British Animation Awards 2014 (part 2)
British Animation Awards 2014 (part 3)

MOSTLY FILM: All The Blobs

It's astonishing to think that Monoglot Movie Club has been a semi-regular feature on Europe's Best Website for over two years now. In that time I've visited the Netherlands, Brazil, Abu Dhabi, Japan, Norway (twice), Belgium, Sweden (also twice), Finland and Dubai - sometimes for work, sometimes for fun - and in each case, I've sat through films I haven't understood a bleedin' word of, just so I could write about the experience afterwards.

The latest episode - All The Blobs, available now -  returns to Holland for another look at the movies that were on show in cinemas back in December last year. As you'll quickly realise when you read it, that was where The Belated Birthday Girl and I spent our Christmas holiday in 2013. So you'd imagine that the Red Button backup content for the Mostly Film piece would be several thousand words of travel writing about where we slept, what we ate, what we looked at and how we got from one place to another.

That article is definitely in the pipeline: it's just not quite ready yet. So instead, you'll have to make do with some videos. This side of the jump, you can see The Kerstman himself making one of his regular appearances on the streets of Valkenburg: on the other, some trailers for the films namechecked in the piece.

Staying with The Kerstman to begin with, he has a small but crucial role in one of the Netherlands' Christmas 2013 movies, Midden In De Winternacht. Nevertheless, he's largely playing second fiddle to the reindeer.


I'm more interested in the Sinterklaas movies, mainly because there's less of an overlap with the UK Christmas tradition in there, apart from perhaps in the context of those festive arguments you have with elderly family members about why they don't have nice programmes like The Black & White Minstrel Show on telly any more. Anyway, this is the one I reviewed, 2008's Sinterklaas en het Geheim van het Grote Boek...


...and four films later, here's the one that was in cinemas for 2013, Sinterklaas en de Pepernoten Chaos.


Moving on to Bro's Before Ho's, which we saw at the JT Den Bosch. I only mention this because it's a cinema that still keeps the irritating Dutch tradition of a ten minute PAUZE in the middle of every movie, which I thought had stopped years ago.


Steffen & Flip's earlier work with New Kids is better, and has even inspired a few YouTube tributes, including this attempt at remaking a couple of scenes from New Kids: Turbo with actual kids.


And finally, the trailer for Hemel op Aarde, which is the best film we saw on our Christmas holiday pretty much by default...


...plus the band responsible for the songs, Rowwen Hèze, blagging a quick promo video out of the movie while they can.


Finally, for those of you who've been looking at the last few Monoglot Movie Clubs and realised that they're all second visits to previously discussed countries: I should be fixing that fairly soon. Watch this space.

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