Category: cinéclub
I suppose you could link this series of non sequiturs under the rubric of “things you look at,” but it’s a stretch.
So if my most recent blurry (arty!) shots were bugging you as much as they were bugging me, you’ll be pleased to know that I have ordered a new camera! Unfortunately, the camera I wanted (Canon PowerShot SD780IS 12.1 MP Digital Camera) isn’t available in France and even if it was, digital cameras are a lot more expensive here. Just in case you were wondering, yes, all the best stuff does indeed end up in America. Have I mentioned how much I miss Target? Oh, okay, I guess I have. Anyway, I’m using M as a mule to bring back my new camera from the United States, that is, unless she decides to keep my new toy for herself. It must get tiring having to think about depth of field and contrast and value all the time. My new camera is apparently totally idiot proof and requires no thinking whatsoever. It’s also has over twice as many megapixels as my current camera, so I suspect the images on Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background will be sharper in the future. They will still probably suck compositionally, but hey! At least I’ve learned to turn the flash off when I’m photographing food. Baby steps to the elevator.
Last night we went to see Inception, which was pretty great! I’ll admit here that I’m biased because I was really jonesing for a Hollywood blockbuster, as one can only watch so many thoughtful European movies without beginning to long for a car explosion. I was amazed how easy it was to watch a movie in which everyone is speaking English! Since I’ve paradoxically been watching mostly Italian movies in the theatres for the past six months, I’ve gotten used to reading French subtitles and listening to spoken Italian. I understand about ninety-five percent of the time, but it’s a lot more work and slows down suspending my disbelief (obviously, Pasolini isn’t really worried about suspending my disbelief, but that’s another thing).
Horrifyingly, however, they turned off the air conditioning about halfway through the film last night, rendering the packed movie theatre into a death sauna. This seemed kind of ironic, because both B and I had both gone back into my apartment to fetch an extra layer, as we were anticipating a proper American multiplex freezer during the movie. Instead, we were drenched in sweat. B whispered at one point that he was contemplating taking off his shirt. The French seemed unbothered by this development. They were also nonplussed by a public service announcement at the beginning of the film that depicted a child being brutally killed in a car crash. I was too paranoid that somebody was going to sit next to me (weird movie theatre phobia) to pay attention to the ad, but B gasped and said to me “So, apparently it’s all right to show a dead child on public service announcements here!” The girl sitting next to B, who I’d already decided that I hated because she had taken off her shoes to sit cross legged and her dirty little foot was well within our space, decided to generously “enlighten the English person” and explain to an apparently dense B that it was an ad meant to shock and teach. No shit, Sherlock. B responded tersely in French that he understood the function of the ad, but that it’s content wouldn’t likely be shown in an American movie theatre and was jarring to him for this reason. Apparently she still assumed he was still too slow on the uptake to understand, because she responded in English that “The death was just acting. It was not real!” Really? Thank you, kindly French person! I’ve been in America for so long that I’ve actually come to believe that advertisements on television are documentary reality! I assume everything is reality television! Are you saying it isn’t?!
Anyway, condescending people aside, the movie was good and totally worth a night away from my beloved Latin Quarter Art et Essai cinemas. We both agreed that we could watch weightless fight scenes all day long.
On our walk home, B said, “You know, I think we’ve been watching Antiques Roadshow for long enough as a couple now…” To be honest, I don’t even know how that sentence ended because the first half sent me into a fugue state. I hate Antiques Roadshow. I hate the stupid, rambling, and often erroneous narratives that people give about their treasures. I hate watching people wait in line to find out how much they can hawk their precious family heirlooms for. Most of all, I hate the smug appraisers, especially the supposedly charismatic ones that make bad puns. But B loves Antiques Roadshow. I mean, sometimes I find him at three o’clock in the morning deep into Nashville Hour 47. He has even woken me up in the middle of the night to see a particularly amazing item be appraised. This is especially ridiculous given that he isn’t watching these episodes on television, he’s watching them streaming from PBS’s website. Meaning I could just as easily watch the clip of the amazing item in the morning. But I’ve been trying to humor him by watching it with him because he is incredibly patient with my atrociously bad, bottom-feeding taste in television. No one should have to sit through an entire season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey against their will, but this poor guy has and without a single complaint. He even listens to my running unfunny commentary during these shows and makes a valiant effort to be a responsive interlocutor to my pop psychology. “Definitely Danielle is a delusional paranoid! Totally!” So I feel obligated to try and like Antiques Roadshow, but man, is there something I’m missing?
