EriK Davis. ;)

I hope you'll be back in Austin next month! Drop me an email while you're here, Mr. Hudson.

VERY happy to see an A grade for the new Petzold. I'm just beginning to catch up with his work, and it's clear he's a major filmmaker whose North American profile is inexcusably slight. Here's hoping Yella remedies this.

Also, thanks for the signandsight link. Ekkehard Knoerer, in particular, is delivering some seriously meaty reviews.

Thanks, Mr. Weinberg. See you in Austin!

>major filmmaker

Absolutely, Michael, and this one's... something else. Very definitely his, stylistically and thematically, but something else entirely at the same time. Met a full round of film folk immediately after the screening, and while we all agreed that we were tremendously impressed, we also agreed that it'd be hours, days, surely longer before we'd really begin to know what to make of Yella.

Well, David, I've slept on it... I still have 4 features today, 7 tomorrow, but I'll be surprised if I see a better film at this year's Berlinale than "Yella," my first 4-star pick.

As for "300," I couldn't make it past the 45-minute mark before walking out of that overwrought gladiator porn. Filmbrain even fell asleep twice... and it's supposed to be an action movie (though is it just me, or was it almost entirely in slo-mo)? If I had endured 'til the end, I would've booed, too, and I'd like to think of myself as above that kind of behavior 99.9% of the time...

Yella - A?
Ouch. I was bored stiff and then had to laugh at the final "twist". Like in Bouchareb's Indigènes, the characters in this film are not humans but walking indignations. I was very, very disappointed. Give me the Costanzo over the Petzold any day.

Mr. Hudson... nice meeting you guys yesterday!

I'm catching Yella at Urania later tonight. Quite psyched now, after reading a lot of glowing reviews of it. Last night I saw Irina Palm which most certainly made up for the overkill pretentious macho-fest that was 300.

Yella: A, Boyd, yes. Meeting with Aaron and Filmbrain again today (after Aaron posted his comment up there), we all agreed that this is the only film we're really obsessing over and thinking more highly of as the fest rolls on.

As for the Costanzo, I hope you saw that you have a friend in Dennis Lim (he had words of admiration for it in his half-time wrap-up for indieWIRE... the link's somewhere around here). Like Erik, whatever it is about that one, I'm missing it.

See you Saturday, too, Karsten!

Frightening the way the fanboys (none of whom have seen the film) come out of the woodwork to attack Erik for his review of '300.' But then, I guess 1000 anonymous imdb posters can't be wrong!

Hell hath no fury like a fanboy scorned. It troubles me that some of the comments on Cinematical are downright racist.

That and, as I've just commented there at Cinematical, the best comedy writers in the business couldn't parody a lot of those comments any better than the pseuds themselves.

Ugh, it was the perfect end to a perfect trip. Meeting you all was definitely one of my only highlights. If interested, video stuff after Hallum Foe in Palast lobby tomorrow.

And the more I've sat on it, Yella is turing out to be one of my favorites as well -- I wish I could watch it again though before writing my review.

Are those even fanboys, or slyly placed shills for the studio? It starts to sound suspicious after awhile. You'd think people booed Lord of the Rings or something. [g]

CP