Ph'lip ya for real.

The Belgian Postal Service has released a commemorative stamp for the 'trone swap' as it is literally translated. AKA: the abdication of Albert II.
Here's the original stamp as it will be sold in post offices across Belgium:

Here's what it actually should have looked like if it embodied the full spirit of a trone swap:

Thank you. I'll be here all night.

Mouser mushroom

Mouser is waiting for the garden gnomes to come home from a hard day's work down in the diamond mine.

Oh wait. They were dwarves. And they lived in a cottage.

Meh.

Come to think of it: What did they actually do with the diamonds they found?

Is that ever explained? Do they just keep them in a vault and leave them there?

This is one of those story lines which should have been explored in the sequels.

Iron butterfly

The radiant Jeanette MacDonald, born on June 18, 1903

Reblogged from Nitrate Diva.

Just one more....

I just couldn't resist!

American Psycho

Why do I, every time I see a picture of Lance Armstrong, think of a certain movie from 2000 starring Christian Bale?

Pope retires ... not yet

The pope announced his retirement last week.
But no time to waste to follow up on other interests he never had time to pursue.
Pope Benedictus XVI has been confirmed for a part in the upcoming sequel to The Three Amigos.

Le Déménagement

Here's an idea for a French movie rooted in reality: 

The Title: 'Le Déménagement' and will be in theatres across Europe in 2013.

The Plot: A wealthy French couple, the Dépardots, played by Gérard Dépardieu  and Brigitte Bardot, are hounded by the French State's tax department and collectors (Pierre Richard). Their close friend and President of the French Republic (played by Daniel Autieul)  is -because of political pressure- not able to help them and advises them to move to Belgium to avoid paying huge amounts of money. 

They end up buying a house in a sleepy Belgian village called Estaimpuis. What seems like a simple moving of house quickly turns into chaos as they encounter the mayor of Estaimpuis (Benoit Poelvoorde) and a former Russian hitman (Jean Reno) trying to persuade them to assume the Russian nationality.

120 mins. Mrs B Productions.

Cast: Brigitte Bardot, Gérard Dépardieu, Jean Reno, Benoit Poelvoorde, Daniel Auteuil, Pierre Richard.
Rating: PG

Menace of the interior

I've just finished my first paper on interior design.
I tried to make it more light to write about interiors in comedy movies, but I got bogged down in philosophy and it turned out to be quite meta and is probably unreadable for lay people.
The professor I'm writing it for did get her post-doctoral degree in philosophy in München, so I hope she'll like it.


Here's the abstract:

"This paper explores the impact furniture and it surroundings have on the protagonist in neo-realist comedy. It is an exercise in combining formalist film theory with design studies, which both analyze forms of visual arts.

In the introduction the outline for a definition of the neo-realist comedy genre is sketched and the delineation of film theory is given and some philosophical underpinnings of design study are touched upon. 

Using several examples from 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s movies the argument is made that furniture exerts a power and hold over individuals. The underlying mechanisms are exposed throughout and common denominators analyzed by using theories explored in interior design studies.

Not only do some pieces of furniture pose as a menace to comfort and dignity, but also to reputation and -ultimately- life itself. Each category of menace is elaborated on. Some contemporary examples will be linked to the ideas behind the set design or revealing the unseen and unexplained.

It concludes that furniture serves as a gimmick on several levels to support the alienation of the individual in the society that is shown in cinema."

The title is: 'The menace of the interior. Furniture in neo-realist comedy' and it will probably never get published! 

A floating raspberry

I was watering the plants I had transplanted during the bulldozing and noticed a big shiny red blob suspended between some twigs.
It looked like a raspberry floating in mid air.
No, it was a huge spider with a big red abdomen with white dots over it.
It looks like it is the Araneus quadratus, or the Four-spot orb-weaver as it is commonly known.
Judging from pictures on the web they vary from green to yellow to red.
I presume the green ones aren't ripe yet.

[Yes -for all you movie buffs- that is a slight tribute to Kevin Klein in A Fish Called Wanda].

Rebel without a Specola Vaticana

I stumbled upon a review of the inauguration of two new telescopes of the Vatican observatory at Castel Gondolfo in the mid 1930's. The Specola Vaticana at that time had a Zeiss Visual Refractor Telescope (aperture 40mm, focal lenght 600mm, and a Zeiss double astrograph installed in the pope's summer residence 24 km south of Rome. It chose this location and moved out of the Vatican gardens because of light pollution tightening the grip on modern Rome.
The article contained a picture of Pope Pius XI standing outside the observatory talking to father Johannes Stein, the Dutch director of the Vatican Observatory. It reminded me of another scene in front of an observatory. I was thinking of the famous knife fighting scene in Rebel without a cause at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
Sure, James Dean is no pope (and vice versa), but there is an eery similarity between the two settings...

In Dreams

I can tell what Mouser is dreaming about just by looking at the way it is sleeping.

