Before Sunrise, Before Sunset. Paris.

Last night I dreamt that I was watching the same movie over and over again. Maybe it was everyday, but definitely repeatedly over the course of the dream (since in dreams time expands and contracts at will).

I couldn't remember the movie, but I woke up with the thought that it might have been Before Sunset.

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are my two favorite movies ever in life, the latter weighed a great deal in my decision to go to Paris. I watched them almost exactly a year ago and the idea popped into my head to buy a ticket right then, to leave the next weekend if I could. The idea of walking with someone and discussing everything through the streets of such a beautiful backdrop struck me as one thing I infinitely wanted to experience in my lifetime. Even now, watching it again, I still have that small ache in my chest at the end. I still feel that same tug. (I watched them both again this afternoon to relieve myself of the funk that I woke up in...Definitely did the trick)

The last ten minutes of that movie, sigh...if you haven't seen it, add it to you Netflix list. You'd have bought a ticket as well.

French Kisses and Bad Days Made Better

I went to see the film Un baiser s'il vous plaît or Shall We Kiss at the IFC Center as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. A film by Emmanuel Mouret, who spoke after the screening. Quite entertaining and if it finds American distribution, I'd recommend seeing it or renting it.

It tells the story of Gabriel and Emilie who meet on the streets of Nantes randomly one afternoon. He offers her a ride , and the ride turns into a pleasant dinner with clearly romantic overtones. At the end of the night he goes in for a kiss only to be turned down by Emile, who believes that even a small kiss could have the most unexpected consequences. They cut to the story of Judith and Nicholas (played by Emmanuel Mouret), two very good friends, who as a means of curing Nicholas' need for affection decide to engage in a quick tryst that begins with just a kiss (what was probably the most awkward and funny love scene I've ever seen on film.) The film centers around there growing affair (Judith is married to adoring, rich and attractive Claudio) and the unexpected repercussions of their actions. Wry, observant and also quite touching, SHALL WE KISS? is a very contemporary meditation on the wages of infidelity. Mouret's intelligent, successful characters deluge their emotions and instincts with very open speculation as to why they're doing what they're doing, trying to appear as if they're in control while it's clear to everyone else they haven't been for a while.

My favorite part of the evening was the discussion after the film, a woman asked in french about the difference between American cinema where infidelity is often treated as tragic and French cinema where it usually takes on a more comedic light. Mouret responded, while of course everything in the film had consequences, in France infidelity was a national sport.

Be Kind + Muppet Babies

I was trying to think of a cutesy way to say how much I liked Michel Gondry's New film Be Kind Rewind, but I have to just start by saying I just plain enjoyed it. The movie was funny, it had heart, it made you feel sentimental without feeling overly cheesy. The feeling I got from watching it was similar to watching films as a kid. The whimsical nature of the film hooked you in, said don't take things so seriously and entertained and moved you all at once.

My friends and I all joked, half seriously, about going home, grabbing a camera and making our own "sweded" films. Therein lies the genius. As Gondry stated about the exhibit at Dietch Projects (which allows people to create their own films and have them displayed in the exhibition) “I intend to prove that people can enjoy their time without being part of the commercial system and serving it. Ultimately, I am hoping to create a network of creativity and communication that is guaranteed to be free and independent from any commercial institution.”

It reminded me a lot of watching Muppet Babies as a child. Something in the fact that it stimulated our imaginations and encouraged us to find inventive ways of playing. We'd watch the Star Wars episode and suddenly we'd be using the couch pillows as the starboard of our space ship and with pots on our heads we'd launch our own exploration into the great imaginary unknown.

Big ups to everyone out there grabbing their cameras and playing like they're five again.

Movie Night: Underdogs and Mafioso.

Eastern Promises- I can't quite put my finger on why I liked this movie. At times it was slow and not much happened, but the fight scenes were definitely brutal (the russian bath scene definitely lives up to the hype) and the end was rewarding. I highly recommend.

