The boy in the Striped Pyjamas

This film finally made it to Vilnius. It's an English film (in cooperation with the BBC) and it sure shows! The music (lush, Ronnie Hazlehurst type style), the very middle-class English conversation....

It's a variation on the Auschwitz theme; about a guy who is promoted to be commander of Auschwitz and moves there with his family. It's told from the viewpoint of his 8-year-old son, who himself feels in a bit of a prison, in the commander's house - a dull, grey, building outside the camp, which also seems to serve as the commander's office. Finally Bruno manages to find a secret way out of the enclosed house and garden, and, exploring the surroundings, ends up outside the fence of Auschwitz, on the other side of which just happens to sit 8-year-old Shmuel, an inmate. They become friends.....

The commander's mother does not approve of the Nazis, and, once his wife finds out what happens in the camp, neither does she. But it's too late....

There are some historical inaccuracies - I am sure the camps were surrounded by double fences, at least of one was electrified. Therefore the story could not have happened the way it was told, if at all.  I am not sure, also, that at a Nazi party someone would have sung in English.

About the end - I'm afraid I thought 'serves them right'...

The Lithuanian subtitles and the English talk did seem to have a bit of a gap; it was rather freely translated.

Am Ende kommen die Touristen

After a small debate with one of my readers about the deluge of holocaust literature, last night I found myself watching a German film set ... in Auschwitz.

It's a strange little film which does not seem to be going anywhere, much like the main character, Sven. Sven is a young German who is sent to carry out his civil service (alternative to military service) working in the Auschwitz youth hostel and museum.  It's quite common for young men to go abroad to do this - in an obscure corner of Russia I once met a couple of such guys working with children with disabilities.  More normally they work in German hospitals and social institutions, which without this low-cost workforce would probably face much more severe financial problems than they do already.

Sven's job, frankly, is that of a gofer. He is assigned to look after an old man, Kchimsky (in his mid-eighties) who is a camp survivor and whose job it is to maintain and restore the suitcases that were left by the Auschwitz victims on the way to the gas chambers. Sven takes Kchimsky to his physiotherapy sessions, and to events at which Kchimsky talks to young people about his time as an Auschwitz 'resident'. In between Sven helps out here and there, and regularly, because of language problems and inexperience, gets himself into trouble. At one stage a group of young German apprentices (in Poland??) sets up a memorial in a village which formerly had been Auschwitz III. Kchimsky speaks at the opening, but is cut short by the company's director - and Sven's protest about this is not much cared for.  It makes me wonder how many locations in and around Auschwitz have similar memorials planted by well-meaning Germans....

There's a vague love interest, too, when he moves in with a female colleague and her complicated brother, but this falls apart when the colleague gets an opportunity to study abroad.

It was quite interesting, particularly seeing how busy Auschwitz is with tourist buses etc, but generally I felt much at a loss like Sven. But it was a short film, so that was all right.
 

Mamma Mia!

Everyone who is anyone in Vilnius musical life was in the 'Mamma Mia! - the Movie' last night. Well, at least David Geringas and I (separately...).

I must admit that when the film opened and a perfect set of American teeth came out with an observation that was pure 12-year-old, I seriously considered leaving. But I like Abba songs.

What followed, was pure summer holiday escapism for all the family. A seriously contrived, happy little story set on a beautiful island, interspersed with lots of Abba songs, and then some stuck on at the end which they obviously couldn't fit into the film.

There was some great acting - Julie Walters at her best - singing, dancing, acting, and then, and then? Let's move on to the singing. Here we had actors singing the Abba songs, hardly ever in a group of 4 like the originals. At least they did not mime the original songs, but then again, some people clearly cannot sing - like Colin Firth - it was cringe-making. And the voices did not always fit the songs, and I wonder if some of the words were changed. And the accompaniments, were they original or arranged? They did not seem to quite fit. This could lead to a paper on 'original' performances in music - sadly, of Bach there are no recordings.....