King of Belgium and Nightmares

A striking picture in some online national newspaper of Albert II, King of the Belgians.
Has he been taking lessons in posing for pictures? I seem to recall an eerily similar pose adopted by Freddy Krueger of Nightmare on Elm Street fame.
They might be related. I think we should be told.

In a DeLorean

Belgium is no longer a country

It has been lingering in the foul smelling air for some time now, but as of this week it has been made official:
According to the message I got on youtube, Belgium is no longer a country.
And if it's on the internet it must be true. :-/



The RTBF (the French speaking community's broadcasting corporation) has blocked me from viewing a trailer for Rundskop because I live in the Flemish speaking part of Belgium. Which is according to the copyright restriction ... in another country. Ironically enough the film was financed with money from the Flemish, Brussels, Walloon and Dutch governments.
And it is an international trailer.

So does that mean the international film trailer will only be available in the Walloon part of the universe?

Reasons Greetings from a profoundly confused Belgian.

Summer Film Camp 2011

I'm off for an entire week to summer film boot camp. I should probably leave out the boot notion, but it really is a survival of the fittest to sit through every lecture and every movie seven days in a row. The first lecture starts at nine sharp and the last film usually finished around midnight. It is not uncommon to hear someone snore their head off during a movie. After day three your feet start to swell up from all the sitting down. Over the years I've managed to devise some sitting techniques to endure all the movie magic. This year it's in Antwerp. This twice yearly event had been hosted in Bruges in years gone by. So I will have to devise a new sitting strategy because I'm not familiar with the seating arrangements in the theatre.

This will be my 8th Summer Film School I will be attending. I feel like a veteran. And I do feel a bit guilty too. While studying in Brussels (waaaay back in the nineties) I used to attend the Film Museum every night, read the glossy magazines, bought second hand books on cinema, worked on film sets. I ate, slept and breathed cinema.
Over the years, moving to an area where most movie theatres are over 15 kilometers away (and expensive), my movie going experience has dropped to an alarming rate. So far this year (or last year) I haven't even set foot inside a cinema.
So this week is very important to me, to keep connected to my very first love for images.

I will have to face up to the music and decide how to spare my strenght. I will be driving to Antwerp every day, so I will need to be alert and wide awake before venturing onto the roads.
This means I will have to skip a movie to get safely home. When in Bruges I could just skip a movie I'd already seen and have a nap in my hotel room. This will be an entirely different challenge.

David Bordwell will be lecturing on Storytelling strategies in 1940s Hollywood. His morning lectures have been very entertaining and enlightening and no doubt his seven Dark Passages-lectures will be of the same high standard I have heard over the years.
He blogged about the Summer camp for cinephiles in 2007 and in 2009.

This year the umbrella theme is Art & Painting. Lisa Colpaert, Tom Paulus, Wouter Hessels (freshly appointed director of Cinematec) and Steven Jacobs will be lecturing on a wide variety of themes i.a. tableau vivants, art documentaries, interiours and landscapes.

After years of whining I finally get what I asked for: A Greenaway movie! Three cheers for the Vlaamse Dienst voor Filmcultuur!

I don't think I will have time to do any blogging during the coming week. Or even a couple of days after that. Dr Livingstone will be home!

The Party Crasher King

King Albert II of Belgium, delivered a landmark speech yesterday. Today we celebrate our National Holiday and are officially 402 days without a government. Very touchingly he expressed his anxiety about all Belgians suffering under this and the impact it has on the image of the country on a European scale.

Surprise in all media about the body language the King used, wildly gesticulating with hands. This is what he also probably looks like while enraged with his son Laurent.

Alas, no one has noticed the similarity between the King of the Belgians and The Party Crasher in the excellent John Badham movie The Hard Way. I think everyone must be told.

You have the right to remain...failed

I honestly thought these things only happened in Police Academy movies or to the bad guys in the A-Team series.
Some boys in blue were heading out to a robbery not far from Antwerp.
They decided to take the tram lane because the regular road was too busy.
Only, they failed to notice there were works going on and the men had just poured out some fresh concrete. Needless to say they got bogged down after a few yards.
I can just imagine the embarrassment they experienced when they called it in.
And the scorn they will have to suffer for years to come...

Gríma DSVD

I must be one of the few people on the planet that hasn't seen the complete Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.
Eight years after the last movie came out I have finally seen the first two episodes. Friday was The Two Towers one.
It struck me as quite funny to see that Gríma Wormtongue is a dead ringer for Channel Zero lead singer Franky De Smet Van Damme.
If they are by any chance related, or share the same hairdresser, I think we must be told.

Sebastian Skywalker

Ok, just one more Star Wars lookalike.
Luke Skywalker and Sebastian Vettel.
Looks like the Red Bull Racing Team has been using The Force to win all those Grand Prix.
The International Automobile Federation probably have got a rule for this.

Quick lookalike

Same hair, different decades.
Joelia Timosjenko and Princess Leia.