Hmph. I'm not sure whether to do this before or after, but I'll start with the following: my Christmas vacation started on Friday (and although it came one week earlier than usual, I couldn't wait for the day to come!) and it took a matter of a
few hours for me to get sick. -__- And I've been like that ever since, although I'm sure my excursion on Saturday made things worse, not better.
But anyways~ *grins like an idiot* I'm so excited that I managed to get to the Eh!U European Film Festival (that is so cheesy, although I'm sure the person who thought that up laughed at it for days on end :DDD), which is a FREE!!! film festival put on by the various EU embassies here, and yeah, the timing and location was horrible, but as a Scandinavian movie was playing on the weekend, I had to go, and go I did, although seriously, the organizers need to find a better theatre since it was such a pain to get here.
We went there in the afternoon, hoping that we could get a ticket and then look around for some dinner, but tickets were only given out one hour before, so we wandered down the street, waiting for the time, and since there wasn't much to look at, we just walked around in the cold. 10 minutes before the hour time, we come back and there's a line for tickets. We stood, got our tickets and saw that there was already a line for ticket holders, so, wanting a good seat, we stood in the freezing cold (it was dark already) for 50 minutes, until they let us into the theatre. I'm actually amazed that I managed to breathe normally and not need to hack and blow my nose during the movie after this (obviously I'd get punished for it the day after -_-), but yeah, the movie finished just before 8... and I got back to the house at 10:40pm. Why? Because we needed someplace cheap to eat, but this being a not-cheap area, we were forced to get a nasty, triple-over-baked slice of cardboard, topping-less pizza, after which, not wanting to walk to the streetcar, we thought we'd take the one on the road and get driven up closer. Bad idea. We waited 30 minutes (other people waiting were grumbling on how this was unbelievable... no comment -__-), started walking in the direction only to have the streetcar finally come. We got off at the intersection... and waited another 15 minutes for the streetcar going north, and then another uncharacteristic 10 minutes for the subway. Yup. But in the end, for free Scandinavian movies, it was worth it. :)
---

Title: Ping-pongkingen (The King of Ping Pong)
Year: 2008
Country: Sweden
Director: Jens Jonsson
[
IMDB Link]
And here's the mandatory review courtesy of me! I have to say I was not thrilled that this was Sweden's entry in the festival. A "comedic drama" about two kid brothers O.o ... in that alone there were two words I'm totally against: comedy and kids, but it was actually really good, in a quirky, cute, amusing sort of way. The story is about Rille, the older of two brothers (he's big, his brother's small; he's more deliberate, his brother more impulsive -- the quote came up a few times in the movie), who feels jealousy and resentment towards his younger "cooler" brother (he ends up running the brother over with his father's truck, but it's nothing serious XD).
Naturally, there's a little more than that, but overall, it was an enjoyable film, mainly because there was enough amusing moments for me without it being overbearingly funny (one of the best regarding Rille's love interest: a somewhat nerdy girl who draws hot guys in all their naked glory :D). Nice story with its more serious, poignant moments, although I *did* have a problem with the audience, who just laughed at everything, even though it was inappropriate and just... not funny. Example: Rille is a fat guy, but his mother even more so, and
every single time she was on the screen, people literally burst into laughter, even at serious moments. Suffice to say, I wasn't amused, as with a few other instances. :/ But people aside, it was fun and shots of Swedish winter were just beautiful. ^__^ Three,
maybe 3.5, stars out of four?