So, it's a happy, good mood, funny little film with nice music, one you could take even the young children to (as long as you can explain the concept of a person having three fathers), but if I wanted to see a film with Abba music, I would always go for 'Muriel's Wedding' which has the original songs, and considerably more bite than 'Mamma Mia!'.

Irina Palm

Her talents lie ...in the palm of her hand.

This film review is going to have people looking at my blog for the wrong reason again.....'Irina Palm' is a film about a widow (Maggie) in her fifties, living in an English village not far from London, whose grandson is terminally ill with cancer. The family is trying everything to get him treated, trying out all sorts of new treatments. Finally the only treatment possible is in Australia; but they have to pay to get there - and already they have no money. What to do?

The parents and Maggie ask for loans and are turned down; Maggie looks for a job, the people in the jobcentre almost laugh at her (no skills, no work history), and then in Soho she passes a sex club which is advertising for hostesses.

The Eastern European owner, much the same age as her, does not quite know what to do with this silent middle-aged frump sitting opposite him, until he touches her hands, and gets an idea.

So she gets a job wanking off men. But she cannot tell anyone. Turns out she is very good at it. Meanwhile back in the village people her rather set-in-their-ways friends cannot work out what kind of work she has.....

It's a very quiet little film - there was a moment when I wondered whether Marianne Faithfull (Maggie) would actually have a speaking part. But not many people speak in the film....A bit of a typical British film, kind of bitter-sweet, with the sad story about the child, and a few funny scenes in the sex club and particularly back in the village, where the village shop assistant, who possibly really never says anything, has a face that speaks volumes. And it's very tastefully filmed - you never see a willy....

Well worth going to see!

Anthony Minghella RIP

That nice Anthony Minghella has died, aged 54. Apparently it was an operation that had gone wrong. He was the director of 'An English Patient' and other films, and he was a lovely person.

He came to Vilnius about three years ago to direct the Madam Butterfly cooperation with the ENO and the MET. It was a stunning production the likes of which the Lithuanian public had not seen before, including some complicated Japanese puppet work, and amazing costumes. Other people and I chatted to him during a reception prior to the premiere and found him a really personable, self-deprecating guy.

What a shame.

(Picture from the Guardian)

Homesick!

Found 'The History Boys' on my return home (must have travelled for only two months from Ayr to Vilnius. Thanks, Pat!).

Wow, it's so wonderful - and so a different world now. Those teachers (hmmm, well) would you get them like this now, in times of targets (and, er, not touching the boys)? That nice school, with its little minibus, those neat school uniforms, those interesting lessons? No mobile phones, hardly any traffic on the streets? Seeing those old actors again, Frances de la Tour (what was her name again in Rising Damp?), Richard Griffiths, Penelope Wilton, that Clive whatisname who always seemed to play headmasters, some more evil than others.....

I see the story is by Alan Bennett - that explains it all! (Including the camp teachers?)

Right nostalgic it made me! Sometimes I really miss that place (and those years.....)

What am I atoning for?

was what I was asking myself while sitting through the interminable film 'Atonement'. Jeeez!

It was my own fault for not checking it out better. I think I may have read the book(yes, in fact it's sitting there on my bookshelf, looking distinctly read) but obviously I blocked out stuff. Particularly the war stuff. I hate British and American war films; the British ones are all plucky Cockney subalterns caring for those above (or apparently above) their station, and having more common sense than their officers will ever have. If they are not that, it's the guys in the tavern/bistrot/Kneipe singing along to a chap with a banjo. (Music as social glue and all that). Large chunk of war scenes in this film. Not convinced that our chaps would include a rather large black guy - black yes, rather large, not sure. Also our hero walks along and then stands in front of a cinema screen while a film is running, and neither does he throw a shadow, nor does anyone shout at him for standing in the way? Not convinced, not one bit.

