Postcards from Oz - AU Edition

Watching an interview from the Leipzip book fair where you can see the interviewee (looking uncomfortable and somewhat distanced right from the start) getting increasingly uncooperative with each ensueing question. Not good? Right? Even worse if the interviewer happens to be a professional journalist possessing an academic degree in German literature.  (For a few years she even occupied a teaching position at the University of Milan.) So one should expect a certain amount of interesting actual discussion going on there, thoughtful questions, perhaps even honest curiosity. Right?

Among the questions asked in front of rather large audience were the following treasures:

"Did you take drugs when you wrote that?"

"Your protagonist reminds me of Parsifal. You are familiar with Parsifal, aren't you?" (Interviewee was looking puzzled, due to the Parsifal connection being somewhat far-fetched. I would have been puzzled as well. Also one should not forget to mention that both the interviewee's parents are high profile stage actors, a small biographical detail adding even more to the insult.)

Last but not least:

"What did your parents say to your book? Do they like it?"

 

*headdesk*
 

• Hans Fallada: Ein Mann will nach oben
• Heirich Geiselberger, Tobias Moorstedt (Red.): Big Data, Das Neue Versprechen der Allwissenheit, Suhrkamp 2013 (a collection of academic and non-academic essays dealing with the consequences and possibilities of Big Data as a cultural, economical and political phenomenon)

What I'm currently watching on DVD:

• Quantum Leap, selected episodes, re-watch ;)
• The Undersea World of Jaques Cousteau I (which, btw. has an incredibly Star Trek-like flair to it)

 

• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
• Only Lovers Left Alive
• Inside Llewyn Davis

 

• Alexander Calder at the Kunstsammlung NRW, two days before closing

 

• the ever amazing Käptn Peng in Oberhausen (Yes, I'm too old for this, but still so much fun. )

Mikroben, Kugelblitze und der ganze Rest, (F.A.Z., 02.06.2013)

"Zwischen Ulk und Einsamkeit, verspieltem Jazz und und rhythmischem Rock - Ab ins Universum: Käptn Peng und die Tentakel von Delphi lösen den Diskurspop im Tanzrausch auf

[...]

Only just about twenty-five people at special premiere screening of a film at a small arthouse cinema (with both the movie's director and parts of the cast present!) should be bound to indicate something, shouldn't it?

Please feel welcome to choose freely from the following more or less likely options below. More than just one correct answer is possible:

A) This surely isn't the new Hobbit or Justin Bieber movie.
B) Whatever Bimo and Cavendish went to see this weekend at the Astra in Essen was incredibly pointless and boring rubbish. I'm sure everyone (including the poor director) had an absolutely lousy and awkward time.
C) What the audience saw was a smart, witty, well-acted, well-observed comedy, highly entertaining and at times rather endearing. Relaxed and interesting discussion ensued.
D) Obviously this movie was one of those neat little films, which, due to lack of advertising budget will disappear from cinemas far too soon. A clear case of run and try to watch as long as it is shown in a theatre near you.

Well, if you've picked A, C and D, you've chosen wisely, as Dietrich Brüggemann's comedy Drei Zimmer/Küche/Bad is just this. Witty, surprisingly poignant at times and thus well worth seeing. Starting from its basic premise "Eight friends, four seasons, eleven different moving days" both the script and the very fine ensemble cast  manage to touch upon the full scale of chaos and complexities that usually come along with moving forwards or backwards in life. Moving in, moving out, searching, finding, regardless whether the need to do so should arise in your mid-twenties or much later.