Now that's what I need — blogging for the lazy: Lately I've been experimenting with Tumblr, a "web two-point-oh service" (websites are now 'services') which brings the better mousetrap approach to blogging. Of course, everyone else has been using bookmarklets for ages and If Then Else is perhaps the only weblog in the world in which the author still types crude HTML into an ugly textbox (after all, nobody else sees it) in a page generated by a CGI script. Anyway: I love the way Tumblr's bookmarklet automatically detects what you are posting. For instance, if you have selected text in the page you're in it becomes a 'quote post', click a button and you are presented with a list of image in that page if you wish to post an image — and it'll copy it to Tumblr's server so you're not stealing bandwidth, resizing it to a selection of multiple sizes in the process (so it can fit in different page widths — templates are fully customizable). Sure it's still in beta — true beta, of the limited functionality kind (no comments, and the permalinks are illogical), but so far, so good. It imports RSS so you can read regular If Then Else posts or watch Fotologue photos there, and features an API, so in the future I'll get If Then Else to fetch my Tumblr posts and turn my blogging once again into a big happy family.

My 'tumblelog'? Found Objects.···

I haven't seen many films during this year's Fantasporto, but still got the good luck of watching two which would become award-winning. Here are some short reviews:

Hana — Hirokazu Koreeda (Japan)
The samurai flick as a dramatic comedy, Hana depicts life in a village in early 18th century Japan, in which a somewhat coward young samurai struggles to overcome procrastination and proceeds with his revenge against his father's murderer. There seems to be plenty of attention to detail in the movie, and there are some funny moments, but overall it's perhaps too long and a tad boring.

The Secret Life of Happy People - Stéphane Lapointe (Canada)
Quite close to the American indie formula — a seemingly happy family with quite a lot of nasty secrets — features some fine comedic situations and all in all it's a simple story of a father stealing his son's girlfriend. However, the last third was somewhat annoying, featuring a somewhat embarassing climax and a half-baked happy ending.

The Bothersome Man - Jens Lien (Norway)
Jacques Tati (it has touches of Playtime) meets the IKEA catalog, with a touch of surreal morbid humour. We follow a man struggling to adapt to life in a strange dystopian city in which everyone is nice to you, TV only shows home improvement and furniture advertising, and suicide is impossible. There are obvious nods at Charlie Kaufman-esque surrealism there, and the blend makes this the best film I've watched in the festival. It won a Special Mention of the Jury, so it seems others agreed.

Isabella - Pang Ho-Cheung (China)
I'm a sucker for Wong Kar-Wai-esque stories about bent policemen with soft spots, and Isabella fits the description. The movie got me quite curious about the former Portuguese colony of Macau, such a strange hybrid it looks (and then there's this character always talking about the evils of Portuguese food). Macau is definitely a place to visit someday. As for the movie, it's quite good (as imitations go that is, but still short of Kar-Wai's work), and possibly a deserving winner of the festival's Orient Express competition. As for the leading lady Isabella Leong (the festival's Best Actress), I have to disagree with the jury, I found her acting little over average.

The Red Cockatoo — Dominik Graf (Germany)
A piece of East German no(t)stalgia set in the early 60s, just before the building of the Berlin Wall, is essentially a love triangle story set in a conflict background in which sex, drugs and rock & roll battle against the Stasi and East German regime in its early days (it's interesting to compare it with very excelent — and which I believe a solid Foreign Film Oscar winner — The Lifes of Others, which depicts the GDR in the 80s). Red Cockatoo has genuinely good moments, but overall I found it too uneven and its character development somewhat spineless.···