So the film (and book) is awf'lly English. Large country house, dippy and rather romantic young daughter of the family, who understands nothing, including how to walk gracefully (had she been watching too much Joyce Grenfell?), sees something, adds two and two together with her imagination and makes seven, and her sister's boyfriend ends up in prison before you can say 'Bob's yer uncle'. Eventually, she starts feeling guilty, by which time it's far too late.

McEwan, the writer, does lovely descriptions - but this does not translate well to film; it's far too langurous, and wallows in sentiment, cliche and self-pity. Like I did by the time it finally came to an end (self-pity that is). James McAvoy was wonderful, though. I see he's a Glasgow lad - I thought I had heard a wee Scottish burr....

Slightly tarnished halo

Was watching this DVD about Jacqueline Du Pre last night, in absence of anything better on TV (Poulenc's Carmelites, isn't that one of the few modern operas with the viola d'amore? Yes, I should have watched it, but....). A slightly complicated DVD, trying to find the relevant bits; it seems to have more than one film about it. On my first attempt I found lots of snippets about all sorts of people (like Segovia and other non JDP people), then I came across a film called 'Remembering Jacqueline', and really late I found one other. There might be another one yet.

'Remembering Jacqueline' was ok; a collection of people talking about her after her death, interspersed with shots generally of her blue eyes. I did not much care for the extremely skinny American lady who was all perfect teeth and eyes, but I really liked her doctor who was the soul of professional discretion.

JDP is my gold standard as far as the Elgar is concerned (which I am sure I am still to find somewhere on this DVD) - and maybe I'll change my mind. In some of the other scenes I thought she was rather playing to the camera. There was an awesome moment when a quintet, including Zubin Mehta on double bass, swapped round their instruments. JDP ended up with a violin which she held upside down, and promptly launched, from memory, into the beginning of the Mendelssohn violin concerto (which she would not have been in much danger to get involved with normally).

What disturbed me, however, was her playing of the Kol Nidre. Not only did it accompany a scene which was not the most fitting (she and her beloved Danny were visiting the EMI recording studio, meeting the delightful Suvi Raj Grubb to discuss some Brahms recording; though she seemed to spend more time gazing into Danny's eyes), but her playing of it was rather jaunty, not that far off the Golliwog's Cakewalk. Those of us who heard Misha Maisky play this piece in Vilnius in 2004 will never cease to be moved by his sobbing interpretation of the piece (I wonder if he has recorded it). But then again, I suppose at the time JDP was young and had probably not at that stage experienced much pain and suffering.

What was also remarkable in the film, the live JDP scenes having been shot in the 60s and early 70s, was how much she seemed to be engaged in ordinary life; walking along the street with her (expensive?) cello in her hand, waiting at a bus stop...There's a lovely scene where she wanders along a street, away from the camera - as she disappears into the distance, a delivery boy's bicycle slowly topples over in the foreground. No doubt totally overcome by awe.

It's a stunning collection of films.

Four minutes

Didn't we have the phrase 'four-minute warning' about the countdown to nuclear (or as a Canadian acquaintance recently called it 'nucular') war?

This '4 minutes' is a German film. If you like unusual films and you like romantic piano music, you might like this film. On the other hand, people who like romantic piano music are often sensitive souls, with an eye for beauty - this film is not for them.

It's intense, it's violent, it's brutal - an onslaught on the emotions. Not sure that I can tell you all about it, seeing as I only saw about half of it: the cinema was packed, we were late and sat on the stairs, peering round the side of a pillar (it was the Tbilisi film festival, and among the German films there were not many recent ones, though a lot of Fassbinder films, which are really quite old now).

The story is about a piano teacher in her 80s (Monica Bleibtreu), who pays her own money to take a grand piano to prison, and gives piano lessons. Amongst the 3 or 4 people she teachers she finds a highly talented, but also very very angry and damaged girl. They finally get themselves together, not without many ups and downs, and prepare for the Jugend musiziert competition, the main youth music competition in Germany, which has rounds from local to regional to state to national level. To win anything at national level, in a country of 80 million people, is to be the bees' knees.

