Back in germany

So I’m in the thalys. Going back to Münster for a few Days. I spend all my holidays in Paris, mostly with my parents and my sister.

Seeing for a long time gave us the opportunity to talk a bit about politics which was really interresting. I met my cousin Jeanne yesterday and had a great discussion with her too. She is working a lot for a burkenese(is that right?) association, and it was really great to get more of the African perspective. Everytime I talk to her I realize I should spend some time there. It is also funny to see how her studies -philosophy, anthropology and sociology- shapes the way she talks but also how she considers things.

Discussing with all of them, as well as recent books I started to read and the events that are taking places since September have made me realize, in a much stronger and clearer way then ever before that the actual avatar of capitalism, the so called “financial capitalism” is really our main enemy in tge pursuit of better life and just society. Somehow we need to get rid of it if we want the situation to get any better, be it in africa, china or at home in France or Germany.

I will close with a citation by Rawls which I find a very interresting thought:

If the responsability of keeping care of an object is not given to an agent, the object tend to deteriorate.

The citation is approximate. It is introduced as moral justification of property. Somehow it would be interesting to see what would happen if stock holder (and CEO’s to a lesser extend) were accountable to society (or/and there employee’s) for the well being of the company they possess (or are in charge of). That would be the price to pay to take profits out of it.

Paris, movie update

Here we go again, looking back it always seems like i need a few days to adjust to new situations. Funnily enough, the longer my period of stay, the more time i need. Does it mean that i managed “better”, this time around? In some sense yes. I pretty much devoted myself to one thing, and i followed it pretty closely:

Cinema
I think i manage to view quite a few good movies, even though i feel like i missed a few. More on that later.

Eric and I continued to go to action ecole ones more, this time to see:
Gentlemen prefers Blonde Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, well the movie was thoroughly entertaining, you couldn’t possibly go wrong with that 😉

I watched Sakuran the next day. I wasn’t completely convinced by this film. I don’t think the music matched that well with the rest of the film. Call me a traditionalist, but the “arty” and elaborate ambience of the red light district don’t mix well with pop and rock sound. The main actress although regularly felt out of place with her strong, and very “Yakuza”-like talk (deep loud voice, and some expression i can’t really remember that felt coming out of a Yakuza film)[Edit i later read that one should expect such behavior since they are Oiran(prostitutes) and not geishas, i’m still unconvinced that a women in her situation could have such behavior]. The images were really beautifull, but almost to much, the saturation of the color was also overdone imho.

On Friday morning, i read from Epikt’s blog that the Maison de la culture du Japon was doing a retrospective on the Shôchiku, and that i had missed an incredible amount of movies… ;_; I rushed over there to see The Last Samurai, the epic last movie of Kenji Misumi, know for the Zatoichi serie as well as for the Lone Wolf and Cub movies. The movie was great, the story is pretty cool, and even the clichées are kinda fun. The only thing that i didn’t know was that the film was in two part… for a total of about 3 hour. I went out of the movie completely exhausted, and opted to not see the next movie (There was two screening every day one at 15:00 the next at 19:00).

The next day, i saw 君の名は(kimi no na wa; french title: Quel est ton nom). It doesn’t even appear on imdb or other sites as far as i can tell… Granted the link won’t help many of my (few) readers, but google translated it, there some fun in there anyways. Back to the movie though: It was an absolutely fantastic movie! Haruuuuuuuuuuuukiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii , Maaaaaaachiiiiiiiikoooooooo!!!!!!! Great stuff, a sublime melodrama like there aren’t filmed anymore. Can’t say how much i laughed and cried during the movie, it would be shameful 😉 Same problem as the day before, this movie has three episode for a total of 3:05 hours! I lost the count of messed up situations the two lovers had to face… I was better prepared this time and ready to see the next film. Sadly i decided to first get some food, and when i came back, at 18:30 the film was already sold out! -.- Sadly this was although the last day of the 2 week long retrospective…

Having finished the retrospective, i tried to focus more on newer films:

Beyond the Years by Im Kwon Taek, who directed Chi Hwa Seon which i already talked about. I mentioned this because i really felt a link between the two movies: similar landscape shots, two themes that are kinda similar -they are both biographies of artists-, the randomness of one’s life as described by both.

The sun also rise, which was pretty much the revelation of the week. i love that movie! The first part which completely won me over was so incredibly absurd and fast paced i barely had time to keep up with the movie. The structure was really well thought and surprisingly he managed to tie up every loose end by the end of the film. A great moment of cinema.

Wonderful town was a strange movie. I really liked it, but somehow i never understood if it was a love story a social tale or an analysis of the “post – tsunami” period in Thailand. Probably something in between, but it made it difficult to follow the film.

Women on the Beach. I kinda liked it, even though it’s basicaly a film about a man who treats women like dirt (and every other man around him as well), somehow it takes time to realize it and to that point you already built some sort of affinity with him that becomes difficult to break. Movies aren’t here to paint the world in pink, i felt strongly catched by the movies and the vice and flaws of all the people in it.

