This coming Monday, November 9, marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. A rare event because it it was carried by happiness and joy; a peaceful event. Something happened that most people in East- and West-Germany never expected to witness during their life time, and it happened without gunshots, without violence.

The credit for this bloodless victory belongs to the people, those of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, etc. If there is one politician who deserves praise and applause it is Michail Gorbachev; his reformist ideas of perestroika and glasnost ultimately paved the way for the Wall to collapse.

Read an eyewitness account by a New Zealand journalist, but be prepared for tears! Same goes for the following videos; immensely touching.

Wong Kar Wai

I’m a great fan of Wong Kar Wai, and the fact that some critics trashed My Blueberry Nights made me a bit nervous. But not to worry: while it is not my favorite (that’s Fallen Angels), it stands way above the average Hollywood production. Cinematography (Darius Khondji), music (Ry Cooder), immensely decorative colors, a script with bitter-sweet symbolism — Wong’s trademark style is unmistakable. The acting — well, that’s a different story. He routinely works without a finished script, which gives his actors a lot of room to improvise and shine — or leaves them without needed guidance, as the case may be. Norah Jones should stay with her music (she sings exceptionally well); Jude Law as yet another heart-throb makes you yawn;  I can’t forgive Rachel Weisz for The Constant Gardener and The Shape of Things, and Natalie Portman who did a great job in Léon,  chose some mediocre roles as well.  In this film, she’s tolerable but not outstanding. That reward goes to David Strathairn as an alcoholic police officer — he by far outshines the other actors.

So yes — by and large, the acting is dull and wooden. And yet, this is a film worth watching; the critics who slam it go on and on with bakery-style metaphors like eye candy when in fact a truly good-looking film is something of a not-to-be-missed delight. No danger of vacuity, when Wong Kar Wai is directing.

Fed up with their party’s dismal voter support, some Connecticut Republicans created 33 websites in the names of Democratic state representatives, and registered fake Twitter accounts for these sites. They sent out posts pretending to be from the Democrats, actually mocking them.

There’s nothing new about fake Twitter accounts. This site collected 65 fake Twitter profiles with “Hilarious Tweets”. Some celebrities, such as Tony La Russa, the coach of a US baseball team, launched legal action over bogus accounts. What is new in the case of the Connecticut Republicans is their use of social network sites and Internet technology. Something that may well have secured Obama’s victory last November, they figure.

However, Twitter, Inc. shut down the face accounts, on the grounds that “[a] person may not impersonate others through the Twitter service in a manner that does or is intended to mislead, confuse or deceive others. … Impersonation is against our terms unless it is a parody. The standard for defining parody is, ‘Would a reasonable person be aware that it’s a joke?’ “, according to a Twitter representative. State Republican Chairman Chris Healy interpreted Twitter’s decision as meaning that “…the Democrats were successful in stopping free speech”, displaying his appalling ignorance of the Bill of Rights. What else is new…

Incidentally, the 33 fake websites are still operating. At a quick glance, they look real enough, except for a small note at the very bottom, “Powered by WordPress & Mimbo Paid for and Authorized by the Connecticut Republican Party, Jerry Labriola Jr. Treasurer”. WordPress? Hello??? Don’t you have a similar policy that forbids deception and impersonation?!!

An animated film can be more powerful than one with human actors, if it’s outstanding. A case in point is Harvie Krumpet by Australian writer/director Adam Elliot which won an Oscar for Best Short Film in 2004. The odds are against Harvie right from the beginning of his life — he has Tourette’s Syndrome, gets struck by lightning, and in his brain is a metal plate (inserted after an accident) that develops magnetic capacities and causes all sorts of metal objects to stick to his head. However, he doesn’t get defeated by life’s blows but maintains a gentle and touching dignity throughout calamities and misfortune. And yes, there’s happiness as well; seemingly short-lived, it could be the strong undercurrent of Harvie’s life that surfaces only sporadically but is always there, beneath appearances.

