Change Your Image
tvamsterdam
Reviews
Dirty Lines (2022)
This is how it was
After bingwatching the complete series I checked some stories about the Skene brothers history and in this "Dirty Lines" it is factual scripted but not complete, which makes it possible for a second season.
So for sure this series is build upon true history, like Hotel Babylon. This is a genre you could dislike because you don't understand that it isn't fiction and you're not able to believe that it has happened for real.
I was 27 in the time these brothers started this business, around the same age. My girlfriend was asked to work for them to do the dirty talks. She rejected because of the poor money (her voice was worth an escort fare). So it is very pleasing that the writers of this scenario putted everything in place as it went. They had to deal with inexperienced students instead of relying on hookers, sexperts, writers or actors! That is what this comedy is about. This lack of business knowledge.
Some lads get an idea to make a new business and instead of focusing on quality they freak around and create their own mess.
Big compliments on scenario and actors/casting. All Amsterdam based talents.
You Don't Nomi (2019)
Finally in 2021, on public TV in the Netherlands
The great thing about Showgirls (1995) is that it gives a semi-futuristic image of a wasteland while at the moment it was shot it is taking place in reality. It was history in the making. In fact Paul Verhoeven created a dramatized documentary by hiring actors and a scenario writer. It was not a bad movie but a bad dream about American society. That's against the American Dream.
Showing Americans that they are in a Third World Country was in those years the biggest taboo. The documentary You Don't Nomi does not come to this conclusion, it describes the fuzz and confusion from a film press perspective, wondering why after so many years the movie regained respect.
Ask Paul Verhoeven to do a movie about the recent Capitol attack and he will show the ugliness of the patriots, including woman.
Showgirls is about that. Show the ugliness of the American way of setting up a sex industry and not able to handle it. A third world country, in 1995 nobody in the US was thinking of it this way... only an outsider could see it.
Grenslanders (2019)
Not everything is ready for Bing Watching
Grenslanders is a complicated story (packed in a flick movie) literally placed in a swamp of mixed cultures, mixed systems and justice isn't welcome. Because at the end of the day all story lines come together, that seems no excuse to tell the story in a calm way. Grenslanders episodes 1 and 2 were broadcasted as one (1h50m) and I was exited about the idea, the topic, the details. The next week the broadcasting of Grenslanders 3 and 4 I was completely confused. I decided the next day to watch it again, because I could not remember anything I should to follow this story, which on such is quit interesting, but the way it is brought doesn't stay in your mind. So a good reason to start watching these episodes over again. Now I can understand some plot lines. But also see some horrific blur in the production. There are too many characters who are not made familiar with. The scenario doesn't help you to identify suddenly appearing key roles. Maybe the series is too short for the compelling story? Fast editing and a lot of car movements doesn't explain me as a viewer why stories develop, The dirty landscape neither. The stories developing in this "flick" are a bit too much together. And the storytellers swallow it all at once. All introduced characters in episode 1 (and 2) are collapsed in affairs in episodes 3 and 4. We have 4 more episodes to go I am afraid we will have a lot of dead corpses to make this a succesfull serie. Untill now, there were only a few corpses carried around with, and somebody buried alive. So I will keep watching, but again, next week when part 5 and 6 are shown, I would like to know the next day what I was watching at and what I had learned from it. Not this lousy experience, that you completely are desorientated because of the flashy filming and editing without recognizing your audience. Story telling begins with patience. And timing...
Vroeger kon je lachen (1983)
This is not a funny movie
This movie is about a (real life) daily writer of small articles about folk sorrows, Simon Carmiggelt, in Amsterdam. His quality was to notate these stories after listening to those people in bars and in parks, and make it to an every newspaper article every single day, and he sold a lot of books filled with these stories, he was very popular. When Carmiggelt became 70 years of age, someone decided to make this movie as a tribute. It did not worked out that well. Bert Haanstra and his fellow crew made the movie (with a huge cast of AAA actors from Holland at that time)and it did not succeed to be a movie at all. Haanstra, very famous Oscar winner (!) documentary style was in 1983, when the film was shot, also in the range of old people wanting to tell stories for the aftermath, but he had no experience at all making drama (Like: Doctor Pulder Zaait Papavers). The movie is so called Comedy, but there is only ONE laugh in it. Haanstra, and his crew (cameraman Anton van Munster) did a great job to light and motion all frames in the film for that time, the sensitivity of the stories were KILLED by the lack of DRAMA in the photography. So you have an actor, we will frame it, and that's it! They, in that time, were to afraid to create reality in front of their lens! So they filmed real people in the park, asking permissions and signing quit claims and film them again (for more better frames). All stories are played by actors doing monologues, Carmiggelt, playing himself as the listener, only listen and don't interact at all. The film is shot as a masterpiece of decent cadrage and lightning, but it lacks anything from warmth, glamour, sex, decadency. It is all not there. However the stories they selected for this movie (around 12) none of them is dramatic enough to catch your brain afterwards. It ends with a scene that the writer is photographed with all his grand children (not for the first time by the way, for the books it has happened before) as it is really a BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE for a 70 year old famous writer. So this is a very boring product I would not call a movie. It is more like a TV special for a celebrity. What you could learn from it nowadays (30 years later) is that you never should documentary filmers get loose on somebody's written content that fits well in the papers for years. Better let some folks rewrite it and make some good drama. And get the original writer's name on the credits in a proper size as the creator and collector of all those great ideas and stories. It is a pity that this movie does not match the quality of the great writer Simon Carmiggelt at all, while it is filmed by one of the greatest documentary filmers Bert Haanstra, who I admire because of his (oscar winning!) editing skills.