Yesterday evening, we went to see the new Wallace & Gromit movie. It was as bizarre and funny as one would have expected from the previous short films and in general I liked it. But I also agree with people who say that it's not a stroke of genius. This may be due to the fact that one has seen the type of jokes before and the bonus of the new is gone. Of course, this is unfair critics: if they changed style and wit, people would have been dispappointed, if not, well then maybe it's not as ridiculously funny as the first time any more.

Nevertheless, there are quite a few hilarious moments and it surely wansn't a waste of time and money. I liked the references to other movies and the self-references to their short films. Furthermore, it has retained the preposterous way of how things work in W&G's world and this alone makes it worth seeing.

Last week-end I watched the whole Firefly series, well, there are not so may episodes made before the show got cancelled. I had heard good things of it before but thought that it probably was overrated and hyped, so I had ignored it until I learned that there was a movie coming out as well. Of course, I had to prepare myself for the film by watching the series first.

I was pleasantly surprised. Although there is some special-effects eye-candy, the focus is on the characters. It's about a rather wrecked crew on-board an old space-ship that struggles to get through by delivery jobs (mind the Futurama parallel) and criminal activities. All this in a future world which definitely has some totalitarian traits but also a large fraction of uncontrolled, violent and wild west attitude. It is definitely the first time that I saw people on horses (with cowboy hats and stuff), cows and spaceship in the same context. So once I started watching the first episode, I had to watch them all at once. Luckily, there are only 14 of them so I lost only one afternoon and evening.

Back to the movie, Serenity: It's a direct continuation to the series and is equally good. Some questions and secrets that were build up in the series are answered and revealed, although I think that it is possible to see the movie without knowing the series.

Final remark: why on earth do most major films start so long after the US-release over here? Looking forward to see it on the big screen in a few weeks...

Zozo will be Swedens entry for "Best Foreign Language Film" for the upcoming Academy Awards. I watched it yesterday at the cinema and must say that I did not like it too much. To be precise, I did not dislike it, but cannot be even be slightly enthousiastic about it either. It is a touching story about a boy, Zozo, losing his parents in 1987 Beirut, just when they were to emigrate to Sweden. Well, the boy makes it to his grand-parents in Sweden and finds it not to be paradise as he gets mobbed at school and so on. That's it. In my opinion, much time is wasted by not making a significant jump forward in time when it has become clear that Zozo has to make the trip alone. On the other hand, this allowed a more detailed description of the boy's perception of the situation. The phantasies that result from this are for sure the highlights of the film, including the talking little chicken.

During the last week, I have watched two movies that may not go unmentioned. First of all, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Tim Burton with Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. Such a hilarious and bizarre movie - I loved it and laughed a lot while watching it. A must see.

Second, Donnie Darko. A weird film with many open space for interpretation. Although the fuss about time travel and the excerpts from a ficticious book called "The Philosophy of Time Travel" have nothing to do with either of the two, the question remains if the unnatural things that happen are pure hallucination by schizophrenic Donnie or if it is meant to be a Science-Fiction movie. I prefer the former interpretation. Also worth mentioning is the typical late-eighties set in which the film plays. This - in conjunction with the rather cheap special effects - can nearly make you forget that this is a movie from 2001. All in all, it's fair to classify this film as "strange" and therefore worth seeing! :-)

See here for all my movie comments

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I just watched the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica. With terror, I figured out that this already was the last episode of Season 2 and of course, it ended with a classic cliffhanger! Too bad - I now have to wait until next year to know how it will continue. This series is a remake of the classic 1978 series, also called "Battlestar Galactica". I really enjoyed occasionally watching this new SciFi series during the last months. It has a rather advanced plot that gets driven forward significantly in each episode. The dark atmosphere and the focus on the fracked-up characters instead of special effects make it further appealing. Highly recommendable if you have a soft spot for Science-Fiction.

I just found a very nice animated movie that explains the so called "trusted computing". Download it using a torrent or directly from their site. More info at www.againsttcpa.com.

I'm back home. The connection with Germanwings from Berlin-Schönefeld to Stockholm-Arlanda is excellent: I left Christian's place in Berlin-Moabit at 8.40am and was at my office in Uppsala at 1.30pm. I just fixed the messy previous blog-entry. As a conclusion of our eventful week-end in Berlin, we went to a movie theatre yesterday evening and watched Broken Flowers - Bill Murray at his best!

Sanna and I recently went by the local independant movie theater and found that Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" was starting in 5 minutes. It is from 1964, has Peter Sellers in three roles and satiricly deals with the ficticious upcome of a nuclear war. I had not seen it before, but heard of it, so we went in. It's fantastic, hilarious and if you haven't seen it - DO IT NOW! ;-)

I haven't watched many films lately, but here are some that I liked:

• Whiskey (south-american film)
• Star Wars III :-)
• Sin City
• The new Hitchhiker movie
• German movie: Die Fetten Jahre Sind Vorbei
• Sideways

This movie is totally meaningless and absurd. I love it! :-)
Bill Murray as a wrecked up oceanographer that fakes his movies. Hilarious!

I like computer animated movies. Sure, they usually do not belong to the most sophisitcated films concerning the plot, but hey! light entertainment is ok sometimes. I liked the pioneering ones like Toy Story or Shrek, and still today it's mainly child friendly topics that are made into such movies. Recent example: Finding Nemo (that one was great fun!). The latest addition to the list from Pixar is "The Incredibles". I think this one, containing lots of action scenes, is targeted to an older audience, and yes, I liked that one, too. :-)

what a bad movie. lots of violence and a crude philosophy of revenge that is even generalised at the end to turn into self justice. Sure, go on propagate that it is ok, to punish people yourself when you think the state does not do it. Crap - this violates the fundamental principle that the state has the monopoly on force.

Robin Williams made some really bad movies (Mrs. Doubtfire) but this one is great. He plays a radio DJ (Adrian Cronauer) for the US Army during the war in Vietnam. Adrian is insubordinate and does his funny radio show. I surely missed some of his jokes... He later discovers that his closest Vietnamese friend organises bomb attacks for the Viet Cong.

I saw it yesterday with a buch of collegues on our institute's projector. Brasilian movie about a gang fight in Rio's slum "City of Gods". Its follows the lives of a few key persons, among them the gang leader and the narrator who struggles to keep himself out of things and wants to become a photographer. A lot of violence is shown. Based on a true story. Very good film. Read more here.

A short list of films I want to see that just came to my mind:

• Anything Else, the new film by Woody Allen
• more Woody Allen films
• Some Kind of Monster, Metallica (have seen it in the meantime - not too bad. rich guys who have to hire a therapist to get their personal problems fixed to get the new album done. good film music ;-))
• 2001, A Space Odyssee
• Metropolis