Utamaro and his five women. I was recently telling someone that i prefer films where nothing happens, this is one of those, it was great 🙂

The next day, i went to a late night screening of Martyrs, that i had read about on epikt’s “glop ou pas glop” blog. There was a huge contrast between that and the previous film. I’m not sure if i’m so fond of the genre. But it definitively was well made, in my opinion, and you where regularly surprised by the turns the movie took. Ame sensible s’abstenir!

Last but not least, i saw tanin no Kao which impressed me a lot. The beginning is rather week, taking a too intellectual approach. But after some time, the actor really started to flesh out they role and it became a incredibly deep movie, the concepts and thoughts of it are still on my mind. A really great closure of my cinemaphile stay in Paris.

On a side note, it’s really amazing how many older japanese movies where airing this time around, you basically had 1-2 movies per day, at least (not counting kurosawa). Since talking about the movies alone took me so many time, i will split up and talk about the rest of my stay in a new post.

Paris one fourth over

The first quarter of my trip to Paris is over (more like one third actually). And i stop my frentic pace to quickly look back at what i did, hoping that writing it up will make me focus more on the important things for the next few days.

Quitting a chronological order i will talk about things  in a more thematic way. I will also toy around rudimentary layout in the hope that it will make the text more readable.

a very beautiful street not far from the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Cinema As some of you may know, the seventh art is probably the one i devote myself the most to. I wanted to use the opportunity to see a lot of movies… What i have seen so far:

東京の宿 (Tokyo no yado, An inn in Tokyo, une Auberge a Tokyo) by 小津 安二郎 (Yasujiro Ozu) on Sunday (cine club de Claude-Jean Philippe). I was deeply moved by the movie, which had in my opinions some really amazing shots, once again i feel very frustrated by my inability to describe more precisely what i liked by the lack of shooting specific knowledge. The story itself was deep, looking into the case of a jobless man starving and how he tries to find a future for his son, as well as for some women and her daughter they met during theyr travels. The film, while pretty sad doesn’t fall into a too overdramatic tone, which i was very thankfull for.

Journey into Fear (Voyage au pays de la peur) by Norman Foster and Orson Wells. We went there Monday evening with Eric. Great film noir, i enjoyed the shots a lot, as well as the actors with there “mine patibulaire”.

The next day after coming back from eating at my aunts place, Eric was motivated to see another movie, so we went to The Magnificent Amberson (Orson Wells),  also very impressive, we both particularly liked Tim Holts play. In case you haven’t guessed it by now, Action Écoles, a movie theater 3 min. away from Eric’s place, had a Orson Wells retrospective. While i guess that 3 movies in 5 Days isn’t that bad. I’m kind of disappointed because i haven’t managed to see any newer movie. I hope i will be able to correct this in the next few days and see some Thai, Korean, Chinese and Japanese movies that are airing (is airing right?) currently. The bycicle thief is also looking at me, sadly it’s only on Tuesday morning, so seeing it will be difficult.

view of the street from Eric’s place.

Arts This one is really lacking, i only managed to see the Walker Evans/ Henri Cartier-Bresson Expo, which was really good. I hope i will be able to see more the next few days. (Actually as soon as i’m finnished with this post, i will go see a museum i hope.

Math Even though i haven’t been working all that much, it has been pretty exciting. Ralf came from the Luminy conference with interesting new questions. I was skeptical how usefull this trip would be for me workwise, but it looks like i could learn a lot here in the end.

we have been working mostly in café’s so far, albeit not this one.

Family All my previous trips to Paris have been but last time exclusively dominated by family matters. Last time i think i achieved a roughly 50% family 50% rest. It’s not like i don’t like my family, i love them, but i wanted to be able to do and see something else while here. This time i think i managed way better. I had two dinner with my aunt, one with my cousin and i saw my parents and grand parents for lunch on tuesday. They all took time to talk to me while i was there (sometimes when i live at their places we postpone the talkin till i have to go…). So while i was seeing them less, i have the impression we actually spend more time together. I also went shopping with my cousin in the marias, which was very nice. I bought myself a new hat

＼（＾ ＾）／

Jeanne and me in a café after shopping.

Japanese It’s always difficult to keep track of private projects, while on a trip. But till today i manage to somehow do about one hour of japanese each day. I think i know all hiragana, and hope i will be able to write them fluently by the week end. I still have a lot of vocabulary to learn, but it looks like those two weeks will be good for me in that aspect.

Party! Last but not least, i wanted to party a bit and meet people while here. From the experience of this weekend, it looks like Paris is easier on me that Münster. We had a great time in bars in the Marais on Friday and Eric invited me to an amazing party of some of his girlfriend friend’s. I had a lot of fun talking to nice and funny people. I don’t know what i do wrong in westfalia, but it never work out that nice there. Saturday i will go clubbing at Rex, where Ivan Smagghe is playing, musically speaking it should be the highlight of my trip, unless i end up going to some great classical concert, or some jazz concert. Can’t wait for saturday ヘ(^_^ヘ)(ノ^_^)ノ