Rocket Science- I wanted to enjoy the movie and I think I even enjoyed the movie for the first half hour. The Wonder Years/Winnie the Pooh-esque voice over. The smarter and more clever than humanly possible debate student; rooting for the awkward stuttering lead character with a backpack full of notebooks (which we rarely see him utilize, except to drag it around). In the end, the movie just wasn't rewarding enough. All of the adults seemed kookie and a bit oversexed. All the young people were weird enough to have rolls in Napolean Dynamite, which I personally didn't think was that much of a film in the first place. While I appreciated the point of the movie, which didn't give lead character Hal Hefner the miracle, overcoming the odds transformation that a lot of Hollywood movies might have, I still felt set up for disappointment every time he competed (and lost) a debate tournament. But in case you felt you didn't catch the lesson, Ginny hits you over the head with it near the end, stopping mid-debate to tell Hal how she improved the quality of his life by making him more of a fighter.

Mr. Brooks- Don't. Even. Get. Me. Started.
GARBAGE.

Understanding "Love Jones"**

Last night a group of my friends, who were slightly older than I, began to talk about the movie "Love Jones" staring Nia Long and Larenz Tate. What struck me as interesting about the conversation was not their love for the movie, which I also love, but the ways in which it shaped their ideas about life when they first viewed it. It made me want to examine briefly in writing why, in their words as well as my own, it had the effect on them that it did.

I think large part of what made "Love Jones" so popular for that age group was that it not only portrayed a love story but that it portrayed a life style that hadn't been depicted in films prior to that time. It was a movie about two young "upwardly mobile" black folks, one a photographer the other a poet, who were part of a bohemian movement that included jazz, spoken word, art, and the renewal of wearing natural hair. One friend referred to as an artistic renaissance, which once he said it struck me as the perfect description of the young artistic movement taking place today. It affected them because it said "something else is possible" especially in their young age. They didn't have to be hard or straight out of Compton. They didn't have to be violent. They didn't have to be older to fall in love. They didn't have to be the clowns. It was also the reason that so many of the movies that followed were made including Soul Food, Brown Sugar, The Wood, Inkwell, Best Man and Love and Basketball.

Everyone I know, older than 27 and younger than 35 feels exactly the same way in regards to "Love Jones."

When I saw it finally, I was in college the black bohemian lifestyle that was popularized by the film was already a reality and not just as a small niche of culture. It affected me but not as something that gave me that same feeling of possibility but films influence over black cinema and popular culture at the time might have been responsible the culture that allowed me to experience art and entertainment the way I did and still continue to do. It was revolutionary for its time period.

So I'm excited for our Love Jones movie night, because I think that seeing it again from that perspective will be like seeing it anew.

**links and editing to follow

2 Days in Paris

I was very excited to see 2 Days in Paris, an endeavor I mostly wanted to take on alone. Its sort of one of those things I do when I really want to see a movie that’s not a summer blockbuster and that I’m not sure my friends will enjoy, but a girlfriend of mine happened to be in the area and so she came along. (I have to say that I think I’m going to quite enjoy this long weekend of being alone and quiet, I always forget how much I need it.)

I want to say the movie was not what I expected, though I'm not sure what that expectation would have been. It was Julie Delpy and there was lots of talking on the streets of Paris, which sounds like another film but wasn't. The tone of the film was much more off-beat, not at all similar to the tense sexy romance of "Before Sunset." It even had a Woody Allen-esque quality, which seems almost like a fault but was carried off well by Adam Goldberg. The movie was hilarious and enjoyable but it lacked any resonance, which I felt was supposed to be imposed on us by Delpy’s occasional voice-overs which often went on a few minutes too long.

There is something to be said though, about watching a dysfunction couple, a couple that somehow stay together against all odds, the type that you watch and think "God, they deserve on another." It gives you the sense that there might in fact be someone for everyone, no matter how neurotic or insane they might be.