Clarence in Paris: Pink Flamingo Pizza
205, rue Vielle du Temple, Paris 75003
Métro: Filles du Calvaire or St. Sebastien-Froissart
I’ve been wanting to try Pink Flamingo Pizza since every single person I know sent me this New York Times Frugal Paris article when they found out I was moving to France. The idea was so lovely – order your pizzas, take a pink balloon, and go find a spot along Canal St. Martin and wait for your picnic to be delivered. I’m surprised that it took me so long to actually go to Pink Flamingo. Some of that can be attributed to the long hard winter that made sitting outside anywhere seem less than delightful. But most of it can be attributed to the fact that when I investigated the Pink Flamingo website (yes, I like scouring menus on websites as a hobby), the whole thing seemed, well, kinda gimmicky.
Perhaps the problem is that I lived in New York City for just a bit too long to have much patience for creative ingredient combinations on pizza. At an old-school New York pizzaria, there are only a handful of toppings available and you can bet your ass that none of them are pineapple. Or perhaps it was my time in Southern California, home of the stupidest pizza in the world, that got my guard up. Either way, Pink Flamingo boasts unique, vaguely filmic pizzas in a kitschy environment and I’ll admit I got nervous when I saw formulations like La Che (Cuban-style pork marinated for 24 hours in garlic, lime, green onions, and coriander with fried plantains), La Gandhi (Sag Paneer, Baba Ganoush, and mozzarella), or La Bjork (smoked salmon, fish roe, and crème fraîche) on the menu. It seemed to be the recipe for a California Pizza Kitchen style disaster.
But I just kept hearing good things about Pink Flamingo, and when I by chance walked by their smaller Marais branch on rue Vielle du Temple on my way to APC to admire things I cannot afford, I was pretty charmed by their funky décor and the VW bus that sits out front. You see, as a child I was totally obsessed with pink flamingos and wanted nothing more than grow up and be the crazy old lady with a veritable flock of plastic ones in her front yard. To see that much pink flamingo kitsch aggregated in one location, in Paris no less, got me all hot and bothered.
I had suggested to S that we eat there on the hungover day that followed our night of being blind drunk, but we had already been badly burned by brunch by Breakfast in America (already said my piece on this, but you can mentally insert a shudder in all references to this place hereafter) and neither one of us were interested in another stupid contrivance with bad food. B finally agreed to check it out with me on our weekly date night (I know! If I wasn’t so happy I’d gag too!) after we saw a pretty rare print of Pasolini’s Mamma Roma, his totally mesmerizing (if depressing) indictment of Italian culture. It was my first Anna Magnani film and oh man, is it worth the trip to Accattone if you happen to be in Paris in the next few weeks. I guess Criterion has also already gotten their sweaty little paws on the thing (I jest, I totally love those guys), so you can probably Netflix it too if you don’t live in Paris or if you can’t stand the atmospheric charm of Accattone.