In and around this story are other problems in the prison, a frustrated warder who knows all operatic arias and enters a TV competition not very successfully, another warder who does not understand that one cannot play the piano with hands handcuffed behind the back, the girl's behaviour, the other women's behaviour (and I always thought German jails were nice and well organised - think again). The piano teacher has her own difficult past going back to the war....

The film is not entirely believable - the repertoire for the competition is too narrow, and the end is just unlikely; also one asks oneself whether an 80-year-old lady would be encouraged to take on a violent 20-year-old; though in this case the 80-year-old fought her corner well to be allowed to do so. Also the idea of transporting a grand piano on an open flat-bed truck in the rain just lacks a tiny bit of credibility.

However, the film is extremely powerful. It certainly does not make a statement in the sense of that French film about M Mathieu and his children, that music heals all wounds. Or does it? The ending does not look all that hopeful (and is just sooo unbelievable, though the music, specially written for the film at this point, is brilliant!).

It's a bit on the long side, or maybe I just felt that because of seating conditions (111 minutes), and the music is a bit too much the same, most of the time - but it's still well worth seeing, just because it is so different. It seems to have won lots of prizes, too.

Yaşamın Kıyısında

Went to see this film, called 'Auf der anderen Seite' in German. It's made by a Turkish-German film-maker, Fatih Akim, and includes stars like Hanna Schygulla, playing a concerned mum. It's kind of a strange film, and of course I saw it in Turkish, with the occasional bit in German subtitled. Hence I now know the Turkish word for 'sh*t'.

It's sort of three stories, which are connected. An old Turk in Germany goes to a prostitute and falls in love with her. Not sure if that actually happens at the first visit, or when she is threatened and asks him for help. He invites her to live with him, and introduces her to his son, who is a 'Germanistik'-professor at Hamburg University. Not sure if he wants the single son to marry her. But before anything develops, disaster strikes....Cut.

A young woman, Ayten, in Turkey is involved in some political upheaval, including the carrying of a gun, and when she sees her flatmates arrested, she flees the country to Germany, where her mother lives (lived?- and guess who is the mother??). She comes in as an illegal immigrant, cannot find her mother, goes to the University where she sleeps through a lecture by the professor (see above) and is finally picked up by a young woman, Lotte, who falls in love with her. The young woman's mum looks on with concern. Eventually Ayten is caught, fails her asylum seeker test. Lotte follows her to Istanbul to try and get her out of prison; she rents a room in the professor's flat who has by now moved to Istanbul....disaster strikes....Cut.

Lotte's mum travels to Istanbul to find traces and memories of her daughter, visits the professor to see her daughter's room, and ends up staying there.....And then what? Search me!

The end was very much in the air - all in all the film seemed to be about many missed opportunities, lack and loss of communication, sadness. It seemed slow to me, but not understanding the words may have had something to do with it. Beautifully acted and filmed, in Istanbul as well as in Germany (which indeed has a German-Turkish bookshop not far from my hotel, as described in the book). But it had a bit of a non-ending, with many questions left open.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The worst acting ever!

I'd been trying to get some film with my favourite Georgian actor, Zaza Papuashvili (he), and found a film called something like 'Georgian Grapes'. Unfortunately, it comes only in a compilation called 'Erotic Tales 5'. So I turned on the DVD with some trepidation....

The first film 'Will you be my Bratwurst' you see is absolutely, absolutely dreadful! It's produced by Rosa von Praunheim (also he) who is a gay German filmmaker. I think he should be banned from film-making! It's about a goodlooking (and well-hung) young guy who spends his Christmas in a hotel full of very strange people, all of whom are sex mad. They include the gay security guard, the big black transvestite, a person with height challenges and a hump back, a granny and various others. Each has their own fantasy of what they might do with him. It has a slight flavour of 'The Cook, the Thief, the Wife and her Lover', particularly at the end of the film. The acting is atrocious - a paper bag could act better than some of them! I wonder if that is intentional and an ironic take on such films. I fear not.

