Sunday, January 28, 2007

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)

Since Thursdaynight I spend a lot of time at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). The IFFR wil finish on Sunday February 4th. This year I will set a record by watching 33 movies(!!!). When my mother heard that I was going to see 33 movies she said yuck. Actually she said something else, but this is a proper and decent weblog (wink).

I saw 2 movies on Thursday, 5 on Friday and 5 today (Saturday). So 12 down, 21 to go. Here you can check the festivalprogramme. The festival has a wide range of different movies from all over the world. My main focus is Asian cinema, so the most movies I normally watch at the IFFR are from China, Japan and South Korea and sometimes from Taiwan, Malasia, Thailand (this year a lot from Hong Kong) depending on the supply. That doesn't mean that I try to watch all. It also depends on the subject/story of the movie. The IFFR always has a wide and interesting range of movies from the Asian region. But I also watch movies from other countries if I find the reviews/descriptions interesting or appealing. I always have to make a selection. On my first longlist for this year I had 45 movies, so on my final list of 33 movies I had to skip 12 . The agony of choice (me in my ironic mode). Later I might post a list af the movies (with links) and my ratings.

Last Friday my girlfriend joined me with the last movie at night. Before the movie we had to kill almost three hours, so we went out for dinner. I also could use a break after four movies. We went to a place called Sumo, a Japanese (Chinese management) restaurant with three parts, a teppanyaki part where the food is prepared in front of you on a iron plate (teppan in Japanese, yaki means baked/grilled), a set of tables where you can eat à la carte and a part where they offer all you can eat. We reserved a table at the all you can eat part. For just 19 Euro 50 (about 15, 16 Dollars) you could order anyting you like, from all kinds of sushi, dishes like yakitori, tempura, different types of udon and some ricedishes and other small dishes. The sushi wasn't the best we ever eat, but still more than reasonable with an extreme good price/quality ratio related to the all-you-can-eat-concept.
The yakitori and beef dishes were nice, but the udon was so so good. The (young) staff was very friendly and helpful. Surely a place to go back. The pictures below were taken by my girlfriend.

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