OSKAR

So Dame Helen got the Academy Award she deserved. Good. Otherwise, I can't remember a year when I was less interested in the big beanfest. That said, I'm eager to catch up with The Lives of Others, the Stasi drama which carried off the Foreign Language prize. Sounds intriguing.  The German blog Atlantic Review has more on the background, along with the trailer and a link to an Economist article about the resurgence of German cinema.

Comments

[Mike Myers]

Well worth watching. The actors' performances were uniformly good. The danger in a story like this is that some of the characters could become caricatures--Frankensteins of the Police State as it were.

But nothing went over the top; it's all believable-and all horrifying.