Peter Murmann

Western democracies with the exception of the USA are remarkable in that life and death are a rather democratic affair. Especially in countries where the government runs most of the health care system (e.g. Britain, Canada, Australia) a worker may get a heart-transplant before a CEO get one. We don’t cut up workers and give [Read More]

The dream world is a miraculous space. The mind apparently needs to dream to keep things together. Sometimes watching dogs sleep I get the impression that they too dream. One of the most amazing dreams is when you within a dream you dream that you are falling asleep and starting to dream. Then you wake [Read More]

I don’t know the reason why children like teddy bears and safety blankets so much. All I know is that like most kids I enjoyed them so much that I never wanted to give them up.  Unfortunately, one day I left my teddy bear behind in a hotel room and the hotel staff claimed that [Read More]

Hugo is the most wonderful film I have seen in a long while. It is much deeper than the Artist,which was good and imaginative but did not reach the psychological sophistication of Hugo. Both films tell take us back to a time when movies were new. If you love movies, you don’t want miss this [Read More]

Kick-Ass reinvents the superhero genre (Spiderman, Batman, etc.) by making fun of the genre but also working with it. The film is billed as a comedy. There are a large number of funny scenes that will make you laugh.  But at times it also falls back on the genre that it makes fun off, [Read More]

Monster Inc was made before Finding Nemo, which was the first Pixar film I ever saw. Monster Inc is cute and is fueled by the imaginary power that we are used to from Pixar. But I did not feel as touched by the film as I did by all the others. But it is a [Read More]

The Hunger Games is a real surprise. Who would have thought that a film effortly makes connections between the Roman empire (bread and games), Thomas Hobbes’ life in a state of nature,  George Orwell’s 1984 nightmare of total government control, and our age’s infatuation with reality TV shows such as “Survivor.” After having seen [Read More]

When I read that Brad Bird (who made the wonderful Pixar films The Incredibles and Ratatouille) was recruited to direct Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and that he gave it a special touch, I could not resist to watch this improbably action adventure. Bird did not write the script and hence was rather confined what he [Read More]

The criticism that I and others have leveled against Woody Allen’s recent work seems to have stung. When Allen moved his camera to London a few years ago, got the same stories transplanted from New York to London. The difference in language seems to have freed Allen. Midnight in Paris only feels a bit repetitive [Read More]

The book on which the film is based was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was nominated by Time magazine as the best novel of 2005. Every basic ethics discussions ponders the question whether it is moral to take organs of one person to save a few other persons. The film is sophomoric, disgusting and [Read More]