My wrap-up of the 59th International Berlin Film Festival is up at the Anthem Magazine site:

With an astonishing number of recent and soon-to-be released films being shot in Berlin (including The Reader, Valkyrie, The International and Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Inglorious Bastards) the German city seems to be enjoying a renaissance as one of Europe’s film capitals. Indeed, the mood carried over to this year’s installment of the International Berlin Film Festival, which unreeled from February 5 – 15….READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

The Weinstein bros. produced “The Reader,” which recently earned Kate Winslet her first Oscar, has been coming attack for being morally confused, simplistic or just plain schwach for some time now. The film opened last week in Germany and is being heralded as a much more serious-minded entertainment…

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BERLIN — Kate Winslet took home Oscar gold a week ago for The Reader. But while Winslet may be the actress of the hour, American critics responded tepidly to her film, an adaptation of the best-selling novel by German author Bernard Schlink. In Germany, where the movie just opened nationwide, The Reader is earning high praise as a penetrating exploration of the nature of German postwar guilt…

Read full story at USA Today