Recently in Europe Category

If you're looking for a quality film before the coming holiday deluge (or, if you're like me, and can pretty much tell from afar that Twilight likely won't be your bag), look no further than Tomas Alfredson's taut, eerie vampire flick Let the Right One In, which I caught over last weekend. A Swedish import that combines elements of the age-old vampire mythos with My Girl, My Bodyguard, and Morrissey (hence the title), Let the Right One In moves and feels like a particularly well-crafted Stephen King short story (or perhaps a bleaker version of one of Guillermo del Toro's Spanish Civil War fairy tales), and definitely makes for a compelling nightmare before Christmas if you're in the mood for it. Just make sure you're nice -- but not too nice -- to any kids you meet along the way to the theater.

As Let the Right One In opens, we find ourselves in a run-down apartment complex in deepest, darkest seventies Sweden, where dreams die hard amid the endless snowdrifts, there's never enough vodka to go around, and even the very occasional blood-red flower can't enliven the grim and ubiquitous combination of freezing winter weather and cookie-cutter architecture. Here we meet Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), a lonely, preternaturally blonde young lad from a broken home, who spends his days getting picked on by the school bullies and his nights playing with a knife and plotting revenge. It's on one of these nocturnal escapades that Oskar encounters Eli (Lina Leandersson), a lissome 12-year-old girl ("more or less") who's just moved in from parts unknown, on the complex jungle gym. Pleasanties are exchanged, a Rubik's Cube is passed back and forth, and, by that innocent alchemy of childhood, a strong friendship forms between these two outsiders.

But, as you probably guessed, there is more to Eli than meets the eye, much more. She's only out at night. She's astonishingly agile at times. She's always underdressed for the unforgiving Swedish cold. Oh, and she occasionally dispatches her "father" Hakan (Per Ragnar) to retrieve gallon-buckets of warm human blood from unsuspecting victims. (Hakan's role -- is he really Eli's dad, or her Renfield, or is he just suffering from [rimshot] "Stockholm Syndrome"? -- is never fully spelled out, but the story takes on a darker cast if you go in one particular direction with it.) So, yes, Eli, we discover, is a nightfeeder, a Nosferatu, a vampyrer, as the Svenska say. But, really, when you get right down to it, who is Oskar to judge? Everybody's got problems.

I don't want to say too much more about Let the Right One In, as there's not a lot of story there, to be honest. (In fact, if anything, the movie could've benefited from more of a third act -- I think most people will expect the jag it takes then to have happened a good hour beforehand.) Where the film really succeeds is as a mood piece. On one hand, like that flower budding in the dead of winter, Let the Right One In tells the story of an impossible friendship blooming in seemingly the deadest of dead-ends. At the same time, bad things seem to happen to anyone -- be it Hakan or the woman who survives one desperate attack (two, if you count cats) or the gaggle of alcoholics and losers usually fed upon -- caught up in Eli's wake, so why should Oskar's fate be any different?

The film is an adaptation of a book by John Ajvide Lindqvist, and at times it feels as naturalistic, character-driven, and hyperliterary an endeavor as In the Bedroom or Little Children. There's definitely some gore here and there, but as with the best horror stories, Let the Right One In is most frightening in the realm of ideas, and for what it doesn't ultimately show or explain. (And, while I can't be entirely sure, I have strong suspicion that it's considerably more suspenseful -- and undoubtedly less hormonal -- than the recent Stephenie Meyer adaptation currently in a theater near you.)

"It's really a generation that we've been looking forward to this moment, and the moments that will come after it in particular. September 10 is a demarcation between finishing the construction and starting to turn it on, but the excitement will only continue to grow." A Quantum Leap Forward, or the End of Days? (Answer: The former.) Over on the border of France and Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider --- the giant, multi-billion-dollar particle accelerator decades in the making -- gets ready for its first big test on Wednesday (as does its accompanying "Grid".) "The collider will recreate the conditions of less than a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, when there was a hot 'soup' of tiny particles called quarks and gluons, to look at how the universe evolved, said John Harris, U.S. coordinator for ALICE, a detector specialized to analyze that question."

"'We played with great character in one of the great games in international basketball history, I think,' U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski said." Congrats to the US men's Olympic basketball team, who returned to golden form this morning by closing out Spain 118-107. (Now, Coach D'Antoni, get thee to the Knickerbockers. We have work to do!)

After stops in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel, Sen. Obama takes his message to the heart of Berlin, before a crowd of over 200,000 at the Brandenburg Gate. [Video | Transcript.] As Der Spiegel's chief foreign desk editor put it after the speech: "No. 44 has spoken."

Well, let's make sure we all do our part on Election Day first. Still, it's safe to say the Obama World Tour has been knocked out of the park so far. Between this and Iraq's backing of the Obama plan earlier in the week, McCain's chances are, at least to my mind, looking downright dismal these days. And whining about the press, a.k.a. the mythical maverick's former "base", isn't going to right the ship for the GOP. Yep, all in all, things are looking pretty good for November...and beyond.

(By the way, when Sen. Obama isn't making the case for world peace, he's also got a pretty sweet jumper.)

"The Berliner Morgenpost over the weekend ran with the headline, 'The New Kennedy.' The tabloid Bild went with, "This Black American Has Become the New Kennedy!'" Speaking of JFK, it seems Iowa and (hopefully) New Hampshire are not alone. Obama-mania is sweeping Germany. "An editorial in the Frankfurter Rundschau went one historic president better with a headline that read simply: 'Lincoln, Kennedy, Obama,' adding that 'hope and optimism' are 'the source of the nation's strength.'" (I was going to say something along the lines of "But is Obama a jelly donut?" As I just discovered, though, that oft-told "Berliner" gaffe may not be true.)

"If you're really worried about Iran, do you want to put your faith in the United States, the country that bungled Iraq? If you really care about Islamic fundamentalism, do you want to be led by the country that, distracted by Iraq, failed to predict the return of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan?" Why has the world soured on America of late? The real reason, argues Slate's Anne Applebaum and the data she surveys, is that, thanks to seven years of Dubya, we're starting to look incompetent. "And even if the surge works, even if the roadside bombs vanish, inept is a word that will always be used about the Iraqi invasion."

As if the Dallas-Miami NBA Finals (ok, I was way off) weren't sports bliss enough 'round these parts, the 2006 World Cup has begun, with host Germany defeating Costa Rica 4-2 and Ecuador besting Poland 2-0 on Day 1. Alas, since I have to maximize my research time while I'm briefly back in the 202, and since the Manuscript Reading Room of the Library of Congress aggravatingly keeps bankers' hours (and charge $0.20 a photocopy, but that's a whole 'nother rant), it looks like I'll be missing much of the first round. But I promise to make it up on the back end.

The LA Times examines the beginnings of the second lunar space race, which will involve, among others, the US, Europe, China, and India. "Some researchers even have a name for the first lunar city: Jamestown, in honor of the first English settlement in the New World."

As the State Department stalls for time, the European Union considers suspending the voting rights of those member nations which were home to secret CIA gulags. (Human Rights Watch has said that Poland and Romania are the most likely suspects, although many other nations may have witnessed CIA flights go to and fro.)

As our GOP Congress looks to shoot the messenger over secret prisons, England's House of Commons rejects an anti-terror bill pushed by Prime Minister Blair -- his "first defeat" after 8 years in office -- which would allow terrorist suspects to be held for 90 days without charge. Meanwhile, France approaches the two-week mark of youth rioting, despite curfews, increased jail time, threats of deportation, and the shutdown of instigating blogs, and the rest of Europe looks on with trepidation...