Die Zeit 05.07.2007

With Live Earth concerts taking place around the globe on Saturday, Robert Misik is relieved that Green Glamour is showing that "saving the world" can be fun. "Ecology, which began its round the world trip looking terribly German and dour, with its anti-lifestyle, Luddite jargon of forbidding and foregoing, is returning with a big American grin on its face. It's glamorous, high on entertainment and laced with feel-good rhetoric. The miserable old 'make do and mend' attitude has broken into an encouraging 'we can do it.' 'Fibre not plastic' slogans have been replaced by hybrid cars. Sustainability is becoming the highest form of elegance."


Die Welt 05.07.2007.

Ulli Kulke reports on "Under the Sign of the Golden Griffin" an exhibition opening in Berlin tomorrow on a spectacular archaeological find. The president of the German Archaeology Institute, Hermann Parzinger, spent years digging around in the Eurasian steppe where China, Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan meet, using state-of-the-art Russian oil and gas divining equipment. And what he and the team of Russian archaeologists uncovered was the royal tomb of the fearful nomadic warrior people, the Scythians. "A circle of seventy metres described the grave, with its 29 burial complexes, of these 15 were for humans and 13 were for their faithful companions, the horses. A total of 9,300 golden objects came out of the hillside tomb of the Kurgans, near Arzan. Kilo heavy neck tires, finger rings, and of course saddle embellishments, all in gold and all 2,500 years old."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 05.07.2007

The newly renovated Anna Amalia Library in Weimar will reopen its doors this October, just three years after the treasury of priceless books and manuscripts went up in flames. Regina Mönch looks back to the fateful night: "What couldn't be carried out by the hundred or so helpers was burnt or badly damaged that night, when 380,000 litres of scalding water poured down over everything that princes, poets, savants and librarians had gathered over more than two centuries. The fragile, charred ceilings were threatened by the ashes of tens of thousands of burned books and manuscripts, which had mixed with the fire water to form a muddy mass weighing many tons. And for several days after the catastrophe fear was rife that this aura-filled place, this centre of the very best in German cultural history, had been destroyed for good."


Die Tageszeitung 05.07.2007

Ekkehard Knörer brings us up to date on the latest DVD releases: "With 'Election', Johnnie To, currently number one virtuoso among Hong Kong's filmmakers, deliberately refuses the spectacular. His past films amply prove that he has a fine command of the entire register of action film, from minimalism ('The Mission') to grand opera ('Fulltime Killer'). So if he now limits himself to elegantly lit images, soft camera movements and rapid bursts of violence; if he develops the characters only in outlines without letting us know what to think of them; if he juxtaposes cheeriness and brutality, competition and fraternisation, it's because he knows exactly what he wants. With a sober hand he shows us the rituals and codes of honourable society, before abruptly making clear that the an old-fashioned traditions maintained here are nothing but barbarity with a complex set of rules."