Fireflies in the Lone Star State

There isn't a great deal on at the cinema right now--not even in London--it's that awkward, pre-summer phase, I assume. Of course, I have been keeping up with the movies I watch chez moi but it is still nice to go to the cinema on a regular basis. As such, I went to see Fireflies in the Garden, which was showing at the cinema across the street from my flat (it was a choice between that, State of Play (which I've seen) and Angels and Demons, so no choice at all really). I saw the trailer for Fireflies a few weeks ago and thought it looked like an interesting enough family drama, even though I couldn't work out what was going on and which people were related to one another (all of them, it turned out, although part of the movie including almost all of Julia Roberts's part is told through flashbacks).

Basically, Ryan Reynolds had a bad relationship with his father, Willem Defoe, who treated him pretty badly as a young teenage boy but luckily, his mother, Julia Roberts, was always around to defend him against her dick of a husband (Reynolds's character, Mike, is played by someone else in the flashbacks although Defoe and Roberts play both the present-tense and the 20-years-ago versions of themselves). Also, the much younger sister of Mike's mother, Jane, who is only a few years older than Mike himself, comes to stay with the family and they have a weirdly close friendship. Also, the reasons for her coming to live with Mike and his parents are somewhat mysterious. 

In the present, meanwhile, Mike is flying back to Texas for his younger sister Ryne's graduation. He's a successful writer now (which should show his dad, who was an English professor who didn't get tenure and whose books never sold) but is clearly having some issues as on the plane, he puts his wedding ring back on his finger. when the stewardess asks him to sign one of his books for her, he scrawls all over the dedication, "for Kelly," adding evidence to this theory.

This is when it starts getting confusing--for me, anyway--because Mike's aunt and buddy Jane is now living in Mike's childhood home with her husband two children (one is a teeage boy who is having some issues--sound familiar?--and the other a young, precocious girl, who turns out to be very much like Ryne). Tragedy then ensues and the whole family must come together to deal with the grief and their unresolved issues with one another. I say it's confusing becuase certain branches on the family tree mirror one another but because Jane is Mike's aunt and not his cousin (as might be expected), it doesn't always seem to work as well as it could. Also, I'm not sure Hayden Panettiere is entirely convincing as a young Emily Watson, although both actresses gave good performances.

Of course, there are similarities between Fireflies and both Garden State and Elizabethtown, with all three having the 30-something, male protagonist returning to his childhood home following a tragedy, which helps him to get his life back on track. I really enjoyed Garden State when it came out at the cinema but since then, Zach Braff has begun to really irritate me (his remake of L'Ultimo Bacio was the last straw) and although I still like the Garden State soundtrack, the film itself just feels too smug and trite for me to watch it without throwing things at it. I didn't get to the end of Elizabethtown; we were in Cannes one Christmas and the Head of Culcha (AKA Papa) recommended we watch it but the CEO (Maman) rejected it as "dull" after about 25 minutes. Given that the film stars Orlando Bloom, this may have been sensible. I do generally like Cameron "I never said I did good female characters" Crowe films (well, actually, I liked Say Anything, Almost Famous and Fast Times...I also liked Jerry Maguire and Vanilla Sky when they came out although over time, most Tom Cruise movies have come to annoy me more and more) but re-reading the summary of Elizabethtown, I'm beginning to suspect this wouldn't be one of them.

Fireflies, though, was decent enough, even though it seemed to want to be seen of as a higher art form than the Sunday-night-TV fodder it probably really is. Also, Ioan Gruffudd is hot although his role is small and he is also supposed to be playing present-day Julia Roberts's "older" lover but looks much younger, so isn't entirely convincing. 

A Girl Cut Out for Trouble

It's been a while since I've seen a French film at the cinema and there isn't much on at the moment anyway so I dragged a Francophile friend to see La fille coupée en deux (A Girl Cut in Two), which is on only at two of the Curzon cinemas in Brunswick Square and Richmond. The summaries I had read suggested that the film is all about pretty, blonde weather girl Gabrielle who is torn between two lovers--a prize-winning novelist and bon viveur, several decades her senior, and a rich, young playboy. 

Although watching the film wasn't my priority on the occasion I went to see that film at the cinema, thanks to various distractions, I quite enjoyed Ludivine Sagnier (who plays Gabrielle) in Swimming Pool and she has featured in a number of the other French films I have seen in recent years, including Un secret, Les Chansons d'Amour, Paris Je T'Aime and 8 Femmes. I've seen a few Claude Chabrol films too, including La Femme Infidèle, which we watched in an A-level French class and which was remade as the shoddy Unfaithful.

I wasn't overly impressed with La fille coupée en deux, however. Firstly because none of the characters were very likable, except possibly Gabrielle's mother, who doesn't have much screen time and, in any case, is more not-unlikable than likable. Gabrielle herself is by turns vain and ambitious, naive and insecure. Pretty much every guy in the film adores her but obviously, she can't please them all. She openly admits to Charles, her novelist lover, that although her mother owns a bookshop, she doesn't read. He buys her an expensive and erotic tome at an auction and patronisingly tells her she can look at the pictures if she doesn't want to read it. 

Charles, meanwhile, is a busy man. Busy writing (always on his MacBook), busy entertaining his many women (who include his wife of 25 years, his publicist-cum-PA-cum-mistress Capucine, a barmaid in the Eyes Wide Shut-style club he and his friends frequent and, latterly, Gabrielle who is besotted with him), busy schmoozing and busy hanging out in his amazing country retreat. He may have professed to love Gabrielle but this is sometimes hard to tell in a French film where je t'aime can mean "I love you" or "I like you"; certainly, although she tells him, "je suis amoureuse de toi" (I am in love with you), he doesn't return the sentiment. Eventually, he tells her he's going to London for a few days and buggers off for good, having got his wife to change the locks on his city centre shagpad (the name next to the buzzer reads, "Paradis").

