Ten days have gone by like a flash and I'm sitting here in the press room on Saturday afternoon, Valentine's Day, mulling over the dull flicks I slept through, the one or two that kept me awake, and the handful that I really wanted to see but never got around to. ("John Rabe", Sean Penn's "Milk", a Persian film called "Barbareye Elly", the latest Wajda, and a few others). Of the half dozen competition films I did get to, not one was a real winner, and most were so...

It's always a bit of a let-down when a big one like this wraps and you look through the catalogue noting oodles of films you were dying to see but just didn't have time to get to. Ouch! Among the most coveted 'near misses' (since it would have been possible to see them, but at the expense of missing other simultaneously scheduled events) I can list with sweet regret (and this is only a small sampling), the following: "The Notorious Betty Page" (with a fetishistically luscious Gretchen Mol); "Ab...

30th Retrospective at the 56th Berlin International Film FestivalDream Girls. Film Stars of the Fifties The Retrospective of the 56th Berlin International Film Festival will be dedicated to the screen heroines of the 1950s. A diverse programme of 45 films will present 30 actresses from the US, Europe and Japan. The Retrospective focuses on the portrayal of femininity in international films of the post-war period, which mirrors the reactionary climate of the Cold War and questions the obsolete ro...