Reader Spotlight: Patrick in Germany

We're getting to know the Film Experience community one-by-one. This is going to take us forever! (That's a good thing. Thank you so much for being part of such a big vibrant fanbase.) Today we're talking to Patrick who lives in Germany and writes for DieAcademy.de, a German site devoted to our favorite awards show.

Hi, Patrick. How long have you been reading The Film Experience?

Maybe 6 years? I like this site so much since it's always interesting topics and wonderful to read.

I know you're really into the Oscars but how about the Lolas, Germany's own movie awards. Which German stars do you recommend our international readers get to know?

The Lolas are not as big of a deal as they should be, but I love some German actors who are still too unknown abroad but doing great work all the time, like: Sibel Kikelli (two time Lola winner for Gegen die Wand & Die Fremde), Susanne Lothar (a three time Lola nominee who died last year) and maybe the best young German actor of our generation August Diehl (who you've seen in Inglourious Basterds and Salt but he's been nominated for the Lola three times and won for "23"). It would be a great pleasure to read a post about any of them.

Two current German greats: August Diehl & Sibel Kekilli

Hey, surely you've noticed my love for Sibel Kekilli. So great every time (though it was weird to see her do that romantic comedy What a Man)

Yes I noticed that. I think she was the best of the cast in What a Man, too but not a good movie. But Head-On. What a performance!

Agreed. Name your three favorite movies in the following genres. Horror, Comedy, Drama, Musical and SciFi. Go...

Horror: The Exorzist, Psycho, Silence of the Lambs (if I put it into this genre)
Comedy: Some Like It Hot, Tootsie, Pillow Talk
Drama: The Godfather (1 & 2), American Beauty, All about Eve (if I could choose 5: Sunset Boulevard and The Hours)
Musical: West Side Story, Chicago, Moulin Rouge!
Sci-Fi: Alien & Aliens, Blade Runner, Terminator (1 & 2).

Do you care about a significant other's taste in movies?

The Answer ist YES! It sounds a bit overdone, but I have a problem with guys, who don't like Kate Winslet in general or have mainstream taste of movies and don't feel complex emotions. The movie that comes to mind is Brokeback Mountain. This movie is not about a gay couple, its about love and why two people can't be together because of external and internal circumstances. Heartbreaking! But I think some hearts are too cold to feel that and that is not what I am looking for. (I hope most readers will know what I mean?)

Patrick with his great love Kate Winslet

I understand you are kind of a lot obsessed with Kate Winslet. What other actors/actresses really grab you?

Julianne Moore. She's still so underappreciated it makes me burst me into tears. I also love Bette Davis, Thelma Ritter, Sean Penn, most of the work of Nicole Kidman and Michelle Williams, the 70s and 80s Work of Meryl Streep (but getting tired of her work after the brilliant Angels of America), Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling and many more.

Take an Oscar away. Regift it.

Only one? I love the Oscars, but wanna change so much, especially the Oscars for Kim Basinger & Catherine Zeta-Jones (both to Julianne Moore). The biggest fault from the last decade was the Oscar for Tom Hooper's Direction of The King´s Speech. TKS was good, but the direction was TV-Movie-Material I think and The Social Network is by miles superior! If Colin Firth had pick up Best Actor Oscar the Year before for his brilliant performance in A Single Man maybe he wouldn't have won Frontrunner Status and The Kings Speech wouldn't win Best Picture and Director??? When Kathryn Bigelow announced Hooper as the "winner" it was the only time I completely lost interest in the other awards for the evening; it STILL hurts!

Previous Reader Spotlights
And our imaginary Honorary Reader Oscars go to...
lovely ladies: Mysjkin, Lynn Lee, Ester, Leehee, Jamie and Dominique 
(and yes we need to hear from more of the girls) 
dashing gents: Christian, Lucio, Joey Moser, Zé Vozone, Tony T, Andy Hoglund, Ferdi, K.M. Soehnlein, Sergio, Borja, John, Chris, Peter, Ziyad, Andrew, Yonatan, Keir, Kyle, Vinci, Victor, Bill, Hayden, Murtada, Cory, Walter, Paolo, and BBats

With Six You Get Link Roll

Movies.com has all the distribution deals from TIFF so you can see which films are coming your way in 2013
Deadline Kate Winslet's Titanic screen test!
Culture Monster Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert to team for Jean Genet's The Maids. Alas, not for the screen.

