Tibits Opening in Basel

I've been to the Opening of Tibits newest Restaurant in Basel.

Tibits offers vegetarian food in a new, trendy atmosphere. I don't want to talk too much about the food as for one, I have tasted only some and more importantly, I want to talk more about the Party itself. But I really like the interior design of the restaurant and I do really think, that I will eat there quite a lot. Even though I am no 100 percent vegetarian. Quite the contrary.

I have been asked a long time ago to take pictures at the opening, more than a month ago if I recall correctly.

The turnout of famous people was quite small.

Eva Camenzind, a moderator, is really good looking and she did a good job.



This is the best picture I got of her.

Tanja Dankner sung some songs. Not too special.

I had the luck to talk briefly to Nubya who is a real beauty and nice person. It was interesting talking to her. We bump often into each other, she as a celebrity, I as a photographer.

Murat Yakin also came, just I was leaving. He might have been the best footballer who grew up in or at least near Basel, but he acted as an a** h*le.

There was also a TV-crew present. And they wanted to do an interview with him.

He: Have you been waiting long?
They: Yes.
He: Then you can wait a bit longer...

And went to eat something. What a pr!ck.

Madagascar

A friend gave me this version of Madagascar. Of the three animated movies I watched this weekend (it was too f**cking cold to go out for more than half an hour...) this one I liked most.

It is the story of Marty, played by (or rather spoken by) Chris Rock, who lives in the New York Zoo and dreams of the wild. He somehow mangages to go to Madagascar with his friend, Alex, the Lion, starring Ben Stiller, a hypochondrig giraffe called Melman, played by the Friends-star David Schwimmer and Jada Pinkett Smith wife of Will Smith playing Gloria, the Hippopotamus.

They are joined by a cast of Pinguins and Lemurs and have a nice adventure trying to get back to the zoo. There was a rather short additional movie about the three Pinuins which also added to the nice experiance.

Not having too much time left, should go to bed at once, I will leave it at this and give it seven out of ten points. Why not more? I just am not a that great fan of animated movies.

Shark Tale

Four years younger than the last review, Shark Tale has what it takes.

Underwater has seldom looked better in an animated movie. Will Smith is a believable Oscar and the story, even a bit straightforward, is entertaining. Most of the other actors, I wasn't able to put the actor to the character except of course Robert de Niro who plays/speaks a shark, the Boss of the Bosses with his typical mole.

It isn't a movie you have to buy, but it is fun to see once or even twice. It has also got a great sound track and the extras were what you'd expect.

The Emperor's New Groove

Starting with the bad. To be honest, I don't know where to start.

The movie was released in 2000 and looks like it was made fourty years earlier. Hello! There is a whole new development going on in animated movies and it does not have to be as shiny as cars, but I want to forget sometimes, that it is a movie. Which I can not, if the technique is from the time, my father was young...

My collegue liked the movie because of the lines. Honestly I was bored. I felt waisting my time watching the movie and played Spider Solitair on my PC instead.

The voices didn't help either and I just could feel little to none sympathy towards the main character.

From me, three out of ten points.

Private Update

Friday I was working again for tilllate at an international company. It was a really nice party and they do seem to have a lot of money to spend. Not so sure, if I should sell my shares of that company or not.

The evening was themed cruise and all people working there (with the exception of my, the photographer and the two magicians) wore sailor uniforms. The walls had fake portholes on which moving waves with dolphins and whales were projected.

The organisers first wanted me to take pictures of the people without flash, but I could convince them, that light is the medium of photography. I just can get far better results with flash than without.

A three course meal was served and there were a lot of other attractions.

They had three opera singers, performing "La donna e mobile" and other songs. During the show blocks, there were pictures of the same theme (in this case Italy) on the portholes. Perhaps James can help me to better express myself...

One of the next acts was with Donghua Li a Swiss-Chinese gymnastic champion and 1996 Olympic champion with some dancers.

Followed by some Caribbean drummers and capoeira artists. And some more dancers. A real great show. Makes me wonder, what tilllate or my employer will offer at their Christmas Dinner ;)

I slept and worked most of Saturday and in the evening went to take pictures again. I had planned to go to the concert of Stress, but was turned down at the entry.

Afterwards I met with some friends when one of them got pissed of at me because I said, the there was a limit on how much money we can spend on health. He just wants to give everyone the best possible health care. But of course did not tell who should pay for it.

He got even more angry, when I mentionned, that a lot of people of our generation had forgot to stand on their own feet and rely on parents or the government to sustanin themselves. I don't think, we'll meet again so soon.

