Starring Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson and Lindsey Lohan's hair

Another good day today. My friend Robert from the Burns fellowship came in from Bremen to spend part of the day with me. We had lunch, took a long walk through the city (the sun was finally starting to peek out) and ended up with coffee back where the Berlinale is being held. After he had to head back home, I went into the Filmmuseum and took in the exhibit on the history of German film - the most interesting part was the Marlene Dietrich collection, which downplayed her lesbianism (presumably because European audiences care about it so much less than Americans).

My only screening of the day was "Quinceanera," which won two of the grand prizes at Sundance last month. Given its award history, I had high expectations but was a bit disappointed. The script was great, and it was a wonderful non-stereotypical window into the lives of Los Angeles Latino teens, but the problem was the acting of the lead girl - I found it gratingly bad. Still, the script had me feeling warm fuzzies and fighting back tears by the end.

Afterward I made my way to the press conference for Robert Altman's new film, "Prairie Home Companion." Altman was there along with Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson and Lindsey Lohan. The photographers were the most obnoxious I've seen them here, even worse than they were for George Clooney, testament to Lohan's status as papparazzi bait (though they seemed fairly taken with Streep and Altman as well).

One of Lohan's deepest questions was about her hair, which resembles an Elvira fright wig at the moment - "I colored it" was her profound answer. A reporter put Streep on the spot by asking her to sing, as she evidently does in the movie, but she backed out. Harrelson said maybe two words, but gave no evidence of being stoned. I'm hoping to see that one tomorrow, my last full day before heading on to Torino.