Harvie collects “fakts” which he keeps in a book he wears around his neck, fakts such as “The bible was written by the same people who believe the earth is flat”, or “There are 3 times more chickens in the world than humans”, or “Fakts still exist, even if they are ignored”. Funny and sad, humorous and moving, the story of our humble and lovable character, wonderfully expressive with the help of stop motion/claymation, seemed to have but one tiny flaw — it was too short, little more than 20 minutes long. To my delight, I just learned that Elliot recently finished a feature-length animated film, Mary and Max, which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and will be released at a theater near you on 9 November. Can’t wait!

This is a witty, fast-paced, quirky dark comedy from Sweden, directed by Ulf Malmros. Erik (Jonas Rimeika), who had escaped the monotony and oppression of his provincial home town by moving to Stockholm a few years back, returns to look for his missing sister. He discovers that underneath the bourgeois facade the town is anything but normal: his former friends and schoolmates have cultivated their individual eccentricities to a degree bordering on caricature; the local video store owner supplies the town with hard drugs; the lone cop is both corrupt and melancholic; a nurse working at the nursing home embezzles money. And his sister Susie (Tuva Novotny, in a sensitive and sweet performance) isn’t how Erik remembers her, either — in clever flashbacks, we learn of an aimless, troubled existence.

Actually, the story line shouldn’t be taken too seriously — it’s pure pulp fiction, and some critics have compared Slim Susie to the Tarantino movie (which actually has a funny part in this one). I don’t quite agree, because it doesn’t display the over-the-top violence of Pulp Fiction and is more wacky. I would compare it to early Tom Tykwer films such as Run Lola Run. But Slim Susie can stand on its own — a great soundtrack, quite clever and funny script, an interesting bunch of oddball characters guarantee an entertaining one and a half hours.

Belgian director Nic Balthazar calls Ben X, his film about a mildly autistic teenager, “a film with a message”. It is also highly entertaining, visually stunning, and immensely moving. Ben is a high school student with Asperger’s syndrome who retreats into a fantasy world of computer games in order to cope with the vicious and cruel bullying by his class mates. In a quite magnificent way, the film explores the boundaries between different worlds which can be as solid as brick walls: Ben’s inner world, his perception of himself, is completely and utterly divorced from the reality he finds himself in; he cannot relate to others in a “normal”, acceptable manner. While this may be a bane of the human condition — we all feel to a lesser or higher degree that ultimately, no other person can totally understand who we really are — Ben’s case is painfully extreme. He can’t play the game of being a “cool kid”, and his peers can’t relate to somebody who is different. The fear of standing out, not fitting in, probably contributes to the brutality and cruelty with which some of Ben’s school mates treat him.

Doing a bit of reserch about this movie, I came across the term Happy slapping, a disturbing practice that came up around 2005 and is appallingly popular. It involves a victim who is being deliberately attacked for the purpose of recording the event with a mobile phone. Some incidents have been extremely violent, to the extent that some victims have even been killed. I was rather shocked to read about this practice, and it explained why I found the term “bullying” almost too mild in relation to this movie. The bullies that I remember had their admirers and followers around them, and against this background they felt strong enough to push people around. But it was generally easy to avoid and sidestep them. Basically, they were just plain stupid. In this film, there was a level of psychological cruelty and torment involved that surpassed anything I ever had encountered.

Apparently, the film has done an enormous favor to people who are “different”. In Belgium, for example, three out of four teenagers have seen it, it’s been shown in schools, and discussions about bullying follow the viewing. Parents of mildly autistic children as well as their therapists have commented on the marvelous and accurate portrayal of Ben by Greg Timmermans, a young man who had never stood in front of a camera before. The supporting roles are also well cast, and visually this film is quite remarkable in terms of merging the virtual reality of computer role-playing games (in this case, Archlord) with every-day reality.

The following words of Nic Balthazar sum up the relevance of the movie: “For me the film isn’t really about autism, it’s about what we do as a society to everyone who has a problem functioning and to all the people we call the nerds, the geeks and the dorks because they’re not what everyone else is. It’s the fascism of cool. The fascism of being ‘normal’. That is for me the real theme of the film.”

Some men don’t age at all. Asterix and Obelix, famous French comic book heroes, celebrate their 50th birthday on October 29, and they don’t look a day older than when they first made their appearance on the pages of the French magazine Pilote. Considering their diet, which consists mainly of roasted wild boar, this is quite surprising. Maybe fighting the Romans, their fierce sense of independence, and countless adventures which took them to the furthest corners of the earth, all contributed to keeping them young.

