Since I came to OZ I saw two movies that I found very annoying. I've also read quite a lot of books and most of them were quite ok. But I guess that none will be as memorable as the one I'm reading at the moment.

But let's visit the bad and the ugly before we turn our attention towards the beautiful:

The first movie I saw was The Day after Tomorrow. You probably heard about it. It's about the world suddenly being plunged into a new ice age because we fucked around with the environment too much. Basically a good effort and I don't have anything against the movie as such. I mean, they compress something that could happen over a period of maybe 1.000 years into a few weeks. Alright, that's fair enough. But why do they have to be so fucking stupid when it comes to the little details? Take this: It suddenly get's very, very cold. So cold that you'd instantly die if you were caught outside. And you can see how the cold races down the scyscrapers, shattering windows as it does so. And our heros, seeing this COLD descend at a speed of roughly 5 m/s decide to make a run for it and race the cold. How realistic is that? And don't even get me started on the wolves they used. Even my PC can make a better animation of wolves. And how come that these wolves are so stupid that they constantly run into walls at full speed as they chase their prey? And how come that the pack doesn't act as a pack? And the movie is full of stuff like this. But the worst thing, the absolutely worst thing imho is this: Our hero wants to get to his son who is trapped in New York. So he decided to walk from Philadelphia to New York. In an arctic storm. Fair enough. But what does he pass as he reaches NY City? He actually walks past the Statue of Liberty as he enters New York. Now, how do you manage to do that if you walk in a more or less straight line from Philly, which is inland to New York? I mean, unless you take a detour by something like 25 miles to take advantage of the beautiful scenery. And how likely is it that you do that if you just walked hundreds of miles to save your child.

But that's still nothing compared to the stupidity of Van Helsing! Here they just took all gothic tales that they came up with, threw them in a blender, added some Indiana Jones and James Bond and what came out is...well. I mean, I already found it hard enough to accept that Mr. Hyde was living as Quasimodo on Notre Dame. But when I saw that Dr. Frankenstein was working for Count Dracula in Castle Frankenstein (which suddenly was in Transylvania and not in Germany) I found this a bit hard to swallow. I found it even harder to swallow though, that the only thing that could kill Dracula would be werewolf (leave those stakes at home boys, tame yourself a werewolf). But what really did it for me was the following scene: Our heroes have arrived in a big city. They are standing besides a big bridge, in the background you see a large building. A vampire flies in and tells them that they have to meet at a big Halloween party since "tonight us Halloween, here in Budapest". And the bridge she is sitting on is the Charles Bridge of Prague and the big building in the background is the Prague National Opera!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! Maybe I should try to get a job in Hollywood working on continuity?

But there is light as well, where there is darkness. Though apparently not in Hollywood. The book I'm reading at the moment is probably one of the best books I've read in years: Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness and other tales. I've never read Conrad before. Simply because normally don't browse through the classical literature shelves when I'm hunting for a good read for the hammock. But this book has been recommended to me so many times that I decided to give it a go. Though the fact that I like Apocalypse Now, which is loosley based on the book and have been to a club in Phnom Penh that is also called the "Heart of Darkness" certainly had something to do with my decision as well. And I'm very, very happy with my buy. Seriously - I can't recall any author who has written as gripping and simply beautiful descriptions as Conrad. He's so excellent at describing sceneries, people and scenes, it's taking your breath away. And it makes you realize how bad a lot of the stuff is you're reading normally. So go and buy the Heart or any other of Conrads shortstories and be surprised by how beautiful language can be.

On the web:
The Day after Tomorrow
Van Helsing
Heart of Darkness (deutsch | english)