Today in the afternoon I went with Steph to the movies to watch Finding Nemo. At this time also all the kids went there. Great animation and the dubbed German version is really funny! So already after the small Pixar short film in the beginning I found out that it was a good decision to watch this movie.

Monday last week I finally managed to see Dogville. I expected quite much because I have read and heard a lot of good things from Lars von Trier, the famous director from Denmark. And it has really exceeded my expectations. I liked the special way of showing the story – on a plain stage with only chalk marking the houses – inspired by Bert Brecht’s “Dreigroschenoper”. As Brecht von Trier has also produced his epic theatre with his highly morally intention, which tells us how evil mankind is and will always be.

The supberb playing Nicole Kidman characterizes very well the deeply punished girl, who in the beginning tried to escape from criminals into this small town with its friendly hard-working people, only to find out in the end that this people are much more brutal than everybody else. Maybe the story, consisting of nine chapters, is a bit long, but I never felt bored. Excellent dialogues, especially in the end about the moral of mankind. In fact, at least in my eyes, the moral prevails and Dogville gets what it deserves, not less.

I just heard a great recension about it from zeit.de (only in German – sorry). For sure one of the best films I have ever seen! I await the next one of von Trier – unfortunatelly without Nicole Kidman, who won’t together with him any more. Understandable after you have seen how badly she was treated.

Another highlight last week (there were so many :)) was our visit to Casablanca shown in the Audi Forum programme cinema. Though I do not had to cry as some might have awaited, but the story was nevertheless very emotional with still lots of funny elements and characters. We saw it in the original version from 1942 and then I discovered that the real famous quote is not “Play it again, Sam”, but “Play it once, Sam, for old times sake. Play As Time Goes By”. After getting the music we could not get enough of this everlasting tune. In this spirit: “Here’s looking at you, kid!”.