Then there's Paul, son and heir of a local businessman who set up the famous Gaudens Labs but who died ten years earlier. Although Paul's mother loathes Little Miss Weathergirl, Paul adores Gabrielle and pursues her relentlessly for much of the film, even though she tells him she isn't interested. Paul is also way creepy--one night his friend has to physically remove his (Paul's) hands from Gabrielle's neck after she refused to kiss him (Paul). Oh, and Paul and Charles don't like each other--Charles tells his wife and mistress that this is because he knows that a few years ago Paul kidnapped some nine-year-old girls and had some funny business with them, although it was kept out of the papers. Paul dislikes Charles even before he finds out that Gabrielle loves Charles, although the film does not make it clear why this is the case (perhaps he is worried Charles will blab).

As such, for much of the film, Gabrielle isn't the least bit cut in two--I spent the first 90 minutes working out how it could be seen to be so--as she isn't interested in Paul, only in Charles. I wondered whether she was torn between furthering her career at the TV station (by schmoozing yet another lech who wants to get in her knickers) and her affair with Charles, but this wasn't the case either.

In any case, after Charles leaves the country, our heroine falls into a deep depression, which only lifts when Paul whisks her away to Lisbon (she had asked Charles if he would take her there but he didn't answer). They shop and have fun but then he tries to get it on with her over Martinis in their swank hotel (paid for, along with the shopping, by Paul's trust fund) and she LJBFs him. Error. He tells her to get screwed then because he really loves her dammit, but isn't going to sit around waiting for her. Whether through guilt, pity or realising she can never get what she wants from Charles, she tells him that she does love him and to prove it, she's willing to marry him. Great idea. Much to Paul's Maman's displeasure, they do end up getting married, despite Charles's attempted intervention during Gabrielle's wedding dress fitting where she tells him she'll always love him but at least this way, both spoused up, they'll be "balanced."

The marriage, however, is not happy. Back in Portugal on their anniversary, Paul starts dredging up Gabrielle's past with Charles (to which she confessed in detail so there were no secrets between them) and specifically what kinky sex games she played at Charles's weird, Eyes Wide Shut club. Because he is completely nuts, he pulls out a gun and points it first at Gab and then at himself...pulls the trigger but...wait, it's not loaded. The madness and the tragedy accelerate from this point, with the film culminating in a bizarre closing sequence where Gab's uncle, who turns out to be some famous magician, is on stage introducing his niece as "the woman who will be cut in two." Ah, so after all that, the title just referred to this end gag? Right... As the credits rolls, we just see a close-up of Gabrielle's smiling, "stage face" as she beams at the audience and the red curtains in the background.

Yes, it was indeed a very strange film and one I'm still not entirely sure that I enjoyed. Mais c'est normal, hein?

Sun and Fun on the HIll

For once, warm, sunny weather and a bank holiday weekend coincided in London. Assuming that the few tables outside the cafes and bruncherias of Marylebone High Street would be prime real estate, I woke up early enough to arrive at Le Pain Quotidien at about 10.30, armed with my copy of the Observer. This meant I sat down straight away at a recently vacated table on the street. Being slightly healthy, for once, I had a fruit salad with my cappuccino and walnut bread (the latter is served with an indecent range of unhealthy condiments including some posh variant of Nutella and lots of delicious jams). By the time I left, just before noon, a queue had formed inside and there was plenty of queue rage going on. 

Outdoor seating does cause queueing problems. A few weeks ago at Lantana, the parents and I arrived to find no seats inside and we thought the staff had understood that we would be sitting on the table outside until there were some seats inside. This didn't work out although it was sunny enough that we didn't mind. At LPQ today, some people were not aware of the inside queue and a couple who had apparently just strolled up to the just vacated table next to me asked a waitress if they could sit there. She said yes and they sat down, satisfied with their perfect timing. Then the hostess arrived and told them there was a queue and they had to join it. It then transpired that they had been in the queue but ran outside when they saw the empty table and therefore objected to joining the back of the queue. Luckily, I was leaving shortly anyway so I paid up and solved the hostess's--and the couple's--problem. I can occasionally be nice...

After a hard day's shopping and sun-soaking in the city (well, actually not the least bit hard), I decamped to Primrose Hill. Although they weren't quite a string quartet, a group of four guys (cello, violin, guitar and money-collector) were playing some wonderfully fun, chilled out Sunday afternoon fayre and I spent half an hour listening to them. Hell, I even gave them 50p before being asked to donate any cash or booze, which, for me, is a rare occurrence indeed. The number of empty beer bottles in the photo show just how casual and fun it was. It was also great lying back on the Hill as the sun sank in the sky, feeling the sun on my arms, enjoying the view of the London skyline and ploughing through some more books (Perfume has now been finished--definitely better than the movie; I'm now halfway through Presumed Innocent, which I picked up cheap at Henry Pordes earlier today).

Because of the forecasted heat today, I was careful to put on lots of suncream over the areas of my body not covered by my camisole and short shorts; I also opted to protect my face from the sun by wearing my hat and sunnies rather than trying to go for the more golden highlights in my hair I would get by going hat-free. Unfortunately, I failed to predict that it was going to be hot enough for me to attempt to tan my midriff while chillaxing in Green Park at about 2 p.m. It was more unfortunate still that I fell asleep while listening to the Kermode and Mayo film podcast (which probably says a lot about the new cinema releases this week than anything else).

Obscure Linguistics + NYC = