Solaris Berlin Film Festival 2

An angry George Clooney blasted a Turkish journalist who found his sci-fi love story "Solaris" "boring".

Berlin (AFP) -"I find you fascinating," Clooney told the journalist sarcastically when the latter volunteered his opinion at press conference after a screening of the picture, which is currently in competition at the Berlin film festival.

"You crack me up, man. You just wanted to get up and be a rat, you know that? You just wanted to get up and say something rotten. What a jerk. I mean honestly, you know, what a shitty thing to say," he said, laughing bitterly.

"You make a lot of films, do you? You make a lot of films yourself? Yeah, I'd like to see you make a film first before you get to talk about it. What a jerk," he said.

"Solaris," one of 22 film vying for the festival's Golden Bear prize, is a drama set in the future about love beyond the grave and brought the eagerly awaited Hollywood heartthrob to the German capital.

Hundreds of fans began began lining up outside the press center in the blustery cold hours before Clooney's appearance, hoping to catch a glimpse of the star before he was whisked from his limousine and into the building.

The film features Clooney as psychologist Chris Kelvin, who travels to the Prometheus space station after he receives a report that the crew appears to be suffering under the influence of strange forces emanating from the nearby planet Solaris.

There Kelvin finds a traumatized and depleted group and soon beings to encounter mysterious developments himself, culminating in the reappearance of his dead wife Rheya, played by Britain's Natascha McElhone.

McElhone took her turn at the journalist when Clooney was finished.

"Can I just say one thing about the boredom factor? Whatever movie I'm involved in, I'm very open to criticism of me or of the film," she said.

"But to say that something is boring is surely only indicative of the person watching it. Because it's up to you to get something out of the film," she said.

"Solaris" was first filmed in 1972 by Andrej Tarkovsky and based on a novel by Stanislav Lem. The film reunited Clooney with his frequent collaborator, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, who won an Oscar for directing "Traffic".

Soderbergh joked throughout the press conference after the Berlinale moderator twice called him Steven Spielberg by mistake.

"I'd actually like to talk about 'Minority Report'," he deadpanned, referring to Spielberg's 2002 hit.

He said his studio Twentieth Century Fox was confident that "Solaris", which flopped in the United States, would do better in European and Japanese markets.

"More than any other film that I've made I thought this may get a very divided reaction," he said.

"Of the films I've made I think it's the most European in its aesthetic.

So you may find that people over here find it too American and people in American find it too European," he acknowledged. Clooney is also in town to promote his directorial debut "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind".

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