The 'Georgian Grapes' film, while also pretty trite, at least has some better acting (though not the best from Zaza Papuashvili and I think his dad, David Papuashvili, among others). It's about a downtrodden young woman in a village somewhere in Georgia, who meets a film star (as one does in a Georgian village) and is told how to make the most of her assets; thus surprising her husband (Zaza) who did not realise she had it in her.... Nakedness here does not extend beyond tits, and Zaza keeps his T-shirt and trousers on at all times. (Isn't it painful to act sex when she is half-naked and he keeps on his trousers and his belt?) The film really does not make much use of the talents of the actors either, but I suppose in Georgia in the late 1990s, when the film was made, one had to live. It's fairly forgettable, though.

Would not recommend either of the films - and glad that this one excursion into this world has satisfied my curiosity. Now back to loftier matters....

Since Otar Left

It's a wonderful film! The story is about three women, grandmother, daughter and granddaughter, who live in Tbilisi, trying to get by on next to nothing, but with a deeply abiding love of France. The daughter's brother, Otar, has left for Paris to get some work to support the family; every now and again he writes and sends some money. The grandmother lives for these letters.

Then Otar has an accident and dies. How to break it to the grandmother? They can't - her heart is weak. So a process of deception starts, not unlike that in 'Goodbye, Lenin'. Which works, after a fashion (though it is not possible to replace the money no longer being sent), until granny decides to go and visit Otar in Paris.

The film is largely set in Tbilisi and surrounding countryside - I recognized the post office, the street beside Macdonalds, the Iveria hotel which at the time still housed the refugees (and now is an empty shell in the process of becoming a Radisson hotel), the steep cobbled streets not that far from me, the power cuts, thankfully not the water cuts, some of the other places, more or less derelict....

Esther Gorintin, who plays the granny, is the absolute absolute star of the film; she does not do very much, but the way she looks at people, at things, when contemplating - it melts your heart.
Worth rushing out to see it, if it ever comes to your neighbourhood!

films

Have I seen films in the last two weeks? With 42 hours spent on Emirates planes which have a huge selection of entertainment (doubled since I travelled in different months) I have seen lots of films, four old episodes of 'Frasier', played endless solitaire and other computer games....

'Queen' - I can understand now why Helen Mirren got that Oscar. She is brilliant at faces! It was weird watching that film and remembering that time, almost 10 years ago. Does not help if a steward asks you if you want coffee just as the film hits a particularly emotional moment....

'Blades of Gold' - story about two competing ice skaters who as a result of a punch-up are banned from solo competitions, and end up entering the pairs competition - both are men. The film involves shenanigans from another competing couple, in good old American ice skating style. Would not leave the house to watch it, but on a plane it's ok.

'My best friend' - did not watch this in the plane, but on the ground in Adelaide. It's a French film about an arts dealer (Daniel Auteuil) who realises he does not have any friends, and so recruits a taxi driver to help him with personal intercourse (maybe he has Asperger's?). It's a very pleasant, funny film and very attractive in that French way of making films.

'Because I said so' - film with Diane Keaton where she plays the mother of 3 daughters, two of whom are married, and the third has, according to mum, problems with finding a man. Keaton gives advice which never goes down well, and advertises in the papers for a man, who she then gets to meet her daughter (except there was another man around as well - I was tired by that point). Pleasant family comedy, probably also not worth leaving the house for, unless you want to go to the pictures and there is nothing else decent on at the pictures.

'Starter for 10' - film about a young man who leaves his single mum to go to college (Oxford?). He gets into the University Challenge team, has women troubles, and all the other first year experiences. The team is lead by a rather anal young man who tends to freeze under pressure. The film describes the ups and downs of our hero and the team; also quite pleasant and quite funny. Fell asleep at the end.

