Inside Move: Total recall
Berlinale remembers style
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10/12/08 5:32pm
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'Nora' takes home audience prize
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Directors honored at Tokyo Festival
Mikhalkov, Kaige to receive Kurosawa Award
10/12/08 9:46am
'Dead Men' win at Vancouver fest
Nonfiction award goes to 'Born Without'
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Duo collaborate again to stage Berlinale Day
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The irrepressible Kosslick declared he was in charge of creating "prima Klima," which translates roughly as "first-class atmosphere." Boy, did he succeed. He was everywhere, always on the move, making comical speeches, glad-handing, hugging, joking, and remembering everyone's name.
In fact, his total recall was the talk of the fest, with people he had met only once before being startled by the accuracy of his greetings.
Michael Barker of Sony Pictures Classics tells how he first met Kosslick in the mid-1980s, when they talked about a certain German beer that Barker couldn't get in the U.S.
On opening night at this year's Berlinale, Kosslick waved at Barker across the crowd, and the next day, when he returned to his hotel room, Barker found a handwritten note from Kosslick thanking him for coming, and two bottles of the very same beer.
Multiply that attention to detail several hundred times, and you have the key to the success of the 52nd Berlinale.
Through force of Kosslick's personality, it acquired a social energy to match the efficiency of its organization. Kosslick's innovation of the Berlinale Dining Club, an elegant salon high in the Sony Center where fest guests and filmmakers could book a table for dinner and mingle, was a big hit, and had the directors of other fests making a note to steal the idea.
"I have seen people talking to each other this year who you would never have seen together before," Barker says. "That's what a festival should be about, and that's all down to Dieter."
When Abu Dhabi officials decided to launch their Middle East Intl. Film Festival last year, the focus was all about the finance.
There are few more momentous moments in modern American history than the Watergate break-in and Richard Nixon's subsequent fall from power.
The Japanese biz releases more pics annually -- 407 last year -- than any other in East Asia. It also holds its own against Hollywood imports.
The bluntly titled "Zack and Miri Make A Porno" is a cheerfully vulgar love story or a sweet-hearted sex farce, however you want to look at it.
Appaloosa
American Teen
Hansel & Gretel
