Ugly Americans

Damn you, Ain't it Cool News! To celebrate the ten-day anniversary of our arrival here, Julie and I had planned an "Ugly American" night, in which we'd go to the wastelands of Potsdamer Platz for an evening of low-brow American entertainment.

The colossal Sony Center can stand toe-to-toe with those temples of Hollywood consumption, Universal City Walk or The Beverly Center. M. Night Shymalan's latest, The Happening, opens across Germany tonight, but last night the Sony Center was home to a special early-bird screening. That was our plan… until Julie read some initial buzz from Harry Knowles and his band of merry parade-rainers-oners and started thinking maybe The Happening was going to be more Lady in the Water and less The Sixth Sense. She is probably right - wouldn't you be wary of such statements like "one of Mark Wahlberg's worst performances?” I mean, have you seen The Trouble With Charlie?

At the LA movie-shrines, choice B could be made from a list of at least 15 other films, but alas, the Sony Center has “only” eight screens… and a few of those were reserved for free screenings of Euro 2008 soccer matches last night. Which meant that for us, choice B was between seeing Indiana Jones for a second time (damn you, George Lucas!) and Sex and the City. Please don’t tell anyone I know that I saw this movie. Not sure why the producers had to spend two plus hours exploring the exact same themes they’d exhausted by the end of the 15th and final season (are you sure it only ran for six years?), advancing all the characters about ½ a block (street blocks, not avenue blocks fellow New Yorkers), but that did leave time for a diarrhea joke AND a three-way, so in the end it wasn’t a total loss. The highlight of the evening was definitely watching the last 10 minutes of the Turkey Switzerland match on a giant screen in the bar/concession area of the theatre before the movie started. In case you didn’t know, Berlin is home to the largest Turkish population in Europe, and I think half of them were at the Sony Center last night, decked out in jerseys, flags and face-paint. Turkey won 2-1 in extra time, and Carrie and Big END OF TEXT DELETED BY WEBMASTER