'Happy feet' - things were getting critical at this stage - is a cartoon type film about a little emperor penguin (they find their mates by singing) who cannot sing, but can tap dance. It's easy to do a tap dancing penguin in cartoon because they have very short little legs, so there is a limit to how far they can be shown to be thrown! It's a very cute little film, very easy and with stunning crowd scenes of dancing penguins. Also has a small environmental message.

'Breaking and entering' is a film by Anthony Minghella, set in London, with Jude Law and Juliette Binoche, amongst others, where an architect's firm locates itself in King's Cross, which turns out not to be a happy choice of location, what with getting broken in all the time. The main character, whose seems to be the stepfather of a girl with difficulties (autistic?) which puts a strain on his relationship with his partner. In investigating the burglaries he also meets a prostitute, and has a relationship with another woman. The usual folk of London's King's Cross, I suppose. It's described as a romantic comedy - hmmm; seemed to me more of a usual tale of social exclusion and people from both sides of social exclusion coming together in a mutual explosion, with the losers being the usual losers. I'd buy a ticket for this one.

'The Pursuit of Happyness' (sic) - is about the struggling salesman Chris Gardener (Will Smith) who gets a chance of an internship in a financial company (in Wall Street) just as his wife leaves him and he takes custody of their 5-year-old son (who is brilliantly played by Jaden Smith). The internship is for 6 months (after which one of the twenty starters will get a job) - and it is unpaid. Gardener and his son go through horrendous periods, losing their flat, losing a motel room, having to stay in a hostel for the homeless for some time, with him at the same time talking to extremely rich people about their pensions plans - where a guy could be very bitter, but Gardener gets through it with considerable aplomb. Apparently this is a real story, and Gardener went on to found a major financial sales company. As an American film it also has its tear jerking moments, and it shows the difficulties people go through at times like these. What did not seem logical was how the child was cared for (did the father not have to pay for day care?), that the father was able to finish work early to collect the child, and that he did not seem to claim any welfare (but perhaps he would not have been eligible for this, as he might not have been in the UK).

'Romulus, my father' is a film I wanted to see in Oz, but did not get round to it. A story about immigrant folk, apparently, based on someone's book. Franka Potente of 'Run, Lola, Run' is in it. Might be interesting.

Yengec sepeti

It's a 1994/95 Turkish film I picked up in Istanbul earlier this year; got lots of prizes at Turkish film festivals. It's of the 'family reunion - all troubles will erupt' genre.

An elderly couple decides, on the spur of the moment, to invite their four children with partners as appropriate and grandchildren, for a weekend in their country house, a fairly small one-story wooden house but also with a stable with some very fine horses, set by a lake (I assume not many of my readers are familiar with Turkish country houses). The children are all successful in their professional lives (though the policeman's interrogation methods would not endear Turkey to the EU), but some of their personal lives are a bit of a shambles. One is divorced, one married but has an affair, one has girlfriends and the fourth one is alone. A review mentions that this is a modern Turkish family; something I had not thought about but it's right enough; no headscarves here.

As always in these films, the weekend starts well, but there are undercurrents, which erupt when the husband of the divorced woman turns up to see his daughter, and gets beaten up badly by the policeman.

It's quite a pleasant film - even the momentary violence is tastefully done -, but also fairly predictable. The subtitles suffer from absence, when they don't suffer from grammatical or spelling mistakes.

The father of the family is a stunning-looking elderly gent, but he does not have much of a speaking role - being something of an observer in his family's dramas. There are nice landscapes, too.

A Greyness of Depression

Jim Jarmusch is a film-maker, apparently. No, I had not heard of him either, but in Istanbul a couple of weeks ago I spotted a series of his films, including one with the lovely Roberto Begnini. Which I took home.