France is preparing an enormous birthday-bash: Asterix gets his own postal stamp, the French air force is producing a video in which airplanes will draw an Asterix head in the sky, and some events will take place in the region of Brittany, where several villages claim to be Asterix’s home.

Plus, Volume 34, Asterix and Obelix’s Birthday — the Golden Book, was published on October 22 and is expected to add several millions to the 325 million copies of their comic books already sold world wide.

Bonne anniversaire, les gars; wish I could be there!

A short while ago, I moved from Abiquiu to Arroyo del Agua near Coyote, an area which long-time locals call northern New Mexico’s most beautiful spot. Almost 7,000 feet high, it is surrounded by the Santa Fe National Forest and boasts lush, alpine woodlands, pastoral mesas, and dark-red colored canyons and cliffs that are the signature signs of the region.

Red earth, red cliffs

When I go on a walk with my dogs, both sides of the dirt road are strewn with agate. Many of them are covered with a thin, whitish film that hides the colors inside, but quite a number is cracked open, revealing browns, greys, or obsidian-black. My Rockhound’s Guide to New Mexico claims that there are also orange or red pieces, but I haven’t found one yet. I knew that these kinds of rock formations are of volcanic origin, but it surprised me to realize that they are part of a supervolcano that last erupted 1.2 million and 1.6 million years ago and is now known as the Valles Caldera National Preserve. We often went hiking near Valle Grande (the most famous section of Valles Caldera) in the Jemez Mountains, but that’s really far away from Coyote — how did these agates end up here? I had to do some research.

Strictly speaking, “supervolcano” isn’t a scientific term. Geologists and volcanologists refer to a “Volcanic Explosivity Index” (VEI) of 8 and 7 when they describe super-eruptions. An increase of 1 indicates a 10 times more powerful eruption. VEI-8 are colossal events with a volume of 1,000 km³ (240 cubic miles) erupted pyroclastic material (for example, ashfall, pyroclastic flows, and other ejecta), while VEI-7 volcanic events eject at least 100 km³ Dense Rock Equivalent (DRE). Valles Caldera belongs to the VEI-7 class of supermassive events (accounting for the countless agates in and around my backyard) and is situated within the Jemez Volcanic Field. The last eruption and collapse of the Valles Caldera occurred 1.2 million years ago, piling up 150 cubic miles of rock and blasting ash as far away as Iowa.

The name “caldera” comes from the Spanish word for “kettle”, “cooking pot”, or “cauldron”. Molten rock or magma begins to collect near the roof of a magma chamber bulging under older volcanic rocks. After an eruption begins and enough magma is ejaculated, the layer of rocks overlying the magma begins to collapse into the now emptied chamber because of the weight of the volcanic deposits. A roughly circular fracture develops around the edge of the chamber. In the case of Valles Caldera, the surrounding area continues to be shaped by ongoing volcanic activity, and an active geothermal system with hot springs and “fumaroles” (smoke plumes) exists even today.

Will Valles Caldera erupt again? While most of the media hype surrounding supervolcanoes focuses on Yellowstone where a VEI-8 event happened some 640,000 years ago which means that the next one could take place any moment or at least within the next 40,000 years, the Discovery Channel called Valles Caldera “a sleeping monster in the heart of New Mexico” but added in answer to the above question: No one knows. Duh.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! talks with Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International, and Martina Correia, Troy Davis’s older sister.

I’ve written several times about Troy Davis, and it’s always the same story: he is an almost certainly innocent man on death row, the day of his execution approaches rapidly, and a last-minute stay because of some appeal his lawyers (and millions of people all over the world) presented to the Georgia High Court brings some reprieve. Just imagine living through something like that not once, but a number of times. What Troy Davis and his lawyers are asking for, is an evidentiary hearing which would allow the witnesses to be heard and examined in a court of law — almost all of them claim to have testified against him because of police pressure and intimidation. Almost all of them have recanted their former statements. However, restrictions on Federal appeals have prevented Troy Davis from having a hearing in federal court on the reliability of the witness testimony used against him.

Amnesty International is organizing a global action day for Troy. Please read more about his case, and join if you have time.