movies

This weekend we went to the cinema twice; we saw two Spanish movies in the Toneelschuur.

Saturday evening we went to "La mala educación". It was an intelligent movie, with complicated story lines coming together nicely in the end. I enjoyed the music a lot. Yesterday we saw "En la ciudad", a sweet movie about the life of 30-ers in a Spanish city.

After we came back we saw the last part of Moulin Rouge on TV. It was a relaxed weekend.

Yesterday evening we went to the movies, to "The Terminal" in Cinema Palace.

The movie is about Viktor Navorski, a traveller from a fictional Eastern European nation who gets stuck in an airport in the US after a military coup in his native land. His passport, issued by his previous government, is no longer valid and he has to stay on in the terminal of the airport for months to wait for the political situation to change.

The character of Navorski, played by Tom Hanks, is wonderful. It's a very sweet guy, who is a total stranger in the US. To our great surprise Tom Hanks was speaking Bulgarian, and in fact his whole character was Bulgarian. His language, some movements, his jokes and the whole behavior were typical Bulgarian which was very nice to see.

It was a great movie; sweet and with a happy end. Personally I loved the older guy from India who Navorski meets on the airport.

Sasha, Steven and I went to "Girl with a pearl earring" yesterday. It's a movie about a painting made by Johannes Vermeer.

The movie is based on a book by Tracy Chevalier, which imagines the circumstances under which the painting came to be created.

The movie was marvellous! The story is playing in Delft in the 17th century, and it was absolutely wonderful to see the city as it was 400 years ago. The opening shot of the movie, an helicopter view of the city with the church in the middle and the fields outside the city walls, was just brilliant.

The canals were used a lot in those days, for every day transport of cargo and passengers. It was very funny to see one of the boats being stuck in the suddenly frozen canal; it felt remarkable similar to ice-scratching a car in the morning to go to work.

The story of the movie was interesting, but I mostly enjoyed the great views and superb camera work. The light in the movie was very special; it was similar to the light visible on many of Vermeer's paintings.

After the movie we went for some drinks in In Den Uiver, and later we had dinner together. When we walked back home we talked a lot about the history of Alkmaar and Haarlem.

Ettie and Gerben came for dinner yesterday. The asperge-season just started, so we enjoyed the 'green gold'. After dinner we went to the movies. We went to Cinema Palace, a movie theater I haven't been before. It was really nice, much better than Brinkmann: clean, cosy and a great theater.

We saw Troy, a heroic epic about the Trojan war. Of course, the plot is well known from the Iliad, but the movie was still very dramatic and great to watch. I'd certainly recommended it, especially if you liked Gladiator.

The movie took about three hours and we were home around midnight.

Tonight I went to a Bulgarian movie: "Letter to America", or Pismo do Amerika in Bulgarian. My parents had seen it a little while ago and they told me about it.

I liked it a lot to see Bulgaria, and to hear Bulgarian again. It's been exactly a week now (almost to the hour, as I left Sofia Airport around 23:00 o'clock), and I miss it! The movie was playing partly in Sofia, but mostly on the road to a small village in the Pirin Mountains. At one point I saw the signs on the highway leaving Sofia, pointing to Plovdiv.

It was a good movie, with interesting characters and beautiful music. But, to be honest, I think I would have liked it less if it had been in another country.

The movie was playing in the Filmmuseum in Amsterdam; I had never been there before. It's located in the middle of a public park, and it's a beautiful old-style building.

What a marvelous movie! I just came back from the Toneelschuur, where I saw “Goodbye Lenin” with Arjan. It's been a long time since I saw such a nice film. It is warm and human story about life in the DDR, before and after the changes in 1989.

“Goodbye, Lenin!” was chosen as the best European film at this year's Berlin film festival and has won many other awards. The Economist: "It is the warmest souvenir yet of a nation that died almost overnight".

Next to the great story it was very nice to see so many things from the DDR: the TV-programs, the food, the housing... very nice. Recommended.

Yesterday I went with Karen and Arjan to the Toneelschuur, a theater and movie house in Haarlem. It's located between the Grote Markt and the red light district, in a beautiful building which has been re-openened a couple of months ago.

The movie, 'September 11', was very good. Eleven filmmakers from around the globe offer various views on the World Trade Center tragedy, everyone in a different type of movie. The only requirement is that their creation takes exactly eleven minutes, nine seconds and one frame (11-09-01).

It's a really impressive movie, although some parts are better than others. I liked the Bosnian, French and Chilean films the most. The Japanese creation was probably too difficult for me.

While we were having dinner we saw the house-boat that disappeared last week returning; the owners were reconnecting the powercables. It must be an amazing experience to take your own house on a trip to somewhere!


We went to see the 2nd part of Lord of the Rings, in De Munt in Amsterdam. It certainly didn't disappoint us... a wonderful movie.



It ended around 23:30. It was very busy on the streets at that time (Queensday night, of course).

We went to see Chicago yesterday. The movie was very nice, enjoyed it a lot (see this trailer).



It had been a long time since we went for a movie in Amsterdam on a Saturday night, and we quite underestimated how busy it was! First to Pathé de Munt, where there was a huge line. They have this nice system that shows how many tickets left for each movie. When we entered the line there were 37 available places, but every minute there were less and less. In the end we decided to go to another theather when we realized the tickets would be over before we'd arrive at the ticket-booth.

At Tuschinksi (right around the corner) we were told that there were exactly 2 tickets available but on the front row all the way on the right. Well, that wasn't exactly what we wanted.

By that time it was 20:30 already, but we saw that at 22:10 in Pathé Arena Chicago would play as well. Although it's a very nice movie theater we were a bit uncertain if the situation there wouldn't be the same. However, when we came there at 21:00 it wasn't extremely busy, and we were sold the 7th and 8th ticket for our movie. We had a beer (and of course popcorn) in the main foyer, watching people.

As I said the movie is definately worth seeing. Maybe it was not as good as Moulin Rouge, but comparable.


When the movie was over we had missed the last train and the last metro to Centraal Station... we were very relieved to catch the last Zuidtangent, which brought us through the 3 cities we have lived in: Amsterdam-Zuid Oost, Amstelveen and Haarlem. Home at 2:00 o'clock.