Pajiba 20 Lessons Hollywood can learn from this summer
Flickr Truly amazing photoset of California billboards from 1974/1975 including billboards of Oscar interest

Today's Must Read
"Extraordinary Machines" by Steven Hyden which looks back at the celebrity coupledom of Paul Thomas Anderson and Fiona Apple, the way they were, and the way they are now divergent.

It had been his intention to write a conventional 90-minute comedy for Adam Sandler, whom he met while tagging along with Apple when she performed on Saturday Night Live in 2000. What he actually made was more like a Fiona Apple song — a disorienting mishmash of bright melody and percussive dissonance, with a main character who was odd and oddly compelling and prone to oddly explosive, out-of-nowhere outbursts. Unfortunately for Punch-Drunk Love, Fiona Apple songs were still a few years away from returning to fashion, and the film died at the box office.

It's a really insightful piece about two of showbusiness's most fascinating artists. So go read it.

A Modern Day Fleming?

Jose here. I am fully aware that Stephen Daldry isn't among the most beloved filmmakers in the world; however, I feel that he's earned a bad rep on some extremely unfair bases, given that he excels at a kind of filmmaking that was the norm during Hollywood's golden age. His entire career seems to have been made to piss off auteur theorists, and today on Mr. Daldry's 52nd birthday, I couldn't help but wonder: is he a modern day Victor Fleming?

Click to read more ...

"Titanic" Times Three. And Forever.

I had grand plans for the Titanic centennial, plans filled with a supersize hubris not unlike the power players at the White Star Lines albeit without the deadly consequences. It would be the biggest boldest blog post ever and would compare every last detail of all film versions of Titanic from costuming to art direction to special effects to young loves lost in the icy waters.  Film Experience readers would feel as if they'd won the lottery for a first class ticket, no slumming in steerage required! But before I drive this analogy into an uncomfortably tone deaf iceberg moment -- like the one James Cameron collided with when he mixed "King of the World" bragging with that moment of silence for a 1517 souls lost on the tragic night -- I will stop and just get on with it. Picture time!

Titanic (1943), Titanic (1953), and Titanic (1997)

Here is a brief visual history of the Titanic sinking via the greatest of all art forms, The Movies. All images are culled from films named Titanic directed by Germany's Herbert Selpin, the Romanian Hollywood success Jean Negulesco, and Canada's box office colossus James Cameron in 1943, 1953 and 1997. These are hardly the only films about the infamous oceanic disaster even if you exclude the filmed narratives where the disaster is only a minor plot point in everything from one of the earliest best picture winners Cavalcade (1933) to today's popular British series Downton Abbey (2010-)

The three Titanics begin very differently... before settling in as narrative siblings.

The German film begins with a board meaning at White Star Line staging the event as a cautionary tale about big business. The 1953 picture begins with an eery human-free depiction of the forming of an iceberg that Malick might love (though it instantly flips back to a stuffy 50s drama). The 1997 blockbuster begins with a contemporary dive with an explorer (Bill Paxton) and an old survivor Rose (Gloria Stuart) about to reminisce... cue three hour flashback!!!

After that they're much more similar. We get...

Click to read more ...

Linksploitation

Digital Spy Kate Winslet on Titanic then and now "he's fatter now - I'm thinner."
Baltimore Magazine an oral history of Diner (1982) the influential comedy.
Acidemic interesting piece on The Hunger Games as the They Shoot Horses Don't They of 2012
Rope of Silicon Christoph Waltz on the set of Django Unchained. First look at his character's look.
Furious Cinema films that may have influenced Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained.

The House Next Door 15 Famous Movie Bullies 
Empire new Brave character posters. So much red hair.
Stirred Straight Up... Olivia, Newton, Johns (hee)
Awards Daily Jennifer Lawrence. She's happening.
Cinema Blend Danny Boyle making a short James Bond film with Daniel Craig? Stirring.
Gold Derby Adam Sandler and Adam Sandler and Jack and Jill took all 10 of the Razzie Awards! Clean sweep. 
Guardian a bizarre story of a leprosy joke cut from The Pirates! the new animated movie. 
Pajiba on the casting of Ashton Kutchner as Steve Jobs in a biopic.

The casting is ridiculous. I mean, it’s like Ashton Kutcher playing Steve Jobs: Yes, the most extreme, hyperbolic comparison I can make is THE ACTUAL CASTING.

lmfao.

Finally... enjoy this 5 second delight called "Vampire Bash" by António Silva