Keeping Your Followers Up-to-date 101

Yes, I'm still alive.

That's me, proud graduate, the 2nd from the right.

More or less so, I mean the last week has been heaven and hell in one. I graduated from high school on the 27th of July and since then everything has been on chaos mode. The thing is that here in this weird place between Denmark and Germany, we have a tradition of wearing our graduation hats for two weeks after that graduation and there is a party or something similar almost every day during that time. After the two weeks, there's an official event and the prom. I started out thinking that once the exams are over I will have enough time to post my Blind Spot entry and watch a movie every week for the ALASKAthon and write about it - turns out I was wrong. In between re-watching TFIOS in cinemas, indulging in coming of age flicks anywhere between high (The Dreamers) and low brow (Freche Mädchen, no you don't really need to know what that is) and a drinking game flavoured LOTR party, there hasn't even been time for me to watch the last two ALASKAthon films. Let alone comment one anyone else's blogs. Since Ed Sheeran's new CD has come out, I haven't even been listening to podcasts.

So what does the future hold? I don't know. I said I was going to write an official big-hiatus-goodbye thingy and I certainly will do so before I leave for Alaska August 4th. Who knows, perhaps I will marathon the Alaska films sometime after the graduation-hat-weeks and write all about it. Otherwise, keep an eye on my letterboxd profile, Tumblr blog and Twitter account - those are the places I'm most likely to find online (and talk about movies) these days.

What can I say - I'm sorry for being such a bad blogger. But I have had plans to take a break from blogging anyway and sometimes it's hard to say whether something will come to and end quickly or slowly. Perhaps a slightly modified quote from a certain Mr. Green will help express my feelings: "I stopped blogging like you fall asleep - at first slowly and then all at once".

See you soon - either for some more posts or for the last one in a long time.

Wendy and Lucy | The ALASKAthon

- Chris from Movies and Songs 365 also reviewed Wendy and Lucy -

In the ideal case, an independent movie is more than just a movie produced by a small studio or on a small budget. It's a movie that aspires to walk off the beaten path, to swim away from the mainstream as we like to say. To achieve this, independent films can tell stories that big studios find too risqué to produce, explore themes that won't please a large percentage of the shrinking amount of moviegoers. Or it can use uncommon ways to bring its message across, play with the technical side of filmmaking or choose the long way instead of the easy one. 

In the last weeks, I have been lucky to experience many of the aforementioned techniques or paths an indie film can choose. I had the chance to see Linklater's brilliant interpretation of a coming of age film, Boyhood, to luxuriate in Ayoade's twisted stylistic rhythm in The Double and to experience the orgasmic fusion of low-budget South Korean filmmaking and Captain America gone dirty in Snowpiercer - among others. This week's film choice for the ALASKAthon is another indie movie that takes a different perspective on a certain story than a big studio would have abandoned - a very unusual perspective, indeed. 

Grizzly Man | The ALASKAthon

The concept of craziness is a crazy one. Though it may seem like there's far between the people who see themselves as normal and someone with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, depression or anorexia, there is something seemingly 'crazy' about everyone. Think about it: haven't you called most of your friends crazy at least once (probably more often)? What's more, haven't you called yourself crazy at least a dozen times? Having quirks is part of having a personality, being a grown-up person. Though even babies and animals are often describes as 'acting crazy' or 'having a crazy fit' or simply being 'a little crazy'. Where is the line between an actual mental illness - insanity - and the common craziness of humanity, of life?

Timothy Treadwell, the curious protagonist of Werner Herzog's 2005 documentary Grizzly Man was probably more than 'a little crazy', but at the very least, this describes him pretty well. The self-proclaimed protector of the grizzly bears spent more time in the company of those animals than any other human has ever done. For 13 summers, he set up his tent in remote areas of Alaskan national parks and studied grizzlies, of which 5 years were recorded on camera, adding up to 100 hours worth of material. Treadwell's remains were found at the end of summer 2003 along with those of his girlfriend Amy Huguenard - they had been killed and torn apart by a gigantic male bear. 

