I see that Lars von Trier has stepped away from making films for the time being. Thank god for that, for me, his films somehow manage to combine the worst excesses of ‘arthouse’ pretentiousness, wankiness of theatre and reductive nonsense that is just so mind numbingly dull of so much ‘European’ mediation on ‘America’ lately. A quick rundown of the movies that I've seen: Dogville , Manderlay and Dancer in the Dark fit the rant below, in my eyes. I’ll be honest though and admit that I couldn’t finish watching the first two of that list (life is too short). The Idiots was just dire. A bad film school experiment, European middle class-guilt nonsense. Zentropa / Europa was a more interesting visual experiment, but again, more ‘art’ than ‘cinema’ (in the bad way). Breaking the Waves I liked. The main character was annoying, but as a bit of melodrama wrapped up in art, it was easy to sit through and have a think about. I’ve seen bits of The Kingdom , but it never really got me (alth