After watching this breathtaking movie “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” (directed by Ana Lily Armirpour) I am more and more convinced that there is a fundamental difference between movies maade by Iranian cinematographers living and working abroad for reasons of personal and artistic freedom, and movies made by Iranians at home. The latter are usually praised for the… (more…)
Franz Kafkas novels and stories were all too complex, too ambigious and without a clear message to be turned into a Hollywood blockbuster. Even the French nouvelle vague, Italian neorealism nor the German expressionist cinema had any ambitions to use Kafkas literature as a movie plot (With the exception of Orson Welles’ version of “The Trial”). But now comes a movie… (more…)
One of the highest valued novels of contemporary German literature has been written by the late Wolfgang Herrndorf, whos early death in 2013 was perhaps not only the big loss of a great literature talent, but of many yet unwritten books as well. Unlike the recent death of Gunther Grass, whos most creative period ended perhaps in 1988 with his… (more…)
This is a photo of my mother, in the mid 50s. She poses on a 350ccm AWO motorbike, which is a shame that it got lost over the years. I know that she drove to the clinic when she was pregnant with me. When I was 16 and with our rat pack made the first illegal rides on 50ccm scooters,… (more…)
In one of Monthy Python’s series there was this animated cartoon (by Terry Gillian) about the eminent yellow danger, world wide communist conspiracy that finally causes dental canker and severe tooth loss in people of the free, western countries. To combat this threat, all people in the free western world should therefor use the new toothpaste “Crelm”, making the teeth… (more…)
We had a furious hurrican recently, which broke down the three largest trees in our garden. Luckily, except from a completely damaged wooden hut where we keep garden stuff, ski and bicycles, nothing else was broken. I wish I had more time to sit peacefully with our dog and something good to read. Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend… (more…)
I had a crash with my bicycle a week ago, and I still feel the pain. It was my very own fault. I can not blame anyone else than myself. In fact, it was not my inability to ride a bike, but it was a combination of stinginess and too well working bike brakes. I use to listen to some… (more…)
In two weeks time, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) will release its 3rd World Happiness Report (to avoid any confusion, it won’t deal with happiness in the “Third World” as the developing countries were name in the past). Using a standard set of questionaires and socio-economic parameters, it will rank 156 countries in terms of higher or… (more…)
RIght in time with the agreement between Iran and five permanent UN security council member states and Germany about the limitations of IRIs nuclear activity and the lift of the economic sanctions, the Iranian national bank has issued a new banknote of 50.000 rial. Whereas the old one from 2007, designed under the command of the late IRI president Ahmadenijad,… (more…)
Now I understand why I had to wait for years for a new Amoz Oz novel. It is because a novel as amazing as “Judas” can only arise after the author spend quite some time, to let the characters and their relationships ferment and mature like a good wine. I would call it a centuries novel, and one easily feels… (more…)