the_stardogg

I really wish I could be there, in one of these two pubs around Dallas, on the very evening one of these guys first came up with the idea of making a "Braveheart" movie.

"Heyyy, just that you know, the next round is on me, and tomorrow you will show up in my backyard for a historical movie!!" "Yay!" He must have been quite convincing as an impressive number of extras showed up in some of the big scenes... but then, maybe it was the beer Guinness donated...

The result is great for what it is, the acting is what you would expect it to be, the gags and the ripping is inventive and sometimes absolutely crazy, and there are even a few dance and music numbers - watch out for the English King's performance! Hilarious. Only the sound could have used some post-production work.

IF I hadn't seen a comparable fan /spoof movie called "STAR WRECK - IN THE PIRKINNING" a week earlier, I would have awarded this Strangeheart a golden A+ for effort, but what those Star Trek fans achieved is mesmerizing, professional and mind-boggling fun. Maybe - considering Strangehearts tagline - those Finnish Trek fans were a little more sober...?

I can think of only one other Austrian movie (or German, for that matter) that dives so deep into social deserts and black parts of the common human, and that is "Hundstage", which could easily be described as "social porn" and is equivalent to Todd Solondz' work, yet darker and more dire. In Muttertag, it's more satire, but with many more levels, and none of them pleasant. You live with a group of people from a lower social level, the Neugebauers in the center of this strange and wicked community, living in a notorious apartment estate in Vienna. Their part of town is satirically portrayed like one of the antechambers of hell - for Austrian standards - a socialistic community of concrete and locked doors, where everybody tries to seclude himself and his dark secrets from everyone else. No Walzer, no Mozart, no Viennese courtesy, no post-monarchistic postcard nostalgia and no hope. Everyday life seems to throw everything at the Neugebauers to bring them down, and everything unfolds right before Mother's Day, which provides a certain forced traditional background for this tour-de-force, like Christmas being a battlefield for family conflicts. And just like at Christmas the private tension induces riot-like scenes in the community, in the supermarket, at church, at the gas station and in school. Satirical portrait with some of the finest Austrian comedians and actors, that will offer a haunting, outlandish and desperate experience for non-Austrians and a mirror of the soul for the locals. Remember, people of Vienna, "another social layer" does not mean that these people aren't living nearby, and their issues apply to you as well, regardless of your social and educational background.

Austrian movies have a certain something, "the" something that the renowned Silentium earlier this year managed to communicate to the audience. The something, well, it is this slightly morbid, self-conscious and a little mischievous attitude of Austrian actors and directors. There is a saying "The Austrian has a close personal relationship with his pimples", which must sound quite amusing outside of Austria.

While all this adds a certain charm to local productions, c(r)ook fails to deliver it, and that is mainly because of it's German cast, which -as usual- fails completely to trade on anything that is not German. Moritz Bleibtreu is a welcome change of pace, but all the other Germans, were they really necessary? There is even a cheesy voice-over to camouflage Duringer's Viennese accent for the German audience, which is so completely annoying that it almost made us quit the movie and leave. 6/10