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American television viewers will soon be able to enjoy the same event that is drawing millions of Germans to their TV screen on Saturdays.

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Is that even possible? According to their web address, www.onevoiceforeurope.eu, the newly founded European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) intends to provide that voice. Is it yet another attempt to save Europe from irrelevancy? And what exactly will that voice be?

With prominent members such as Marti Ahtisaari, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Joschka Fischer (and a bunch of other people that you’ve probably never heard of), the ECFR is based quite apparently, and not just in name, on the American Council on Foreign Relations. And since it is funded primarily by the liberal American billionaire George Soros, you can bet that transatlantic relations will be on the top of its agenda. [Read more]

This is a liveblog from the grand opening of the Graduate School of North American Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. Since all the speakers hold their speeches in German, this post will now switch its language:

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It’s election time in the Danish Kingdom, and what better way to churn out those votes, than to let the Prophet Muhammad work his magic?

The Danish People’s Party (DPP, Dansk Folkeparti) has published election posters (here) featuring a drawing by Alexander Ross from 1683 of the Prophet. The poster reads in bold, capital letters: “Freedom of Speech is Danish, Censorship Isn’t – We Hang on to the Danish Values,” and continues, “Danish People’s Party – Your Country, Your Choice.” According to Danish People’s Party’s party leader, Pia Kjærsgaard, “We [Danish People's Party] are not doing this to provoke, but are doing it exactly because a drawing – a 400 year old drawing of Muhammad – is a symbol of the freedom of speech in Denmark, because we hung on to that freedom of speech.” [Read more]

We’re all used to watching MTV videos with more licking, sweating, and rubbing than half of the usual soft core porn movies.

Same goes for the TV station’s shows, where participants habitually get down and dirty in hot tubs, and stage dramatic cat fights which end up in some nice girl-girl cuddling (just watch The Real World!). Therefore, it was just a matter of time until porn would start looking like music television. Well, that time has come, and it ain’t as spicy as you expected.

AfroDite Superstar had its official European premiere at the Second Pornfilmfestival Berlin yesterday. It tells the story of two girl friends, who are trying to break into the rap world. One of them, Afrodite, is discovered by talent scout CEO and put into the spotlight, while the other one, Iris (notice the inventive names!), is the real talent who writes the songs Afrodite shines with. This is a blow to their friendship and Iris falls for the female stylist, who is really the big boss, but has to stay in the background because she isn’t accepted as a woman in the rap world. Another rapper and a dialect coach who teaches the girls some street cred are also involved. So far, so soap opera.

Various members of the cast get together in occasional sex scenes – and I do mean occasional, given that this is a porn movie the ratio between sex and talking is just depressing. Also, the scenes don’t spare a certain unintended comic, which the audience realized as well. Some of the highlights that caused outright laughter were a very sexy pair of underwear from one of the actors as well as the lines “I cannot do this. Your father – he is like a father figure to me!” followed by the almost untakeably corny line “Meet me in my room- in five minutes.”

What makes one wonder is that this movie is part of the festival’s female film section, where movies are shown that take on a woman’s point of view. Is that what female porn looks like?

A story that would fit The Bold and the Beautiful, hardly any getting-it-on, and no truly explicit action? This movie represented all the clichés about women and porn – that women need an extensive storyline, that they need a friendship part and lots of dialogues. Well, that has proven wrong here. The movie is a mix of Britney Spears’ Crossroads and quite a bit of your daily soap opera, while it tries to imitate MTV with confessional- type talking to the camera by Afrodite and a show that looks like TRL. Maybe this was intended to be a striking parody on today’s music television and the quest for street credibility, but it ends up being more corny than classy.

AfroDite Superstar oscillates between fun and funny, but a little more spice wouldn’t have hurt this one.

By Jessica Binsch

You can watch the trailer here.

What can a drunken Robert Byrd really tell us about the American political system? Quite simple. The truth and nothing but the truth. While people like to focus on the president, it is quite clear that the true force in American politics is still Congress and here it is clearly the Senate which plays the overpowering role (due to its only 100 members and need for bipartisan consensus). Thus, Robert Byrd is not far off with this self-description. Big Daddy. The Man. [Read more]

2006 for Germans was not only the year of the World Championship. On the sociopolitical level there was also a broad discussion about nationality. Photographer Lars Borges found himself in the middle of this discussion or as he puts it “in an ocean of black, red and golden flags”. Is young Germany ready for a new national conscience? Or is it the first signs of the old demons returning? [Read more]

Bill Maher’s at it again.

The man who brought you “Politically Incorrect,” which ABC eventually took off the air in 2002 after Maher made a comment on live radio that the 9/11 terrorists were not cowards, but “we [the American government] have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away,” might just have hit home with the political right. [Read more]

Starting today, Queens’ P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center , a MoMA affiliate, will present Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 15-hour epic film version of Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Orginally aired in 1979/80 as a 14-part series on German public television, Fassbinder’s masterpiece, running a total of 930 minutes, was recently restorated and released on DVD.

Apart from being able to see the episodes in 14 distinct screening rooms, visitors will have the opportunity to read the storyboard, see magnified stills and listen to audiotapes of Fassbinder dictating the script.

Fassbinder: Berlin Alexanderplatz was previously shown at Kunstwerke Berlin. P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center is located at 22-25 Jackson Avenue in Long Island City. Directions are availabe here.

“The Dynamics of the City – Fragmentation and Concentration” was the topic of a keynote lecture by Columbia University Professor Peter Marcuse (if the name sounds familiar, you might have heard of his father Herbert) at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin tonight. The lecture was the opening of a conference on cultural diversity in New York and Berlin. [Read more]