Third morning in Berlin Film Festivals. I’m sitting in the hotel room of Villa Amadeus, in third floor. Sun is shining brightly outside, birds are twittering in the trees and life seems nice. Only one thing has changed: yesterday I met Christopher Lee.

The story goes like this: we were in one hotel in a smoking room, enjoying a cigarette and chatting idly, when AJ (Annila, director of Sauna, which is going to be the greatest horror film ever) spotted a tall guy smoking a fat cigar in the corner. He notified us that there’s a guy who looks exactly like Dracula. We were looking over our backs and realized that oh-shit. That’s him. Mr. Christopher Lee himself. I was totally starstruck, but Ukko (Kaarto, of Bronson Club) went on chatting with him, and led us there. I had to run for another meeting, but had a chance to introduce myself to him, and told him Iron Sky’s logline (“In 1945 the Nazis went to the Moon. In 2018 they are coming back”) and gave him a leaflet we had created. He laughed and said he liked the idea.

And then I had to go. But Ukko and AJ stayed there, sat down with him and what do you know, Christopher actually knew Finland pretty well, because during the World War II, he was fighting in Finland as a volunteer. So, naturally, they had a lot to talk about, and later found themselves singing Finlandia in Berlin with mr. Christopher Lee. Isn’t that just as cool as it can get?

Meeting Lee was my high point here, but I’ve had great time in addition to that a lot. We’ve been going around Berlin from an event to an event, spreading the Iron Sky word and meeting with a lot of people. This year for Finns, Berlin has two important films. First, of course, Black Ice (“Musta jää”), the film that’s competing in the Berlin festival competition. They had a wonderful party in embassy on day 1, a party that lasted to about 6 in the morning. Then there’s Lordi. Dark Floors, I mean.

I’ve been following the discussions around Lordi the film, and would like to hear your opinions, dear readers, if you’ve seen the film. I myself don’t believe a word of the reviews, because what I know is that Finnish film reviewers don’t know jack shit about horror films. I believe much better those who actually know the genre, and one of my very favourite film reviewers, whose opinions I’ve learned to trust (also, I met with him in a dinner on wednesday) is Todd from Twitch Film, and he said it was awful lot of fun. Todd writes:

Now, Dark Floors is clearly not a perfect movie. The script shows signs of being written outside of the author’s native language – which it was – in some unsteady dialog and spotty character moments. There are also a couple of obvious plot holes – more logic problems, really – that the film asks you to accept. But perfect or not it is an awful lot of fun. The logic issues are nothing beyond what you see in any number of films, the major ones basically coming down to cooked up obstructions to force the characters to stop on each floor rather than descending directly, and the dialog issues are more than overcome by an immensely likable cast.

I have the feeling that Todd sums it up well, but then again, I haven’t seen the film yet, and I’m planning to go with Energia posse back in Tampere to go and watch it.

Well, I’m signing off now, I need to run to the main festival building to meet a distributor. You people have fun, I try to write more as I have some time. Also, I will upload some pictures as soon as I get them off my phone!