The past decade has been a rough one for me (and for a lot of other writers, of course), as work dried up, magazines and newspapers died, and the publishing business started going off the rails. Fighting off eviction, termination of telephone and electrical service, and trying to find enough to eat are all too Continue Reading

By Andrew Horn
I used to be a big fan of Guy de Maupassant and in fact I once made a film based on three of his stories - I used to describe it as a story within a story, in which one of the characters tells a story. So I, of course, also read Continue Reading

Keith Richards and Mick Jagger knew of each other's existence because they went to the same school, but they didn't actually speak to each other until the day Keith noticed that Mick had a pile of impossible-to-find blues albums with him. (He'd been ordering them directly from Chess Records in Chicago). Obviously, this kid was Continue Reading

By Andrew Horn

Leave it to the Forum to program a film about concrete. All kidding aside - actually only some kidding aside - the film "Parabeton - Pier Luigi Nervi" is about the architect, Nervi, insofar as it documents his various buildings, all designed for his material of choice, poured concrete (concrete in German is Continue Reading

By Andrew Horn

I started off Saturday with “Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present” playing in the Panorama. During "Iron Sky", I met a critic friend of mine and asked her if she had seen it. She acknowledged that it was ok but semi dismissed it as “typical HBO”. But okay, I’m interested in Marina Abramovic Continue Reading

A long time ago, in a newsroom far away (as far away as Austin, Texas is from you right now, anyway), a newspaper columnist sat typing blurry green letters on a black screen when he felt a presence next to him. Turning, he saw Jimmie Vaughan, one of the best guitarists in a town loaded Continue Reading

By Andrew Horn

With literally 100s of films on offer at the Berlinale, it’s always hard to know what films to go see based on just the small descriptions given in the catalogues. Sometimes films that appear dire can turn out to be interesting and sometimes things that look like a must-see turn out to be Continue Reading

I used to have this nightmare that Steve Jobs showed up at my apartment in Berlin to thank me for my support of Apple (believe it or not, for a short while I was the go-to guy for English-speaking Berliners having problems with their Macs) and, as a token of his respect, gave me an Continue Reading

Hi, folks. My name is Ed Ward and this is my new weekly blog for realeyz. They've given me permission to write about just about anything I want to, which I take to mean I'm going to range far and wide over the cultural landscape, covering everything except films. They've got that taken care of Continue Reading