Today was a special day for Team Edward and Team Jacob, the German Premiere of Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 at Sony Center in Berlin with Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner and director Bill Condon, unfortunately without co-star Kristen Stewart. About 3.000 screaming young (and not so young) girls had the chance to get an autograph or to take a picture with their beloved actor.
According to some rumors, Apple will open a new store at Kurfürstendamm 26 in Berlin. It will be Apple’s flagship store in Germany with 5000 m² on 6 floors, so there will be plenty of space for every apple product ever made.
The building, once used by Microsoft as a showroom location, was one of the first true movie theaters in the city, opened in 1913 under the name Union Palace.
Since 1992 every summer the Gendarmenmarkt in the heart of Berlin turns into a great concert arena and yesterday was the last day of this years event. This summer was the 20th anniversary of the Classic Open Air Festival and it ended with a special concert, the soundtracks of the James Bond Series performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London.
Dominique Horwitz will accompany you on a musical voyage though almost half a century of Bond movie history, under direction of the American conductor Carl Davis, London’s world-renowned Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the British singer Mary Carawe.
The whole place was filled with music and people enjoyed the concert sitting in the warm evening sun, drinking a beer, eating an ice cream, even without buying a ticket.
Oh and I tried to record it with my DSLR, check it out:
Finally I had some time to visit this years Berlinale at Potsdamer Platz and lucky me got some shots of Helena Bonham Carter as she left the Hyatt Hotel near the Berlinale Palace to promote the new movie “The King’s Speech”.
Helena is well known for her role as Bellatrix Lestrange in Joan K Rowlings Harry Potter or on the Side of Johnny Depp as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd.
I watched the second Anime during this years Berlinale, the world premiere of Welcome to the Space Show or Uchuu Show e Youkoso / 宇宙ショーへようこ if you are more familiar with the Japanese title.
A tiny mountain village in a remote woodland region. Five primary school kids have come together in this idyllic spot in order to spend their summer holidays at a camp. At first the children enjoy carefree days amidst unspoiled nature far away from adult supervision. But their life changes dramatically when they come across what they believe to be a small dog, badly in need of help.
The creature turns out not to be a dog at all but an alien on an important mission. It seems there is a mysterious substance on earth that is coveted throughout the universe.
The movie was produced by the same guys who brought you R.O.D -Read or Die-, Ishihama Masashi Masunari Kouji, Hideyuki Kurata and Tomonori Ochikoshi, all of them were parts of the audience.
There was only one thing I found a bit disturbing, I watched the movie in three languages, Japanese language, English subtitle and… a German translator for every single sentence and also totally emotionless.
But overall It was a really great movie with an interesting science-fiction story and cute characters.
So I watched Summer Wars today at an official cinema of the Berlinale 2010. It’s the DVD premiere in Germany and the movie was shown two weeks earlier, of course in Japanese language with English subs.
The movie was about a boy called Kenji, a computer technician for a virtual world called Oz (a massive social network in which everything is connected with the real world) who was invited by the most popular girl at his high school to her expansive family’s home for a summer job.
During their trip, the world of Oz became infected by a virus, Kenji’s Account got hacked and so the chaos begun.
Hosoda Mamoru, the producer himself, was one of today’s guests and at the end, he answered a couple of questions about the movie which I can’t tell you without spoiling you the story. The only thing I can tell you is that he got his inspiration from his own family… oh yes and that he loves Germany.
Seems like this year’s Berlinale is pretty popular, people standing in line for about an hour to get a ticket for their favorite movie or a chance to meet one of the many stars who came to Berlin to present their newest creations.