Jarmusch, the above website tells me, is interested in people on the margins of society. Right enough. He makes Art House Cinema. This film, shot in black and white (in 1986) starts extremely depressingly with a couple of drifters, in unhappy relationships with their women. The neighbourhoods are extremely poor (clapboard houses, do they call them in the US?). The conversations are full of cliches - 'what are you doing to yourself', 'you are ruining your life'. The two guys, Zack and Jack, don't do much, but sit around and ...maybe... think. An Italian character briefly passes one of them sitting on a porch and has a short conversation, mostly with himself.

Then both Zack and Jack get themselves arrested on trumped up charges, and guess what - the Italian (Begnini), also appears in their cell. At that moment the film begins to become bearable (up to that moment I was still doing stuff on the computer while the film was going on). Begnini, who does what he does best in all films - anarchic problem solving - is the only one of the three who actually committed a crime. He completely changes the atmosphere in the cell, and of the film, and helps Zack and Jack (and himself) to find a way out of their situation. This second half of the film is worth waiting for, though, unless you are a Jim Jarmusch fan, I am not sure you should rush out to buy it. Maybe rent it first....

Apparently the actor playing Zack, Tom Waits, is a bit of a singer, and he does some of the sound track.

It was interesting but I am glad I only bought one of his films.

Slack Alice....

...or East German pianos by the name of Alexander Herrmann. Turns out that the piano I am using is unusual in more than one way - apart from the keyboard sloping away from me, the way it is strung is also different - the tuner muttered something about an 'experimental design'..... The only way of fixing the keyboard issue is by tilting the piano towards me - would I want that? No - and anyway, probably the music would fall off the thing. Also, it seemed to be a particularly relaxed piano, or rather a piano with especially relaxed strings - was it 20 years old or had it not been tuned for 20 years? I did not understand, but he did not seem too impressed even though it looks a nice piano. Inner life issues - I guess. If it were a fiddle it would need retuning again soon - but then for the moment I am not playing it like I would my fiddle. We'll see.

I see that the 'Queen' has been nominated for lots of Oscars, as has 'Little Miss Sunshine' (for rather fewer). Interesting.

Gourmets, Giggles and Golden Globes

Lotus reads has a wonderful review of Madhur Jaffrey's memoir 'Climbing the Mango Trees'; now on my building-up amazon list. En passant I notice Ms Jaffrey has brought out many more cookery books. Must stop reading Lotus read's blog!

The funniest blog entry I have read for a long while is Grannyp's fight with her wetsuit - maybe it was not a good idea? (Grannyp retired to the Canaries, or thereabouts, but seems to be dipping a lot back to the UK or other parts of Europe).

I see that Dame Helen Mirren has won a Golden Globe for her Queens, both QEI and QEII. QEI was filmed in Lithuania! (It was shown in Vilnius in September last year - I found it too long, but it turns out to have been a mini-series).

A Ray of Sunshine

'Little Miss Sunshine' is one of the funniest films I have seen for a long time! A family consisting of a father teaching the 9 steps to be a winner, a teenager who has taken a vow of silence until he joins the American Air Force Academy, a coke-snorting grandfather, an uncle who is America's first authority on Proust and who has just attempted suicide, a mother who holds all of them together, and a little girl who dreams of winning the next 'Little Miss Sunshine' competition, set off in a campervan from Albuquerque to Los Angeles for the final of this competition.

In the course of this trip, like every good road movie, a number of truths reveal themselves to each of the participants, and a variety of disasters occur before they finally just make it to the competition location. The scenes of the competition are priceless, with severely over-dolled-up children and then our wee heroine, wearing glasses, and being of a somewhat dumpier build. The dance routine her grandfather taught her is out of this world, as are the stunned reactions of the audience.

When the film opened with the mother of the family, Toni Collette, I thought - I have seen those teeth before! I could only think of 'Muriel's Wedding' - and right enough, this is the main actress of that film, having lost about half her weight, it seems.

