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1. Watch German crime thrillers for free.

Every Wednesday 6pm at the 4th Floor, Room 3 of Goethe-Institut Philippinen, Adamson Center, Leviste St., Salcedo Village, Makati.

April 8: Dreileben – Etwas Besseres als den Tod (Beats being dead). Directed by Christian Petzold (who made Nina).

A sexual offender escapes from a hospital. His escape and the police’s hectic search serve as a background to the love story between Johannes, a boy from a rich home undertaking his civilian service, and Ana, a pretty girl from Bosnia.

April 15: Dreileben – Komm mir nicht nach (Don’t Follow Me Around). Directed by Dominik Graf

A sexual offender is loitering somewhere in the Thuringian forest. Police psychologist Johanna is sent to Dreileben to assist in the case.

April 22: Dreileben – Eine Minute Dunkel (One minute of darkness). Directed by Christoph Hochhäusler

Frank Molesch, convicted of murder, uses an opportunity to escape. He takes refuge in the forest. The awareness that he has become fair game changes him. The police combine all their technology and manpower to capture the fugitive.

For more information, visit their website.

2. Get a free trip to France (if you speak French).

Filipinos aged 18 to 25 are invited to participate in LabCitoyen, an annual program launched by Institut Français that selects French-speaking youth from all over the world to participate in a series of conferences, debates, and workshops on citizenship over the course of a ten-day, all expenses paid visit to France.

Each year, Institut Français opens this contest to Francophone youths to raise discussion and awareness on various issues concerning human rights and citizenship.

This year, interested participants are to create a 5-minute video documentary in the French language on the theme “Human rights in the face of environmental challenges,” in view of the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 21) to be hosted by France in December 2015.

COP 21 is vital as 195 governments will endeavor to sign an ambitious, universal and legally binding agreement to limit global warming to 2°C,
before the effects of climate change become irreversible.

One Filipino shall be chosen by the cultural section of the Embassy of France to the Philippines to participate in the 10-day program in France from July 15 to 25, 2015.

The deadline for submission of videos is on April 20, 2015. For the complete mechanics, visit their website.

3. Tennis lessons

Since our eldest niece was two we have been bugging her mother to let her take tennis lessons. After all Martina Hingis was only two when she picked up the racquet. True, her mom was playing in tournaments during pregnancy, but the point is that we can make like the Djokovic family at tennis matches and jeer at the enemy. Or the Federers and invite fashion editors to sit courtside wearing large sunglasses.

We volunteered to take the kid to her lessons, and then our sister pointed out that her classes are at 10am. Yuccch, sunshine. So we won’t be trundling out our horrible tennis relative impression (Mary Pierce’s dad, Jennifer Capriati’s dad, Steffi Graf’s dad, etc), but who knows.

The niece is expected to balk at physical activity since she’d rather dress as various Disney princesses, so we have recommended a regimen of Maria Sharapova videos (free earplugs for the whole family).

Bad enough that Sean Penn looks leathery, but apparently he’s been slathered with brown shoe polish.

When I was a kid, my parents took me to see a legal drama called And Justice for All. Its high point, which was also its low, was defense attorney Al Pacino yelling and foaming at the mouth at the judge: “You’re outta order! You’re outta order!” He was led out of the courtroom, but not before every Pinoy mume-Method actor had resolved to recreate that scene in his own movies (and harvested awards for it). Al has defined screen pyroclastics in films like Scarface and Carlito’s Way. When he cuts loose, you want to open an umbrella to protect yourself from getting drenched in flying spittle. (Apparently you’re supposed to do this at his theatre performances.) And yet I maintain that his deranged intensity was essential to those movies: you cannot be an understated cokehead megalomaniac. The derangement was the character. In Sean Penn’s case he will scream, contort his face, display his neck veins and threaten to go full Scanners for no other reason than to show that he is a Great Actor. In some movies, it works. In other movies, it begs to be tasered.

Read our column at InterAksyon.com.

So far we’ve heard only two types of comments:

“Robb Stark’s pants!!!”

“Cate Blanchett’s clothes!!!”

And nothing about the movie itself. Do you recommend it? How is the niece from Downton Abbey, is she sufferable? Do the stepsisters…alter…their shoe sizes?

We do owe Kenneth Branagh, who’s brought us Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston, and now Richard Madden (on Game of Thrones he was muddy).

Hugh Grant’s new movie The Rewrite isn’t terrible, we just wish it didn’t exist. It makes us feel old. Hugh Grant has always played adorable losers—in Four Weddings and A Funeral he was the friend who couldn’t find love, in Notting Hill he was the average guy who fell in love with the most famous actress on earth. The joke was that he wasn’t really a loser—he could find love if he looked outside his social circle, and he was really not average. He was merely condescending to us viewers, but he did it so charmingly that we bought it. Plus we suspected that his self-deprecating air was not put-on and that he had depths of self-loathing which made him far more interesting than the happily successful.

But in order to play adorable losers one must be adorable, and past a certain age the adjective has to be dropped. Oh, Hughie. Perhaps it’s time to specialize not in floppy-haired nice people, but in cads and bounders horrible jerks, as you did so well in About A Boy and in Bridget Jones’s Diary. It’s too bad Cloud Atlas was savaged by the critics because we liked it very much, and you were good at playing various evil creatures.

Also we think part of Hugh Grant’s success was that he was selling an idea of London and should therefore be surrounded by eccentric British characters. Which of his American movies work?

In The Rewrite, Hugh Grant plays a wash-up Hollywood screenwriter who accepts a job teaching at a college in upstate New York. The fish-out-of-water plot hasn’t worked in ages. Hugh is still charming but the movie is so bland, it should only be shown to patients recuperating from gastroenteritis.

The Rewrite is directed by Marc Lawrence, who also did Music and Lyrics. That one had a better hook—Hugh plays a washed-up pop star who accepts gigs in theme parks and school reunions. His character seems to have been based on Andrew Ridgeley. Remember Ridgeley, the other guy in Wham? George Michael’s partner? We’ll never forget the review of his solo album: It sounds like the work of an evil back-up singer who erased all the main vocal tracks. That movie was also bland, but has-been Hugh did not look so has-been, and it began with this brilliant parody of British New Wave Band music videos, which we watch when we need to cheer up.

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan (We can’t find the clip of the “Electronics store is a dream killer” scene)

Superbad

We just saw this again last week with our cat Mat, who watched it from beginning to end. (He identifies with McLovin.)

Elf

Another favorite of our cats, along with The Two Towers.

Love and Death

Russian novels, spoofed.

The Lady Eve

Jokes flying so fast some just whoosh right by.