Berlinale, 2/15.

"Iranian-themed pics won big at the Berlinale's Teddy Queer Film Awards, on Thursday, with two documentaries taking a number of prizes," reports Ed Meza for Variety. And here's the full list of winners as a PDF.

And the Berlinale announces the winners of the Crystal Bears, awards in the Generation14plus program.

Shane Danielsen, former Artistic Director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, lets the Berlinale have it full blast, both barrels blazing, at indieWIRE. Madonna and the Stones? Fine. "Every film festival, after all, must court the attentions of the press, if only in order to please their sponsors. But when the rest of your program fails to measure up - and this year's most definitely has not - such plays at populism stop looking like the gilding on the frame, and begin instead to resemble the polish on a turd."

I was talking with friends about all this today - this year, the core group, give or take, has consisted of Andrew Grant, Jürgen Fauth, Daniel Kasman and myself - and it does seem to me that one possible measure that might help would be to "promote" Dieter Kosslick to General Director or some such, someone who calls the long shots as he's done so well for eight years now (launching the Talent Campus, for example), while creating a new curator-type position for the Competition. In other words, an Artistic Director.

"Berlin occupies a singular place on the festival circuit," writes Sheila Johnston in the Telegraph. "Its competition is often - as this year - desperately unexciting, a mix of stately art films and second-rate American dramas.... Yet the sidebar sections are a wild and teeming morass of out-there stuff for which neither Cannes nor Venice would deign to find space."

"[A]lthough the red carpet was trod by quite a few stars this year, cinematic gems were rare," writes Naomi Buck. Also at Spiegel Online, Olaf Sundermeyer reports on the remarkable reception Andrzej Wajda's not so remarkable Katyn received in Poland. Related: For Reuters, Mike Collett-White reports that "Wajda said on Friday he had made enough films about war and his native Poland's past and would turn to modern themes instead."

"My favorite competition film is Night and Day, by the great South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo," announces Patrick Z McGavin at Stop Smiling. Also, Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky "moves so nimbly it might mistakenly be thought of as light, even disposable; it has depth and weight." And: "Despite the artistry and intelligence behind it, Standard Operating Procedure feels strangely bloodless and unconvincing."

"[Tilda] Swinton's performance as the heroine of Erick Zonca's film Julia is an arthouse tour de force," argues James Christopher in the London Times. "The official competition films for the Golden Bear have yet to produce a likely champion, but Swinton is an exceptionally good bet for the Best Actress award."

Writing in the Evening Standard, Derek Malcolm agrees with Gavin on Happy: "If the film may seem at first to be about nothing very much, you don't have to look far into it to see that it covers a great deal of ground about how ordinary people live their lives." He also has quick notes on Julia and Elegy.

Fabrizio Maltese has more terrific shots at european-films.net.

Posted by dwhudson at February 15, 2008 3:32 PM