It was rather late and rainy by the time we finished the film, so sitting along the Canal while we ate didn’t really seem like an option. We headed to the Marais branch of Pink Flamingo and immediately found ourselves transported into a Jim Jarmusch film – Tom Waits on the stereo, checkerboard tablecloths, dim lighting, pictures of Brooklyn on the walls, and what B calls “a studied grittiness” (I was going to just steal that outright, but all those lectures I give my students about plagiarism have finally gotten to me). We decided to go for it an order some of the more adventurous combinations on the menu: La Basquiat (gorgonzola, fresh figs, and prosciutto) and L’Almodovar (a “paella pizza” with chicken, shrimp, mussels, chorizo, fresh peas, and a tomato saffron cream sauce). It smelled really good in there, and we were impressed to read that all the flour used on the premises was organic and that all the ingredients were bought fresh daily from small, local producers and retailers. The guys who worked there were surprisingly nice, especially given that they are probably some of the hippest hipsters in the hippest part of the Marais (that’s pretty hip, people). And the pizza:
Oh.my. lord. This stuff is delicious. Thin, perfectly charred crust, sweet tomato sauce, and a carefully considered combination of toppings that were flat-out alchemic in your mouth. Both B and I walked in to this place expecting to get something out of our system, and instead found ourselves waxing poetic about these perfect pizzas. We brought the menu home and now find plotting future visits to this place one of our favorite activities (“Ooh, next time we should do La Macias (tajine-style chicken cooked with onions, ginger, coriander, and cinnamon, served with pickled lemons, and green and purple olives) and La Poulidor (finely-sliced duck meat, apples, and goat cheese)!” or “Don’t we practically have to order L’Obama (grilled ham and pineapple chutney) at some point if we really want to call ourselves good Americans?”). Best of all, my local branch not only does home deliveries (by cute hipster boy on bicycle no less!), but will also happily bring you your pizza on the grounds of the Musée Picasso if you want to have a picnic. But I suspect we will be trying the Canal delivery service next, as boozing by water features is already in pretty heavy activity rotation. Might as well add some truly fantastic pizza into the mix.
Details: Go with it and you won’t be disappointed! Pizzas range from 10.5 – 16€ apiece, and we did see a happy couple share one. Clarence only shares pizza if he can still eat the quantitative equivalent of an entire pie, so B and I were pretty stuffed with two pizzas. Free bicycle delivery to a local outdoor picnic spot, complete with a souvenir pink balloon so the guy can find you. Home delivery requires that you spend at least 15€ euros and they charge you 2€ fee. As far as I can tell, that’s a lot of hipster sweat for a small price. Open everyday for lunch and from 7-11:30 p.m. They also appear to be in Berlin as well! Their website is definitely worth a gander.
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B came to my place in a state of pure glee a few nights ago and drug me to see this billboard:
This baby, you see, appears to share the same name as one of my favorite readers. A silly association, perhaps, but we thought of you, Hattie. Hope this delights you as much as it did us.
Contempt and my new color-scheme
Last night I went to see Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris (Contempt) at La Cinémathèque Française, a place that is all kinds of awesome. It’s housed in an amazing Frank Gehry building, has an incredible museum and library of cinema on the premises, and screens an entirely overwhelming number of films on a daily basis. If you wanted to know ground-zero for an autodidactic approach to becoming a real cinéphile, La Cinémathèque Française is the place. I’ve seen Contempt many times before (how would I know how to do my eyeliner or wear stripes if I hadn’t?), but this was the first time I’d seen it on the big screen and man was it cool. They are showing Contempt as part of a larger retrospective on the work of Alberto Moravia, the Italian writer responsible for many of the most interesting narratives of that era of filmmaking. I’m planning to hit the Bertolucci and the Pasolini screenings next week. I find it is good to have goals.
I don’t know whether it is the sudden profusion of bright, blue-sky days in Paris or merely my fatigue with the monochromatic look of winter clothing, but I’ve been starved for some new colors in my life lately. While I had a pleasant recollection of Godard’s gorgeous use of the primary color palette in the film, something about the mustard yellows, cherry reds, and robin egg blues really hit home last night. If you too are needing some new hues in your life, here’s some stills I stole from the internets. Hope they make you feel as swell as I did.
Eclisse Twist!
I just realized that you might be needing a new theme song. Give this one a spin:
Consider the pics of Monica Vitti a bonus prize. I’m personally going to spend the rest of the day resenting my plebeian bone structure. I sort of can’t believe that we even call anyone in this current generation of actors and actresses “stars.” Go watch some Marcello and Monica. You won’t regret it.
Eclisse Twist!
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Thanks, M!