I then went to a party of a friend. But there were only very few people. I should have gone to 'tis, an other party location, because there was a huge crowd there and no photographer of tilllate.

On Sunday, I did only sleep, eat and wached a movie or two.

I recently also joined Facebook, an other social network-site and have met some friends I had lost contact with. Probably I tell more soon, but I have to go to bed now.

The Kingdom

The Kingdom is the title of the newest Peter Berg movie. My favourite movie by him is Very bad things, a superb story, with very black humour starring Cameron Diaz and Christian Slater.

Sadly, his newest movie does not satisfy the expectations I had.

It starts very well, rounding up the fact in the initial five minutes. Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producing country with an extremely fundamental Islam is the worlds largest supporter of terrorist organisations. Osama bin Ladin is Saudi, 14 out of the 19 911 attackers were Saudi and without the financial and personal support of Saudis, most Muslim terrorist organisations would crumble.

On the other hand, the Saudi Arabia need the US to protect them even though Saudi Arabia is the biggest buyer of US arms. Probably Israel receives more, but Saudi Arabia at least pays for them.

There are no operational US military forces in SA since 2003 and the movie was produced in Abu Dhabi. The situation is very difficult. There are a lot of foreign workers in SA, the Westerners live in protected communities, separated by the SA public. The dirty work is done mostly by Philippians or workers who come from other Muslim countries. There are a lot of reports about mistreatments of foreigners, just these day a Swiss-French boy was raped by three Saudis.

The movie is about an attack of Saudi terrorists on a ‘protected community’ where US workers for oil companies live with their families. As there are a lot of casualties, the FBI sends in a group of four people to support the Saudi investigations.

As so often in these movies, we have Jamie Fox as the young leader of the group, Jennifer Garner bringing her boobies. At least, Peter Berg resists of trying to add a love scene between his two stars. Being an American movie, I had expected that. On the other hand, she could have at least dressed better not displaying her breasts in SA. Not that you see any skin, if she were a professional FBI-agent, she would have dressed more decent in SA, I think.

An other thing about Jamie Fox. I like him as an actor. But now, his teeth are just unnaturally white and his hair is always perfect. Sorry, I just can’t take him serious as an FBI-agent, when he looks too much like an actor. Hardly ever gets dirty.

The other two agents are believable. But do not play a major role in the movie.

There are some Saudi, who don’t want any US citizens on their ‘holy’ ground (besides the terrorists). The Saudi police force is shown as being incompetent, even stupid and mostly unsupporting of the ongoing investigation.

There is ‘of course’ a good Saudi police officer who helps, without spoiling too much of the movie, to take down the terrorist group.

In the end, all the bad guys are dead, their children and grandchildren swearing revenge and the good guys fly back home.

Why can’t I give this movie more than four out of ten points? There is not too much acting going on, Jennifer Garner and Ashraf Barhom stand out (a bit). The story would have a lot of potential and the topic is extremely interesting, Michael Moore should do a movie about it. But after the before mentioned five minutes, the story has done it’s duty and is replaced by action. I am not an enemy of action, but a good movie needs a good story and after the five minutes and the trailer, I had expected more information and some hints towards a solution.

I am on Facebook

I recently started my profile on Facebook.com. I have joined a lot of groups and have met a lot of friends. Some I have lost contact with some time ago.

It has some privacy issues, as you can expose a lot of private information. You can either not be honest with the information you feed into your site or just trust Microsoft, who have bought 1.6 % of the company for 240 million USD.

Something to be afraid of?

R.I.P. Tilllate-Basel-Forum

Born on Januar 4th 2007, the private forum of the tilllate-team Basel had a good start. We joked about the problems of tilllate-team Bern, whose forum didn’t survive long.

Now, it is time to bury tilllate-team Basel. I had posted over 450 times, accounting for over twenty percent of the total posts. A lot of the members had less than five posts. Eight (including me), had more than 100 posts.

I think the slow death started, when baaluu wrote less.

Could have the forum be saved? I always have advocated the creation of an international forum for tilllate-photographers or at least a forum for all Swiss photographers.

But what would be a half day’s work, has never been achieved.

For now, at least, good bye tilllate-forum.

Youtube Favourites

I thought about starting a new topic, favourite Youtube-Vids.

You (should) all know the new Video of Nickelback newest song, Rockstar.

But there is an equally well made parody which you can see here.

He also has a myspace site worth wisiting.