Arb's post about an Australian silent movie reminded me about this story from earlier this month.

For anyone who's into film history, Metropolis -- a movie from the high-water mark of the German film industry, when Babelsberg competed with Hollywood's best -- is a true classic. Even today, though it is a silent movie, it is eminently watchable and the special effects quite impressive.

Sadly, complete prints of the movie have been lost for years, so any time you saw a copy of Metropolis, it invariably had gaps in it, usually filled by text trying to explain what the curators think should have been there based on best guesses and old reports. Imagine a movie like, say, Blade Runner with the scenes where Tyrell gets murdered and parts of Roy's soliloquy are missing, and you get the idea (a nice parallel, since parts of Blade Runner were clearly inspired by Metropolis).

Now a complete print has been found in Argentina, of all places. It will finally be possible to piece together the classic story and the orchestral score -- for "silent" movies were usually accompanied by live music. The times I've seen the movie, they had a pianist playing throughout, who freely admitted that he had to improvise the missing bits based on his own interpretation.

I'm looking forward to seeing the complete version -- I love the movie. I even did a postcard design based on one of its promotional posters once (that and King Kong), back when I was first self-employed.

Though the talk of a Blu-Ray version is a bit silly -- come on, it's not like it's going to look any better in 1080p...

If you're looking for other early German film classics, I highly recommend:

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
(which provided much of the inspiration for the Red Hot Chili Pepper's Otherside video)

Der blaue Engel
(aka The Blue Angel, the movie that made Marlene Dietrich famous, but full of other German stars from the time like Hans Albers)

Der Golem, und wie er in die Welt kam
(an early horror movie based on a Jewish legend)

And, for a more modern German movie that I got a big kick out of:

Good Bye, Lenin!
(a bittersweet movie about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the changes it caused)

Note the first city listed on the calendar.

The kids and I are so there, dudes and dudettes.

(NASN was advertising this on heavy rotation as we watched the Twins go down swinging against the O's.)

I give myself five stars.

Redskins 22, Giants 10.

Though if the Giants had caught half the passes they dropped, they'd probably have creamed the 'Skins. Yeesh. Manning damned near set a record for incomplete passes, and half of them were dropped balls.

And the wind kept doing the 'Skins favors, weirdly enough. Only once do I recall a case where the wind really cost the Redskins a play (when a Collins pass that would have been a TD wobbled a bit too short), but other than that it kept blowing in FGs and blowing Giants passes awry (and one Giant FG). And in one case blowing what would have been a lousy 30-yard punt and turning it into a 60-yarder ending at the Giants 4.

Not to mention a couple bad spots where I thought the Giants had the first, but then the spot was miraculously inches short. If the game had been in DC, I'd have been suspicious.

If you're wondering why I only now am posting about the game, the original broadcast was at 2 am last night...so I chickened out and watched the repeat at 9 pm. And they're showing the 'Skins-Vikings game next week...at 1 am. Sigh. At least there was the occasional baseball game earlier in the day, when the kids were still up, but letting them stay up until midnight is a bit much (even if the Confessor was excited by the prospect of watching tonight).

Meanwhile I noticed they announced the game times for various places around the world, and it never occurred to me before, but the evening NFL games in the US are of course midday in Oz. Therefore I am moving in with Arb.

I direct your attention to the NASN TV schedule for this Saturday at 6 pm.

Hot diggity damn.

The Confessor was weirdly prescient, getting himself dressed earlier after coming home from shopping with BoE...putting on his Ohio State sweatsuit that his Buckeye grandma gave him some months back, but until now he always refused to put it on. But today he proceeded to go to the closet, pick it out and get dressed.

Maybe he heard me talking to Grandma about the game during our recent video chat, and took it to heart more than I realized...

Anyway, I now also direct your attention to the schedule the next day, 10 pm (or 22:00 as they put it).

Hot diggity-double-damn.

Hail to the Redskins, hail victory, braves on the warpath, fight for old DC!

That goes for every one of you!

Our apartment is, by German standards, fairly good-sized -- 105 m², to be exact, with four rooms, plus bath, kitchen, hallway and balcony. Thing is, the building was restored just after the war, and being an old building it's got pretty high ceilings (almost four meters high), so heating it isn't too fun.

The additional thing is that the windows in the living room and kitchen were replaced a few years ago with vinyl double-glazed thermal windows -- really good ones -- and just before we moved in, the windows in the workroom were also replaced with the same type. Unfortunately, the window and balcony door in our bedroom and the window in the kids' bedroom were still the old single-glazed wooden-framed type -- and worse, the balcony door (which could both open swinging inwards or also hinge on the bottom to tilt in, a common type in Germany) wasn't closing properly, sometimes popping out of the hinges and only hanging on by one hinge and the latch.

We complained to the management about it a couple times, and they sent a guy over, who sprayed WD-40 on the hinges and proclaimed it miraculously healed. Unfortunately for the management company, no such magical healing powers exist in cans of WD-40, and I pointed out the rapidly worsening signs of water damage in the frame and on the floor in front of the door (not to mention not being too happy about the door not latching properly when two small kids play in front of it).

So they finally caved and agreed to replace the door and window. The workmen came by today and did it. The only downside being that I couldn't get any work done while they were here, since it made a huge racket cutting out the old frame and installing the new one.

I immediately noticed a difference in how the living room (which adjoins our bedroom) and our bedroom felt warmer. Just in time for winter, hopefully saving us a ton on heating costs.

It sucks that the kids' room (adjoining our room) is still badly insulated -- it has two exterior cinderblock walls and most of the ceiling is also exposed to the outside (being the upstairs neighbor's terrace), and the window is still the old type, but at least it's not as leaky and drafty as our old balcony door was. It used to be that, if we left both doors to the bedrooms open from the living room (but had the windows closed), you could clearly feel the draft of the cold air coming in from the bedrooms (which is why we generally closed the door to the bedrooms in winter). Now that is no longer the case and we can let the kids use the bedrooms in wintertime more. w00t!