Last night I watched a German/Austrian/Italian made for TV movie about the Austrian Empress (Kaiserin) Elizabeth. It is a remake of one of my favorite films Sissi (1955). I never understand why they have to remake already perfectly made movies. But alright, I was curious, so I watched it.

The entire time I was thinking that there was something off about the acting. The actors weren’t really connecting well which I put down as pure bad acting and made me wonder why they didn’t hire better actors. But I found out afterwards that the main actress (Cristiana Capotondi) is Italian and more or less everyone else, including the main actor (David Rott), is German. The German actors don’t speak Italian and the Italian actors don’t speak any German. So what they did was to have the Italian actors speak Italian and the German actors German. Even if they had a scene together. They would memorize the last word of the other persons dialogue as their queue. Apparently this is called babylonian film making (at least it is in German).

Which brings me to my question: WHY???? Why would you do that? I’m sure there are plenty of German speaking actresses that could have played the Empress. So why go through the hassle of all that confusion on set? Well, in this case the producers were mainly Italian and insisted on using an Italian actress (or so it sounded in the interviews on their website). But why couldn’t they find an Italian actress that speaks German? I just don’t get it. I don’t see any advantages of doing it this way.

And it shows, it really does. The actors are more or less reciting lines that they memorized but they are not playing off each other. Most of you know that I am at acting school at the moment and the main thing they teach us is to really listen to each other and let the other person have an effect on ourselves. But you can’t do that if you don’t understand the other person and are just waiting for one word in a foreign language that tells you that it’s your time to speak now. It is also strange to watch since one person is obviously dubbed but the others aren’t.

I wonder if this is a European thing or whether its going to come over to America as well. I surely hope not. I’m completely up for international collaborations and using actors that come from all sorts of different countries but then film it all in English (or whatever common language they all speak). This is completely nuts! Sorry, but I couldn’t sleep well cause it was bugging me so much last night.

Is anyone else here following Lost? I don’t have a TV so I normally don’t follow TV shows until they come out on DVD but I really wanted to watch Lost Season 6 ASAP so I am watching it on Hulu.

The slogan of this final season is “No more questions, just answers” but after watching the first four episodes, the questions are still piling up. Not one single question has been answered yet! What’s up with that? I feel like writing an angry email to the producers or writers of the show asking them to PLEASE explain what is and has been going on on that Island for 6 seasons now. I should have known better than to put my trust into a silly tag line like that. So far, I am not impressed.

I mean not only are we still asking ourselves what/where/who this Island is and who “The Others” are and what the deal with Jacob is, now we are also faced with the question of why everyone keeps existing on the Island and is now also simultaneously back in “the real world”. And why the “monster” is suddenly in form of  John Locke’s body and wants to get off the Island. Chaos! So please, please stop posing more questions and just GIVE US THE ANSWERS. Thank you.

Sorry that I haven’t written anything in a while…I was working on a post for “The LAMB devours the Oscars” (Best Art Direction) which I can only post once its published on the LAMB website. The other reason is that I haven’t really been watching films because I am completely addicted to the BBC series Coupling at the moment.

The premises of this sitcom is simple and very similar to the American series Friends: Six Friends (three men and three women) keep swapping partners around and meeting up and discussing their relationships. Doesn’t sound too exciting but the fun characters and the British humor quickly made me fall in love with Coupling.

The characters are very unique and mostly completely clueless about life and relationships. Especially the men. A lot of the jokes are based on clichés but the way they are presented is hilarious. They are short episodes (about 30mins) so I can easily watch two or three a day. What a pity, that there are only four seasons. I wish there was an unlimited supply of this series.

If you like sitcoms and/or British humor, you should definitely check this one out. It’s on “watch instantly” on Netflix, easy access.

Ally McBeal is a self-centered, neurotic, eccentric lawyer whose sole purpose in life is to find a man.

Even though the series is named after Ally (Calista Flockhart), it really is about the firm she works at, Cage & Fish (In fact I think the series should have been called Cage & Fish or something along these lines). Over the period of five seasons the lawyers who work at the firm change quite frequently.

In the first and second season Ally is working side by side with the love of her life, Billy (Gil Bellows). They were high school sweethearts until he left her and got married to the Barbie doll look-a-like Georgia (Courtney Thorne-Smith), who, of course, also works at Cage & Fish. Ally is still in love with Billy and has to learn to cope with the situation. This doesn’t prevent her from dating other men, though.