Cinéclub: La Filmothèque du Quartier Latin
La Filmothèque du Quartier Latin
9 rue Champollion, 75005 Paris
Métro: Cluny – La Sorbonne
Last night some of my people and I saw a delicious new print of Pasolini’s 1968 Teorema at La Filmothèque du Quartier Latin. I’ve mentioned this cinématheque here before, but it really deserves its own entry. God, I love this place. From what I gather on the internets, La Filmothèque was founded in the late 1960s as part of the Cinémas Action, an excellent group of small theatres on the Left Bank that is now made up of Action Écoles and Action Christine. Following a management dispute in 2005, La Filmothèque splintered off and was renovated in 2006 with quite excellent results. It houses two screens, the 100-ish seat Salle Marilyn and the smaller Salle Audrey. The OCD preschooler in me loves that the two screening rooms at La Filmothèque are color-coded. Everything in Salle Marilyn is red, and everything in Salle Audrey is blue, extending to the Filmothèque’s excellently maintained website. I’m mildly obsessed with the light fixtures in the theatres and fantasize about the day when I can outfit my own home with such baroque loveliness. I have lots of really bourgeois dreams.
The programming at La Filmothèque is consistently sharp and timely. Like some of the other slick theatres in the area (including Le Champo), La Filmothèque synchs some of their programming with other cultural events in Paris. So to correspond with the excellent Fellini retrospective at Jeu de Pomme, La Filmothèque screened La Dolce Vita every night for a two months (I only went twice, I promise). Something about being in Europe makes me obsessed with Southern California, meaning that I’m compelled to devour Thomas Pynchon novels when living in Paris (weird, I know). In the same vein, I went through a intense revival in interest in David Lynch in the past month. Ever-canny to my longings, La Filmothèque served up an amazing three-week Lynch binge. Likewise, I suspect that La Filmothèque heard that I have a cinéclub and that we are really into Pasolini right now, hence their current screening of Teorema. We had a ball last night, though I suspect we might have been the obnoxious Americans that were whispering too much and laughing too hard. As a sidenote, my angry reader never responded to me, so I’m going to keep writing about Pasolini. It could have been a great love affair, Angry Reader! Where have you gone?! Are you at Accattone right now? We’re going to see Il Racconti di Canterbury tonight, join us!
Teorema chronicles a domestic scene turned inside out by the introduction of the seriously sexy Rimbaud-reading Terence Stamp, who enters a wealthy Milanese family and quickly seduces mommy, daddy, brother, sister, and the maid. Stamp’s character leaves as abruptly as he came (ha!), leaving the family to disintigrate in his wake. Mommy starts trolling the streets for young men to screw in ditches, sister goes into a fist-clenching catatonic state and is institutionalized, brother discovers art and becomes a handful of clichés about sublimation, and daddy becomes a train-station stripper who ends up screaming in a desert of volcanic ash. The maid returns to her rural village and goes into a religious withdrawal: eating only nettles, curing children afflicted with measles, levitating above the building for the entire town to witness, and eventually burying herself to weep in a construction site for new apartment buildings. I’m sure that the initial reception of this rabidly anti-Church and anti-bourgeois film was a tad different in 1968, but we thought it was hysterical.
My last entry was titled “Remnants” and I realized that I titled it that because of a passage I especially like from Pasolini’s A Film-Maker’s Life, which I’ve been reading in lieu of doing work. I was thinking about this passage last night when I was trying to explain my deep and abiding love of men with chest hair and I found myself saying, “Well, of course this is deeply Oedipal, but…” I find myself increasingly annoyed by my circumscription of my own autobiography by a certain clinical and critical language. Pasolini obviously felt the same way:
I’ve never talked about the importance of the family, I’m against the family, the family is an archaic remnant. During my childhood I had certain conflicts with my family whose background was definitely middle-class. My father represented the worst element I could imagine. It’s rather difficult to talk about my relationship with my father and mother because I know something about psychoanalysis. What I can say is that I have great love for my mother. My origins are fairly typical of petty bourgeois, Italian society, I’m a product of unity of Italy as a Republic.
He also obviously had a soft spot for a man with some serious body hair.
The Bear-Garden 