A filmy Sunday

Honeybuns and I went to Stockholm City Museum to see the recently opened exhibition on Stockholm on film. One suspects that the exhibition has been sponsored, as the exhbition featured a large number of props from the recently premiered Kenny Begins film, which is not placed in Stockholm, but they did not detract from the overall ambition of showing scenes from Stockholm, and how the Big City has been used symbolically and concretely in films. Short excerpts are shown in loops everywhere in the exhibition halls. The leaking-over of sound from adjacent films is luckily not large enough to be too bothersome. In the end, the time we had allotted for seeing the exhbition was not enough and we will have to go back. So far my favourite is the tourist propaganda film from 1932 in now badly faded colour, showing off exotic Stockholm, full of happy and healthy Stockholmers. The American speaker made a good job pronouncing Swedish words, but finally stumbled on ”skärgården” and ”Saltsjöbaden”.

When the museum closed, we moved on to Filmstaden Sergel to see Watchmen. Oy, I didn't think you could cram that many explosions and bullet-time fight scenes into just the first few minutes of a film and it continued to be quite violent—tender-hearted Honeybuns probably had her eyes shut about half the time. The soundtrack on the other hand was quite exquisite with well-chosen music. Presumably most of the images would have been computer-generated pixels, but with impressive detail levels (but I think Dr Manhattan's crystal construction on Mars was pretty dorky and pointless, sharp edges notwithstanding). Watching the credits I realised I must have missed out on a lot of details, apparently there is plenty for those with the DVD to look through in slow motion.