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Wednesday, 15 September 1999:

Wow, it's been a while since the last time I had the time to write something for this corner of my homepage, and quite a lot has happened since then.

In this edition:

So Tom won some prizes at the German Film Awards. Well, not just some: he and the crew of Run Lola Run managed to rake in eight prizes, including best picture, best supporting actress and actor and two audience awards (see News of 18 June for details).
But although I'm happy of course for Tom and everyone involved in the making of the film, I sort of fear every additional award this film receives, because I think it all adds to rise the expectations even more, which could lead to the well known "Phantom Menace syndrome", as it were. As far as I'm concerned, it is a really good movie, but it won't work that well if you expect too much in advance (just IMHO, of course).


I finally saw Deadly Maria last weekend on video. It was about time for someone who maintains a webpage about its director, don't you think? :-)
I liked it, and didn't like it at the same time. I liked it because it successfully managed to create a disturbing atmosphere, but this atmosphere is something that you don't want to experience too often, so I can't say I really liked it because it made me feel uncomfortable...
Deadly Maria is about a woman who wasn't loved at all by her parents, she has lived in the same house with her father for all her life. After a stroke he even has to rely on her and she has to look after him. A long time ago, he even picked a husband for her. And so she lives a life in which every day is exactly the same, her only outlet for her pent up emotions is writing letters to an imaginary friend. When she meets a neighbour who is actually interested in what she thinks and does, she starts to realize that she has to do something about the environment she is living in.....
When the film was over, I had to take deep breaths to shake off the depressed atmosphere. But the film shows the oppression and the supressed feelings very convincing, IMHO. You could argue that "I had a difficult childhood" is a cliche, but even though this is true, what do we do with those cliches that you can find a lot in reality?


the old homepage look One year (ahem, and one day) ago, I started my (then) little homepage about Tom Tykwer. It was entirely in German because at the time no one knew that Run Lola Run would become a worldwide success. It seemed like Tykwer's films would reach a dedicated but small crowd of fans (outside of Germany, that is).

Between 15 October 1998 and 27 January 1999 there were no new entries in the guestbook *g* and I began to wonder whether there was anyone who was interested in this homepage. But a bunch of friendly emails with interesting questions kept my spirits up. :-)
From the moment that Sony Pictures Classics announced they had the distributional rights for Lola in the US and Canada, I began to think it would be necessary to become more 'international', as it were. Because of the growing success of Lola even Wintersleepers found further distributors in Europe. So on 23 January 1999, the English version of my homepage went online.

On 24 June, the counter on my German page was at 1400 and the English one at 1330. Less than three months later, the German one is at roundabout 2300 while the counter on the English page is close to 5800 by now. I have received over 180 emails within the last year and it takes less than two months for a new entry in the guestbook to appear.
All of this is virtually nothing compared to other sites, of course, but to me it really means something. There have been so many emails that inspired me to add new things to my homepage, so thanks to all of you for your questions, informations and support during the last months! I really apprechiate it, because it means that creating this homepage was actually a good thing to do and not just a crazy idea that noone was interested in. :-)
Sometimes a webmaster will complain about all those emails that pile up waiting to be answered or all the questions that have been asked over and over again, but apart from many other things there's one thing that is far worse: not having feedback at all. :-)

So off we go into the second year of the unofficial Tom Tykwer Homepage! There's still a lot on my "to do" list for this site.


That's all for today, folks. :-)

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