespeare's plays.

Instead the film starts with a panorama over Warsaw before WWII and the invasion of Poland, with a speaker voice informing us about some of the things we see.
All of a sudden people stop, looking either terrified or extremely surprised. What is it?
It's Adolf Hitler, wandering the streets in Warsaw all by himself, without any other military or escort. How is this possible?

It's possible through the fact that a theatre group is rehearsing a satire about 'Der Führer' and the actor doing him - Bronski (Tom Dugan) - is questioned concerning his resemblance, whereby he leaves the theatre, walking the streets of Warsaw, "like an ordinary Führer". Unfortunately for him, a young girl approaches him, asking for the autograph of "Mr Bronski".
We get to meet more members of this touring theatre company and not least the always fighting couple Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) and his wife Maria (Carole Lombard, who died in a plane crash two months before the première of the film).

They perform 'Hamlet' and Bronski and his colleague Greenberg (Felix Bressart) are both tired of only doing small roles, they want to be in the spotlight - where Tura is. Greenberg says he always wanted to do Shylock ('The Merchant of Venice') and his monologue "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases...". He will be given the chance to do the role but not on stage.

Maria Tura has received a bouquet of flowers from a handsome young pilot - Sobinski (Robert Stack) - and he comes to her dressing room, leaving the stalls during Josef Tura's Hamlet-monologue. Before anything happens Sobinski has to leave for an assignment as they are reached by the message that Hitler-Germany has occupied Poland. In a PUB he meets a professor by the name of Siletsky (Stanley Ridges), who he suspects being a Nazi allied although he pretends being the professor of the young men now being engaged in the war.
Sobinski gets a message through to Maria who will pass it on but Siletsky invites her to dine with him, hoping to win her over on 'his side' in order to use her as a spy for the Nazis.
Maria Tura returns home to think it over and on the same time she contacts the theatre group in order to find a way to get hold of the list over the names of the Polish pilots, Siletsky is going to deliver to a certain Col. Erhardt (Sig Ruman).
They decide to lure Siletsky by disguising themselves as nazi's, knocking on his door inviting him to a Gestapo headquarter. This headquarter is the theatre, remade and there Joseph Tura awaits him pretending to be Erhardt (as Siletsky doesn't know what he looks like). Tura gives himself away but when Siletsky tries to flee he is shot by Sobinski.
From now on the actors are forced to do different roles in order to save the pilots and their families and help the resistance movement. They need to be both Hitler and many others and Greenberg gets to recite Shylock's monologue. Tura takes on the role as professor Siletsky.
Of course everything ends well.

This is a typical screwball comedy with a lof of quick cue's from the different characters and a rather rapidly told story, although not so rapid that we can't follow the different movements in the film.
We've both seen this film before and even if films making fun of Hitler and 'The Third Reich' are legio, it has quite a lof of charm, not least thanks to the fact that it's made in a way where we, as viewers, continuously ask ourselves if they will be in time for this or that, be able to fool the nazi's with their acting etc etc.
Most actors are very good and they are among those being known for their performances in this kind of comedies. This goes of course not least for Carole Lombard.
She was actually, a time during the 1930's, the best payed actress in Hollywood, earning 500 000$ per year, five times more than the President of the USA at the time.
As noted above she died not long after the making of this film in a plane crash, after having participated in a war bond rally.

(Photo Carole Lombard/Maria Tura and Jack Benny/Joseph Tura copied from: http://images.telerama.fr/medias/2010/08/media_59085/cette-semaine-lubitsch-a-paris-peplum-a-arles-et-les-caraibes-a-douarnenez,M41285.jpg)

(Photo Tom Dugan/Bronski/Hitler copied from: http://louvreuse.net/images/stories/simidor/tobeornottobe_01.jpg)
(Photo Felix Bressart/Greenberg copied from: http://images.telerama.fr/medias/2009/11/media_49258/revision-de-classique-to-be-or-not-to-be-d-ernst-lubitsch-2,M29350.jpg)

The Wolf Man (1941)

This film was made in 1941 and since then we've seen many 'wolf men'/'werewolfs' on screen and some of them are somewhat frightening but some rather laughable as it's hard to create a credible character of this kind. This film was written and produced by a man who was born in Germany but became a 'naturalized' American citizen (like so many other directors and actors before and during the Nazi era in Germany): Curt Siodmak.
This film is also written by Siodmak.

There are some very good and interesting actors participating in the film: Lon Chaney Jr (as 'the Wolf Man', Larry Talbot), Claude Rains (as his father, John Talbot), Bela Lugosi and Ralph Bellamy.
This film - being the second screen version of this story, the first one 'Werewolf of London', not being commercially succesful - has been very influential on how later versions or adaptations of this theme was made.

It starts with Larry Talbot (Chaney Jr) returning to his ancestral home in Llanwelly in Wales where he will try to reconcile himself with his father, John Talbot (Rains). This after the death of Larry's brother, the favourite of his father. The question is perhaps: How did he die?
Larry falls in love with a young woman called Gwen Conliffe (Evely Ankers), who runs an anitque shop. Just to come close to her, he goes there and buys a silver-headed walking stick decorated with a wolf. Gwen tells him it represents a werewolf.
When the subject of werewolfs surface, villagers often recite a poem sounding like this:

"Even a man who is pure in heart
and says his prayers by night
may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
and the autumn moon is bright."

One night Larry rescues Gwen's friend Jenny from an attack by a wolf, or what they think is a wolf. He kills it with his walking stick but is on the same time bitten by the animal.
A gypsy (romani) fortune teller explains to Larry that this was not a wolf but a werewolf and also her son, Bela (Bela Lugosi) who once was transformed into this creature when being bitten himself.
Now Larry's purgatory begins, finally leading to his death by his own walking stick, held by his father. But is his father actually only a human father?

I think George Waggner succeed in not creating a too ridiculous figure and the story is built up in a rather meticulous way, not revealing everything at once.
The 'beast' being a combination between man and wolf, has to be portrayed not to overtly at once to retain the suspension but once we've seen him, he doesn't scare us.
One of the more interesting scenes is when Larry is being locked up in a cellar by his father. That night the werewolf commits an assault anyway but the question is: Who escaped from the cellar, Larry or...?
In later versions the werewolf is perhaps depicted in a more frightening way (not in all of them) thanks to better techniqual resources but I think this film is very charming and the characters around the werewolf is not just props, like in many other versions.