Not really. But I did watch a Belgian movie.
But before we get into that I just have to say, this fucking city dude. I saw a businessman walking down the street the other day. He was wearing an immaculate, silk checkered suit, clutching in one well-manicured hand a tanned leather briefcase and in the other a giant slice of chocolate cake. Here's this clean-shaven, well-dressed professional, strolling along pushing mushy, meaty chunks of cake into his mouth like a pig sniffing for truffles. At the time I thought nothing of it, except that it was very silly. On reflection I realize that it was a little encapsulation of everything that is Paris: having your cake and mashing it against your face too. Paris isa city where you can actually find serious political candidates running on anti-capitalist platforms, and yet when you go to fnac, the French equivalent of Best Buy, you see this:
Calm down, guys, it's just consumer electronics. Also, from that same checkout line:
No, stop, that's not his name and you know it, you are perfectly well aware that all you're doing is irritating well-informed English speakers. Why change his name in the first place? And why to Charlie, of all things? The name Waldo is no accident, obviously it's meant to have so alliteration with the 'w' in 'where'. But "Où est Charlie"? Maybe no French names begin with the 'oo' sound, but you could do a hell of a lot better than Charlie.
So anyway, onto this film. In general I object to open-air cinema. Like falling in love with an attractive homeless person, after the initial romance wears off things tend to get uncomfortable and a bit chilly. I probably wouldn't have even gone to this movie were it not for the title:
Merde is the French word for shit, and so the word Merditude might be loosely translated as "shittiness". Of course it's important to mention that whereas we in the States measure positions on the Earth's surface using latitude and longitude, the French include a third dimension, merditude. This allows them to describe completely any position on the globe not only by where it is but also by how awful it is. Brussels, for example, is at <50.84844, 4.351559, très>.
As you can tell from the poster, this is a documentary movie about the political campaign of Belgium's current prime minister, Elio Di Rupo. This particularly moving still (see what I did there) comes from his most famous Höosenbuster, which is when a Belgian politician blocks a vote by refusing to put on his pants. To be riding a bicycle while doing so is traditional, to be smoking is mandatory.
Before watching this movie I took it for granted that if one language were being translated to or from another language, then at least one of those two languages would be English. As it turns out it's perfectly possible to have a movie with French subtitles and Flemish dialog. Everything worked out in the end though: turns out when people want to say something truly profane or idiotic they downshift into English anyway. Actual lines from this movie include "Bring more shit" and "A fuck a day keeps the doctor away."
Can I recommend this movie? Sure, why not. Can I recommend going to see outdoor movies at Cité de la Villette? Yes, but only if you take a bunch of mushrooms before hand. I think in my sober state the full impact of a hundred-foot wall of undulating, inflatable color was somewhat lost on me.
Still, beats the hell out of Montreuil.
But before we get into that I just have to say, this fucking city dude. I saw a businessman walking down the street the other day. He was wearing an immaculate, silk checkered suit, clutching in one well-manicured hand a tanned leather briefcase and in the other a giant slice of chocolate cake. Here's this clean-shaven, well-dressed professional, strolling along pushing mushy, meaty chunks of cake into his mouth like a pig sniffing for truffles. At the time I thought nothing of it, except that it was very silly. On reflection I realize that it was a little encapsulation of everything that is Paris: having your cake and mashing it against your face too. Paris isa city where you can actually find serious political candidates running on anti-capitalist platforms, and yet when you go to fnac, the French equivalent of Best Buy, you see this:
 |
No, stop, that's not his name and you know it, you are perfectly well aware that all you're doing is irritating well-informed English speakers. Why change his name in the first place? And why to Charlie, of all things? The name Waldo is no accident, obviously it's meant to have so alliteration with the 'w' in 'where'. But "Où est Charlie"? Maybe no French names begin with the 'oo' sound, but you could do a hell of a lot better than Charlie.
So anyway, onto this film. In general I object to open-air cinema. Like falling in love with an attractive homeless person, after the initial romance wears off things tend to get uncomfortable and a bit chilly. I probably wouldn't have even gone to this movie were it not for the title:
Merde is the French word for shit, and so the word Merditude might be loosely translated as "shittiness". Of course it's important to mention that whereas we in the States measure positions on the Earth's surface using latitude and longitude, the French include a third dimension, merditude. This allows them to describe completely any position on the globe not only by where it is but also by how awful it is. Brussels, for example, is at <50.84844, 4.351559, très>.
As you can tell from the poster, this is a documentary movie about the political campaign of Belgium's current prime minister, Elio Di Rupo. This particularly moving still (see what I did there) comes from his most famous Höosenbuster, which is when a Belgian politician blocks a vote by refusing to put on his pants. To be riding a bicycle while doing so is traditional, to be smoking is mandatory.
Before watching this movie I took it for granted that if one language were being translated to or from another language, then at least one of those two languages would be English. As it turns out it's perfectly possible to have a movie with French subtitles and Flemish dialog. Everything worked out in the end though: turns out when people want to say something truly profane or idiotic they downshift into English anyway. Actual lines from this movie include "Bring more shit" and "A fuck a day keeps the doctor away."
Can I recommend this movie? Sure, why not. Can I recommend going to see outdoor movies at Cité de la Villette? Yes, but only if you take a bunch of mushrooms before hand. I think in my sober state the full impact of a hundred-foot wall of undulating, inflatable color was somewhat lost on me.
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| Before |
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| After. The colors, Duke, the colors. |
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