The ALASKAthon

„I'm going to Alaska“ - I remember the moment I first heard that line a few years ago very clearly. I also remember the longing it inspired in me and that has since caught me every time anyone mentioned Alaska, whatever the connection. It's not that I'm brave (or stupid? - it's a fine line) enough to burn all my money and leave civilisation, nor do I have the guts or the money to go on some sort of literal walkabout for a whole year. I'm simply going to Alaska as an au pair, to take care of kids, become a member of my new Alaskan family and spend the money I earn on trips around Alaska or maybe even farther, skiing and visits to the IMAX theater. But even though I'm not really going full on 'into the wild', I think that it will be almost as adventurous - or perhaps even more so - than doing work and travel in Australia like everyone else. It might be a stupid prejudice, but I always connect Alaska with a certain sense of freedom that you can't find anywhere else in the world. It seems like one of the 'rawest' places in the world and I know that this is a hazy explanation but I always say this about things that I love the most in the world. Like my favorite film Dil Se.., which I think is one of the rawest films out there. It means as much as unpolished, uneven, rough - which I hope isn't just a romanticized view of nature. Although who knows, it might be, after all I often find myself romanticizing things like danger and melancholia. 

However my year in Alaska will turn out to be - and only the future can tell - I am most definitely excited to go. I know that some people think being an au pair is boring and conservative, but I am determined to prove them wrong and have the most adventurous, enlightening, philosophically satisfying gap year of them all. Due to the big change that moving up north and actually working instead of lazying through high school classes, this blog will probably be on a light hiatus between August 2014 and 2015 (with exceptions like the Blind Spot series). I won't be completely gone and will write an official post on the future of Reviews and Confessions before I leave, but my internet activity is sure to drop for a year. That and my intense excitement to finally go to Alaska, is the reason why I'm hosting a blogathon for the following months, that is June and July. 

During the ALASKAthon, I will watch seven new-to-me movies set in (and, for the most part, filmed in) Alaska, and then re-watch Into the Wild as a cherry on top. You will find posts about these eight films each Sunday and if I have time, I will pop in some other Alaska-related posts about music, art and what-not. Be free to send me any existing posts on Alaska-related movies or other themes or write something completely new. I will include posts in my reviews each Sunday, so if you review or write about a film I'm also writing about, I will include your post in my own post about that film. You can see the schedule I have set up below. Send me your links on twitter (@mettekowalski), via email (limereviews@googlemail.com) or in the comment section. Please link to this post in any new post you write for the blogathon and include one of the banners. If you could include a banner in your sidebar, that would be awesome as well!

Schedule

08. June: Grizzly Man (2005)

15. June: Wendy and Lucy (2008)

22. June: Insomnia (2002)

29. June: 30 Days of Night (2007)

06. July: Mystery, Alaska (1999)

13. July: Alone in the Wilderness (2004)

20. July: The Gold Rush (1925)

27. July: Into the Wild (2007)

Banners

Have fun, Cheechakos!

Wrapping Up May 2014 | Happy New Month!

May was an odd month - I don't have any classes anymore so basically, I sleep for hours, spend most days either in the hammock or working at the local supermarket (the first thing is awesome, the latter sucks) and watch a bunch of movies if I'm not meeting friends. Nobody has suggested studying to me yet... well, okay, some have. I will start this month, there are still three weeks until the exams so I'm good. The greatest news I have for you is that I finally found an au pair host family... in Anchorage, Alaska! So I will be moving way up north in August and honestly I have no idea how I will handle blogging and all that jazz for the following 12 months. So be prepared for a hiatus. As a little compensation, I will host an Alaska-centered blogathon during June and July so look out for that post pretty soon. And no worries, the podcast is definitely going to continue. Speaking about which, we finally found a way to get all of our old episodes on iTunes and Stitcher. If you follow us on iTunes or the Apple Podcast app, you need to unfollow the old feed and search for Across the Universe Podcast. You should find the up-to-date feed with all previous episodes. (Let's hope so!)