I forgot to tell you about the Lives of Others

Which is a mistake because it's a really good film. Essentially it's about a Stasi (east-German secret police) officer tasked with bugging a stalking a prominent playwright to make sure that neither he, his girlfriend or their friends engage in any subversive activity or even have any thoughts or ideas that go against the values of the totalitarian state. I won't give too much away but as the fall of the communist bloc demonstrates that miserable conformism does not fair well when compared with creative freedom.

The only niggle I had with the film was that by choosing to tell the story through the prism of the estranged relationship between the two protagonists the film assumes that the audience fully understands just how grim East Germany was and how deeply unpleasant the Stasi were so it may have gone over a few peoples heads but for a budget of 2 million I don't expect the film makers were expecting it to be seen by an audience that wasn't familiar with time.

It was a bit worrying that on the DVD extras there was a gallery of were meant to be very sinister Statsi surveillance tools and when presented with the surveillance video camera they only thing I could think was "Oh it looks like a really crap CCTV camera."

There is also a little bit, right at the end of the film that proves that yes indeed the Germans actually do have a sense of humour after all.


I also watched the Black Dahlia which turned out to be a deeply disappointing experience.
It could be that a film directed by Brian Depalma starring Hillary Swank, Scarlett Johansson and Josh Hartnet raised my expectations more then could ever be expected to delivered but the film never ever felt like anything more then a second rate attempt to remake LA Confidential.

One of the main problems the film had was that it tried to take on far, far to much by attempting to marry a story about the relationship between two very different but complimentary police officers with another story about each of these officers with one of the officers wives with another story about one of the policemen’s relationship with the daughter of a rich family all wrapped up in a murder mystery. Plus they seemed to think that the only vital ingredient for a film nior is bad lighting and to have every talking in hushed but earnest tone.

All this meant by the time the final whodunit reveal finally turned up I left far from caring and the final twist in the stories tale left me slightly less then shocked.

I have to admitted the dull disappointment of that film has sorted of clouded the rest of my week in an air of futility so as far as I'm concerned there has been nothing interesting in the news apart from the shocking announcements that those who are accused of plotting Sept 11th will possibly face the death penalty in a trial that will happen just before the US election and that apparently different nations have been spying on each other.

I did today begin the second stage of that grievance thingy but I suspect the organisation will gone to carry out a time consuming a tedious investigation before bottling out of the final decision.

Not really much to add so I'm off to the pub.