After Billy goes completely nuts and Georgia divorces him, he is diagnosed with a brain tumor and dies (I guess the story-line was getting old or the actor got another show). This changes Ally’s life considerably.

Now she is open for a new relationship. This comes in the form of the lawyer Larry (Robert Downey, Jr.). Finally Ally is happy and in a great relationship until he leaves her to go to Detroit to live near his son. Just because I only mention two of Ally’s boyfriends here doesn’t mean she is not dating. She has a different guy almost every episode. A nice wide variety of men.

Some of the other major characters in the series are John Cage (Peter MacNicol) who is not only a partner in the firm and the best lawyer in the series, he is also Ally’s best friend. Richard Fish (Greg Germann) is the other partner, a sex-obsessed, strange man with a fetish for women’s necks. Ally’s secretary Elane (Jane Krakowski) has a great passion for dancing and singing; the “rich bitch elitist ice queen” Nell (Portia de Rossi) dates John for a while but mostly hangs out with her equally mean friend Ling (Lucy Liu), who dates Richard. There are many others, too many to mention all of them here.

I have to say, the series is very intelligently done. It is really funny and witty. Ally, as wacky as she is, is a wonderful main character and it is great to watch her go through all the little disasters that she encounters. Calista Flockhart really did a great job as Ally, I couldn’t imagine anyone else doing it. The cast work well together, a real mix of personalities that make it an absolute delight to watch this show (at least the first four seasons).

This series absolutely deserves the MovieCat award.

Hank Moody (David Duchovny) is having a major midlife crisis. He is a famous writer but hasn’t written a thing since his last bestseller came out years ago. Since moving from New York City to Los Angeles he has been struggling with an alcohol and sex addiction.

Hank is still in love with his long-time girlfriend Karen (the two of them have a 12-year-old daughter, Becca), who is planning to get married to the publisher Bill.

What basically happens in every episode (the first half of the season anyway) is that Hank is desperately trying to convince Karen to come back to him. Because he can’t get her, he goes out and finds himself other random girls to have sex with. His best friend and agent Charlie is constantly nagging him to write a new novel. The only light in Hank’s life is his daughter, who still loves him despite all the disappointments.

In Episode Nine the story gets a bit more varied. Hank’s father has died and Hank has spent some time in NYC where he has written a new novella. When he comes back to LA things change a little and it gets more interesting.

I have to say, Californication didn’t interest me much, still I watched it to the end. The dialogue is funny but the story is repeating itself in every episode more or less and is therefore fairly boring. At first I thought it would bother me to see Mulder from the X Files (David Duchovny) in a new series, but since he is playing such a different character I barely recognized him. He gives a great performance as the miserable but still charming writer Hank Moody.

The British Natascha McElhone (who plays Karen) is the perfect woman for the role. She is utterly beautiful, tall, slender, with long hair and she is still a real, down-to-earth woman, so that it is believable that Hank would still be hung up on her, even though he could get any girl he wants. Her love for her daughter Becca is touching, but it is not believable that she is really in love with Bill. He is too overly unsympathetic and she has obviously no interest in him. This could have been done in a more subtle way.

The story of the Forsyte family is entwined in six episodes. Marriages, break-ups (even divorce!), love, hate, despair, all the good stuff! As my dear friend says, hours and hours of Victorian fun. Based on the book by John Galsworthy.

Soames Forsyte (Damian Lewis) falls in love with Irene Herron (Gina McKee). Here the drama starts. Irene is not in love with Soames, but marries him against her better judgement (for he is rich and she is poor).

After a few years she falls in love with someone else (a rather handsome fellow by the name of Phillip Bosinney). Obviously she has to steal him away from an engagement with her best friend (and cousin via marriage) June. Unfortunately their life together is ended by a rather inconvenient accident before it can even begin. This leaves Irene homeless (for she has already left her husband) and Soames son-less. As luck will have it there is the other side of the family, where several generations of Jolyon Forsyte’s (one of them played by the great Rupert Graves), can look after the beautiful Irene, although Soames’ obsession with her does not make her life easy.

This series is a must for those who like to lose themselves in a costume drama with intrigues, betrayal and love affairs (such as me!).

The Forsyte Saga (Series One) has received the MovieCat Award for best family drama.