Seriously, this is the hottest club in town.

The Malkovich interview, our front page story, turned out to be very difficult because he was relatively reserved and gave a series of short responses. I’d been hoping he’d turn out to be a little crazy or creepy, which would have made for good reading, but he’s actually fairly thoughtful and calm. Good quality in a human being, but I wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it yesterday when I was transcribing the interview.

Then there was absolutely nothing for our gossip column, so the end result was that all of our stories came in late, which put us behind considerably, and we didn’t even get our first pages in until about 10pm. Usually we finish before the Czech section, but last night they were all gone by 11, and we were still correcting proofs. Every time something else went wrong we’d get a little giddier, and by the time we wrapped up (a few minutes short of midnight) we were more than ready to move on.

And here we are getting giddy at the end of the day...

Three of us decided to go to Aeroport, which is largely considered (by our staff, at least) to be the best club in town. But it was pretty quiet, so we ended up walking back to the hotel and crashing. It was pretty cold — I’d guess around the low 50s — and I’d left my jacket at the office, so I was pretty chilly by the time we got back.

When I dragged myself down the stairs to breakfast this morning, everyone else looked as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I felt. By the end of the festival, we’re all kind of whipped. Granted, I’ve only had to work one 15-hour day, but we’ve worked 9 days straight without a break, and the earliest I ever got out was 10pm (making it a 13-hour day). It’s starting to tell. the office refrigerator probably has as much alcohol as water in it at the moment, and the ashtrays in the hallway (yeah, you can actually smoke in the hallway) are full to brimming and our trashcans are overflowing with empty Diet Coke bottles and paper cups for coffee… So I guess we’re all indulging in our own peculiar vices. One day more!

An equally surprising delight was Made in Hungaria, which I’d describe as Footloose with a dash of goulash.  It was silly, fluffy, brainless fun–but it was thoroughly entertaining. I’ll bet you didn’t even realize that jitterbugging brylcreamed Eastern Europeans were missing from your life. http://www.madeinhungaria.com/

Ditto Israeli sumo wrestlers (trailer here).

I hit the 20-movie mark earlier today, and these three (along with Black Dynamite, Sin Nombre and The Lives of Others) are definitely some of the best that I’ve seen. Not sure if they’ll ever make it to U.S. theaters, but if they do I’d highly recommend them.

And then we decided to go out to the food tents outside the hotel and get street food. And then somehow it was 3:30 in the morning and we all realized that we had to be up and back in the office at 9am, so we called it a night. That’s the latest I’ve stayed out this year, but I have it on good authority that my colleagues have been burning the midnight oil (and the 5:30am oil) with much greater frequency. I’m not entirely sure how they manage to get up in the morning, to be honest. Maybe it’s a Czech thing?

Finally, and apropos of nothing, I really dig European street signs in a big way. They’re so detailed. Not for them the round head and stocky features of the stick figure on the women’s bathroom. My bathroom icon has an impossibly narrow waist and a natty hat. And just check out the beauty of the sign below. Not merely dogs are forbidden — that is clearly a poodle. Take a moment to appreciate the detail on the rollerblades and the cryptic, Picassoesque simplicity of the final square, which forbids either hiking or walking on the grass–or perhaps the placement of misshaped buttons on public greens….

(From a review) This is a somewhat pretentious Russian film which is really a collection of video clips set to a fairly deep and apparently meaningful poem about the nature of life and death and murdering your wife with a shovel.

(From a news article) Pustules are the least of his problems.

(From an interview) You ask them, “Hey, would you like to dress up and be a pimp for a day on a pimp council?”

(From the gossip column) Lowdown scouts report standing cheek-to-cheek with cinematic luminaries and Variety guests … And, no, we won’t say which cheeks.

(From a restaurant review) But rest assured, drug-filled milkshakes and Vietcong violence aren’t on the menu at this cozy little joint.

(From an interview) When I was child, I killed so many cats with my father. We drove many nights and days to run over cats. 

The first task was easy enough: two new restaurant reviews. That involves going to one restaurant I’ve never eaten at before (always a risk in this town) and gathering material for a 200- to 300-word review, and going to another restaurant we’ve reviewed in the past and gathering just enough material to rework our original review. Unfortunately, the restaurant I chose (which was dreadful) had already been reviewed, meaning I suffered through a miserable lunch with no benefits to anyone.

The second task was even worse. Every day, we get interviews from the directors of the competition films that need to be reworked into 500-word interviews or profiles. For some reason, 500 is a really difficult number for me, and I’ve been struggling most of the afternoon to finish the profile. It doesn’t help that I haven’t seen the film and don’t know anything about the director. Plus, turning somebody else’s interview into a profile is extremely difficult, even more so when neither the interviewer nor the director are native speakers of English. My brain feels about as nimble as a meatball and I’m ready for a nap. Of course, it’s 5 o’clock and I cut out early last night (early meaning just after 10) so I’m in it for the long haul…. How did the day get away from me?

My editor and I took our relationship to a disturbing new level today. I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but one of us had a really creepy stray eyebrow that needed grooming and instead of dealing with it by himself, like a sensible adult, requested that the other one trim it with a pair of scissors swiped from the photographers’ desk. Is it possible we’ve been in this room too long?

First, we have the view of the River Tepla. Tepla means “warm,” which this river is. Karlovy Vary is a spa town after all. The spas themselves can actually reach 163 F, which is one of the reasons people who drink the water for the spa cure are encouraged to use cups with sippy straws built in.

Here’s one of the colonnades, where the spa faithful dip their sippy cups under a burbling pipe where hot spa water rushes out. It’s been a few years since I’ve tried it, but I recall this one having a slightly spicy flavor. Really, I wouldn’t recommend any of them, unless you’ve got a thing for sulfur. But they are supposed to cure what ails you.

And now, back to the festival. Here’s the official mascot/award: The Crystal Globe. Actual globe is much smaller, but about the same weight.

Below are the ever-present backpackers. Unlike most film festivals, KVIFF has an extremely young audience, and many of these young adults come to town and camp out in a little tent village nearby, or stay in hostels. You can get a festival pass for a ridiculously cheap price, which entitles you to four tickets a day. Plus, if you really want to see a film and can’t get a ticket, you can queue up outside the cinema beforehand and hope that somebody doesn’t show. So you see a lot of pale, bleary-eyed youngsters out and about.

Here’s the early-morning line outside the box office. People start queueing up early because shows sell out.