Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The Lives of Others

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Das Leben der Anderen (English title: The Lives of Others), in German, written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and starring Ulrich Mühe as Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, Sebastian Koch as Georg Dreyman, and Martina Gedeck as Christa-Maria Sieland.

IMDb has a good summary of the basic plot:
In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Two poems, a movie, and another David Sedaris collection

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"House Fire" by Allison Seay (poem from Born Magazine, originally published in Blue Mesa Review, No. 18, Fall 2006)

"Advice for Women on the Graveyard Shift" by Karen J. Weyant (poem from Broadsided Press, May 2009)

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2008)

La Tourneuse de pages (English title: The Page Turner), in French, directed by Denis Dercourt and starring Déborah François as the adult Mélanie Prouvost, Catherine Frot and Pascal Greggory as Ariane and Jean Fouchécourt, and Antoine Martynciow as Tristan Fouchécourt. This was not the best film I've ever seen, but the music alone is worth the price of admission (or rental, I guess, in this case). It was billed as a thriller and I was expecting a climax along the lines of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, but this was much more subtle.