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Baby Mama took in 18.3 million over the weekend, beating out Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo Bay.

It’s so great to see a comedy starring two women take the top spot at the box office.

I’m a huge Tina Fey fan and have been anxious to see the film since I heard about it over a year ago. Just waiting for it to come out in Berlin!

Here’s a trailer for the film.

Skoda was one of the official sponsors of FilmFest Dresden. This ad was shown prior to every screening. At first I thought it was a joke but then realized it was a real TV spot.

I came to love this commercial after having seen it many, many times. (Sorry for the poor quality).

Turns out the two puppets in the commercial are Spejbl and Hurvínek - the legendary father and son duo from the Czech Republic. They first appeared in the 1920’s in amateur marionette shows performed in Pilsen cabarets, then in 1930 professor Josef Skupa established the first professional marionette theatre in their name.

Skupa was arrested by the Nazi’s for antifascist resistant activities in 1944 and the theatre was shut down. It reopened at the end of 1945 and Spejbl and Hurvínek have been entertaining children ever since.

I didn’t know puppetry was so popular in the Czech Republic.

I think I’ll have to check out a show when I’m in Prague.

I did some sightseeing while I was in Dresden. Too bad it was raining the entire time that I was there. I have seen the sun twice since I got to Germany and I’m going a little crazy. I left Montreal hoping to get spring sooner. So much for that.

Some facts about the city. Dresden is the European birthplace of porcelain. (Actually Meissen is the official birthplace but over the years the two became interchangeable seeing as the cities were so close to one another).

Dresden is also home to one of the most famous milk shops in the world, the Molkerei Pfund.

The shop opened in 1880 and the entire inside was lined with thousands of tiles hand painted by Villeroy and Boch.

The creamery was listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the “prettiest milk store in the world.” I took these photos before I was told that you weren’t allowed to take pictures in the shop.

It’s really quite spectacular. Not to mention the cheese is unbelievable.

Dresden is a beautiful city with a gorgeous historic district and Baroque quarter. For more pictures of the city check out the Dresden Flickr photo gallery.

Birthday Girl screened with seven other short films from Quebec (all of which were in English), four of which were animations produced by (or in part by) the NFB.

I was blown away by the animations screened in the program.

One of the films, Come Again in Spring, was written, directed and animated by Belinda Oldford. It’s a stunning, touching and somewhat comedic film about an elderly man who is visited upon by a dark robed figure who has come to take him to his death.

The animation is beautiful and the story is simple but moving. The score, composed by Judith Gruber-Stitzer is also wonderful. The film was produced by Academy Award winner Marcy Page, who produced this year’s success Madame Tutli-Putli. It was probably my favorite film of the night.

Another great animation was called Here and There. It was written, directed and animated by Obom. It’s a personal story about Obom’s childhood, growing up with her father in Montreal and mother in Paris. It’s funny, honest and the animation is charming.

Two other filmmakers from Quebec, Karl Lemieux and Patrick Gazé, were at the festival to present their films as well. Their films, Passages and Victor Gazon were also excellent.

The Dresden Film Festival happened this past week. I was invited by the festival to present Birthday Girl, which was showing in the Panorama Quebec series curated by Etienne Desrosiers.

I Got into Dresden Friday afternoon. Picked up my festival pass and immediately sat down for some kaffee und kuchen (coffee and cake). I brought my laptop so that I could blog from the festival but found out very quickly that the WLAN wasn’t compatible with my Mac. So now I’m back in Berlin but here’s what I would have been blogging about from the fest.

The film screened Friday evening at 9pm and Sunday at 5:30pm.

The response was wonderful. I was a little nervous showing the film to a foreign speaking audience but it went over very well (most Dresdeners speak excellent English). It was also a great exercise in learning that the best jokes were the ones that didn’t require language to comprehend. Even though the audience laughed at the verbal jokes, the silent ones got the best reaction.

There’s a scene in Birthday Girl where two sisters are sitting on the living room floor at the birthday party eating sandwiches. One sister gets up to get some soda and while she is gone the other sister opens her sister’s sandwich, places the cheese from the sandwich onto the floor and then back in the bread.

This scene happened to be everyone’s favorite scene during the script writing phase. When the film was finished people would tell me it was their favorite scene in the film. I think people like it because it’s full of genuine conflict. It was nice to see that even in Germany, the scene got the most laughs. My lesson: conflict is universal. Doesn’t matter what language it’s in, as long as it’s there, people will identify with it. And if it’s a gag with conflict, people will laugh as well.

“Once something is successful, once it’s established, once it’s working well, it is impossible to get them to change their mental model… People will look at new technology and fight it, and only later do they realise that it will reinvigorate their business…”

Scott Kirsner delivered a keynote address at NERCOMP last month. In the podcast, Kirsner discusses the challenges innovators or entrepreneurs face in a world where institutions are naturally averse to change.

Here’s a brief description of the discussion:

Technology innovators sometimes expect that users will embrace new ideas and new tools with open arms. In reality, most innovations are met with hostility and indifference, and it can take a lengthy campaign to persuade organizations to change the way they work. In an illustrated spin through Hollywood history, journalist and author Scott Kirsner will demonstrate how innovators like Pixar, George Lucas, and Bing Crosby (yes, “Mr. White Christmas”) have changed the movie industry while facing enormous resistance. He’ll also describe the three kinds of people that exist in every organization and some of the key reasons people tend to rebel (or go into a shell) when confronted with a new piece of technology.

Kirsner points out that at every stage in the advancement of film technology, innovators have been faced with opposition from the studios, or even from the inventors themselves. Even though Edison was one of the first inventors of the film camera and the Kinetoscope (a machine where people could pay to see short, moving pictures, individually), he objected to the idea of film projectors, stating that he could not understand why people would want to see a film collectively.

Whether it was from the Kinetoscope to the film projector, silent films to talking pictures, black & white to Technicolor, editing on the moviola to editing on the computer, these new ideas were met with skepticism and hostility. In time, they were adopted, became the standard, and ultimately saved the industry.

We’re at a crucial point right now with the Internet, in terms of adopting it as a new mode for not only film distribution but how films are being made and marketed. If history has taught us anything, it’s that we should all be jumping on the bandwagon, now.

Podcast: What Innovators Can Learn From Hollywood.

There’s some amazing graffiti going on this city (tags, cartoons, elaborate pieces, you name it, it’s here).

The New York Times has an interesting piece on the culture of graffiti art in Berlin. You can also check out the Berlin Graffiti Project.

More pictures of graffiti art on Flickr.

This is the headquarters for the DZ Bank of Berlin. It was designed by Canadian architect Frank Gehry. The building is situated on Pariser Platz, home to the Brandenburg Gate.

Gehry is known for his eccentric and unconventional structures but for this building he was heavily constrained due to Berlin’s strict building codes, especially those when it comes to building on Pariser Platz. Constraints such as height (buildings cannot be higher than the gate) proportions (relationship of windows to solid wall) and materials (obligatory stone cladding). This didn’t leave much room for experimentation so Gehry, true to form, used the inside of the bank to express himself.

Sketches of Frank Gehry, directed by Academy award winner Sydney Pollack, is a great documentary worth checking out.