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Reviews
Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin (2008)
Brutal Russians Hordes
Being of German blood and having a mother who actually lived through the experience of living in Berlin as the Russian armies marched in, I was looking forward to a film that mirrored the experiences that she lived through. She joined to watch and disappeared about half an hour into the movie. Germans at the time thought of Russians as brutal subhumans and that was part of the justification for conquering & enslaving them so that the more deserving master race could take over their lands. Looks like some still have that attitude. My mother does not, nor do most of her friends who also experienced the war from various parts of Berlin and Germany. Sure rapes did happen, but not to the extent that this movie portrays where every day consisted endless Russian abuses. My mother was not raped once, nor any of her friends. The Russian soldiers were human - some good, some bad - no different than any other human beings. She tells the story of an extremely drunk Russian soldier invading the basement they were hiding in as their first contact. Yes he did drag a woman off into the corner, no doubt a terrifying experience. But then before he could do any damage he fell asleep & started snoring.
RiP: A Remix Manifesto (2008)
No idea is 100% original
We are the sum of all our experiences and what we have learned from other people. Only a new born baby could possibly be 100% original. What happened to George Harrison with the My Sweet Lord/He's So Fine legal case was ridiculous. We need to restore sensibility to our copyright laws. The net effect of today's copyright laws are self serving to the corporations and rarely benefit the original creator. As mentioned previously the original creator is lucky to receive 10% of the final selling price. As with everything else today corporate property rights have higher priority than almost anything else including our democratic freedoms.
But I do agree that some protection must be there so that one is rewarded for their hard work. My suggestions: Time limit such as with patents. Too much great creativity is rotting away because some greedy person (most likely not the author) wants more. Don't allow copyrights to be sold. Only the original creator can benefit from his/her work.
Passchendaele (2008)
Cheezy - should be called Passiondale
This has got to be the worst Canadian movie I've ever seen.
I guess it affects me more because I had such high hopes for this movie. I even bought the book, when I saw it on sale at Costco, but then I began to suspect the worst with the huge grade 2 sized typeset that could be read in 2 hours, and that nobody had dared claim credit for writing the book.
How fitting that this battle was fought around "Passiondale" - it couldn't be a more fitting title for the movie. Most of the film was romance and passion developed around Calgary to the finale in the middle of the battlefield.
I accept that movies need to entertain and so can tolerate that reality often needs to go by the wayside, but this was way too far off the mark.
All the characters are so artificial and cookie cutter. "Patriotic" old folks gleefully sending their children off to gruesome death (kids stupidly eager for adventure) and mercilessly hounding the slackers who don't volunteer. There's always a few idiots around like that, but it seems from this film that most of Calgary was filled with them. After all why did we come to Canada, but to escape from the European way of life?
Battle scenes are properly gruesome, but otherwise illogically worse than anything I've seen in American war movies. I'm not in the least offended by putting Christ figures into the movie, I just think it was totally stupid and cheezy as done here. Hero gets blasted somehow into a guy on the cross figure and both sides stop butchering each other and cooperate to take down this blasphemy. Huh???
I've seen some excellent Canadian movies, but this is not one of them.