Berlinale day 2

I feel I've got a much better grasp of the Berlinale now. This morning I started the day with a documentary called "Wide Awake" which was actually the filmmaker's study of his own insomnia - it had premiered last month at Sundance, and had a feel similar to "Super Size Me." It was an appropriate subject matter because my jetlag kept me up the night before. I caught the director in the lobby afterward and chitchatted - yes, he still has insomnia, and no, he hadn't slept the night before. The film was well-done and I believe it may have been picked up by HBO, so it's worth catching when it airs.

Then I caught a German premiere, "Elementary Particles," which features the stars of one of my faves, "Run Lola Run." I wasn't that crazy about the movie - it was about the deviant sex lives of two brothers with mommy issues, overlaid with a bunch of overblown philosophical thoughts. But the German audience loved it, and the press treated its stars as reverently as U.S. media would fawn over Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Directly after that press conference was another presser with Sir Ian McKellan, a.k.a. Gandalf from Lord of the Rings and Magneto from X-men, and, oh yeah, the guy nominated for the Oscar for Gods and Monsters. I felt badly for him because most of the media cleared out after the German movie stars left and it was a paltry crowd asking him questions, but he put on a charming show.

I had a few hours to kill so I tried unsuccessfully to fix a problem with my mobile phone - I've fried my charger on German voltage so I'm in danger of being out of touch during my upcoming days in Torino. Then I caught a quick meal at a uniquely German snack stand - all they served was potatoes, in various incarnations (I had a potato pancake with sour cream and applesauce).

Next I had my first interviews of the festival: with Janusz Kaminski, the cinematographer who has worked on Steven Spielberg's last 10 films (he won Oscars for Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List), and with Charlotte Rampling, a Brit actress who's a familiar face despite not many big-name films (one of her most recent was "Swimming Pool," and she's going to be in the upcoming "Basic Instinct 2" opposite Sharon Stone - I hope that one doesn't suck too bad). Both interviews went well - at one point a publicist interrupted my conversation with Kaminski and asked if he wanted to wrap it up, and he said he wanted to continue the interview because he was enjoying it. Hoping those will turn into freelance pieces.

And I wrapped up the evening with my hosts Christina and Peter, who joined me to watch an Israeli documentary called "News from Home," which tracked the former owners and subsequent occupants of a house in Israel that was seized in 1948 from a Palestinian family - overall interesting but a flawed film because the director put his own agenda into it too heavily. My hosts then took me to a classic German beer garden for a late supper.

A note on the people I've encountered: though the Germans persist in describing themselves as unfriendly, my experience has generally been the opposite. A random guy in the airport gave me a free day pass for the subway after spotting me with a confused look on my face in front of the fare machine, and all strangers I've asked have been unfailingly helpful in giving me directions. But this morning I had an exception to the positive experience - a group of four or five people ranging from late teens to early 20s surrounded me as I was walking to the S-bahn (train) early this morning with my laptop hanging over my shoulder. I thought I overheard them calling me a "computer clown" so I ignored them and just kept walking. Christina clued me in that in fact they were saying they wanted to steal my computer - "computer klauen" - so it was a blessing I didn't understand them because they were most likely just trying to provoke a reaction. But they grew bored with me quickly, and Christina reminds me that Berlin is generally a safe city and street thefts are rare.