Vilnius Ghetto

Amazon is very good at knowing what I might be interested in reading - it's a great marketing strategy. So when a book popped up by Schoschana Rabinovici called 'Dank meiner Mutter', I thought it was another book on holocaust survival, and I have read quite a few. However, turns out that Schoschana was a girl from Vilnius - that immediately made it much more relevant!

Indeed it is a story of holocaust survival, written in 1991, and it seems, written in German. Schoschana, or Susie, as she was then, was 9 when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, which Lithuania was part of at that moment in history. She describes vividly all that happened to her large extended family, all of whom lived in central Vilnius (she uses the Polish street names, but one can work out more or less where the locations were). The family was quite comfortably off, but as life became more and more restricted, they moved together into increasingly crowded apartments, at one stage living 15 to a room - and then it gets worse. Just before the fall of the ghetto it is decided to build an underground refuge, with the entrance going through an outdoor toilet with very complicated plumbing arrangements. As a number of invited families gather outside the entrance, other people join in, too, and in the end 180 people go into this hole. The only oxygen supply is via a chimney and people have to behave quietly and not use energy. A baby who cries is accidentally smothered by his father. Susie's mother discovers she suffers from claustrophobia....

After a day or two they decide that this is not going to work, and they go back to their or other people's houses, where eventually they are caught and sent via days sitting in a graveyard in December, sent to the first camp, near Riga. Life there is predictable, little food, much disease etc. Finally via another camp Susie and her mother are liberated - the father's brother also survives, out of a family of more than 15. But it is indeed thanks to her mother that Susie survives; the mother who bribes a guard to let her 10-year-old daughter join the working women (as opposed to the 'to be disposed of' women), the mother who makes her dress and wash every day in freezing conditions, the mother who gets all sorts of jobs which come with extra food, thus allowing Susie to eat, the mother who bullies her out of starvation - and finally Susie also saves her mother's life.

The book is not wonderfully well written, but it is a harrowing story told in a very matter-of-fact way - after all, the author was very young at the time of these events and saw it through a child's eyes. I read it through in one sitting. The details in the book triangulate well with the recent film 'Ghetto' , based on a play by Joshua Sobol, about the Vilnius Ghetto Theatre, started by the Germans to entertain the ghetto population. It's a gripping film! The film's soundtrack by the composer Anatolijus Senderovas is awesome, mixing yiddish songs with Bach's Ciaconna, amongst others. The songs are sung extremely authentically by Judita Leitaite. The DVD of the film (which is in English) is available from Amazon in Germany, though I noticed that some Germans here did not much care for the film - but the linguistic quality of their comments makes you wonder what exactly they watched the film for, and what kind of people they are.

The power of music

Just watched 'Das weinende Kamel' (the weeping camel), a story set in the Gobi desert in Mongolia, with Mongolian actors (actually a real Mongolian family). They live of breeding camels. These are particularly cuddly camels (though perhaps it was also filmed in the spring, since everyone who met anyone asked 'and how are you surviving the spring' - much like 'how do you do').

Lots of camel mums have babies, but one of them won't let her baby near her to feed. Nothing can be done, until the family remembers an old folk remedy....the two young sons, one not looking older than 7 or 8, are sent off to the nearest town (a day's or two camel ride away) to find a horsehead violin player. A horsehead violin has a trapeze-shaped body, two strings, interesting f-holes, and a scroll shaped like a horse's head.

They find one in the local music school, where he is instructing a recalcitrant group of students in the playing of this instrument. He finds a replacement to take his classes, and the next day rushes out to the countryside on his motorbike. There they find the similarly recalcitrant mother and the sad baby camel, and he starts to play his violin, with the mother of the human family singing. And see, little by little, the camel mum calms down, bursts into tears, and lets the baby near it. And all ends well.

Does it end well, though? The smaller son discovered TV on the trip into town and now the family has a TV, a solar panel on top of the yurt and a huge satellite dish to lug around.

The loveliest moment was at the end of the film, when all actors lined up in small groups with their names printed on the screen below them. This included the two main camels and their names.