Reviews

Störtebeker is truly one of the worst TV mini-series ever made on this planet.

The acting is unbearable and the historic background is mostly nonsense: Just two examples: Visby was shown as a village of three houses. Instead, it was a major city at this time, it's best days already passed by. Secondly, Hamburg would have never been the city taking care of pirates in the Baltic Sea. Hamburg had no access to the Baltic Sea, the major town at that time was Lübeck.

But worse than all that: The directing! How can a dilettante like this guy be allowed to direct a movie like this? Impossible! There was not a single believable scene it, the fights were ridiculous and I could not suppress laughter at most stern scenes.

I can't understand at all how a major television station could be so incompetent.

Narnia is one of the most amazing film-phenomenas of the last years. For me. The hype, the amazing number of good ratings...

I had very high expectations and thought Narnia to have the quality of the Lord of the Rings. Well, it has certainly not and probably the only one to blame is: Me! For having high expectations.

When you approach Narna (book or film) you should never forget: It's a story FOR CHILDREN. Nothing more, nothing less. It is not a story compatible for anyone looking for an intellectual challenge.

If you keep this in mind (and you are a kid or someone at this level) you're going to enjoy this. If not, don't bother to watch it.

I was glad to see that another of the better NDR documentaries made its way to the IMDb. This film tells the short stories of different people and animals sharing a habitat on the Baltic peninsula Darss.

To be honest, the storyline is a little misleading, since the strange and funny mayor is by far not the leading character of this film. He is merely another interesting figure with an interesting hobby: painting the cranes, arriving every year in spring and leaving south by October. The other characters are equally interesting and refreshingly strange.

If you think the cranes, at least, would be the leading "actors", you're wrong again. We encounter many animals, including impressive shots of sea eagles, that live in the area.

The film has a convincing structure, divided into little connected stories of man and animals. The animal shots are average, some highlights (the eagle!), but nothing extraordinary. The overall atmosphere is quite emotional - but I like that!

It's just the music, dear folks at NDR (or dear director, dear producer) that is a clear NO GO. Spare us this electronic yowling next time!

This film was shown as an NDR production on SFB a few weeks ago. As a huge fan of nature documentaries I was quite surprised by this "new" style of story telling - at least new for NDR productions (which is - FYI - Germanys number one producer of nature films, if DER SPIEGEL is correct).

The film follows the work and life of a handful of young U.S. scientists who have set up a base somewhere in the Masai Mara. Since the 70ies (?) students, post-docs and other personnel are doing intensive research on spotted hyenas from here. These animals, as told by the rather strange Masai woman at the beginning of the film, are considered to be craven, double-faced, evil, merciless monsters, eating their prey alive.

Well, I've learned this is only half the truth. The film shows in fabulous images their complex social behavior (hyenas are dominated by woman, BTW). The scientist's devotion and fascination creates some kind of spark that suddenly, at the end of the film, you find yourself admiring hyenas! Well, kind of.

I could have seen much more of the scientists work and life, not the usual stuff like eating, talking, driving around, shooting - we've seen that a million times. Why wasn't there more about the balloon guy or the old Masai lady?

Otherwise, excellent documentary.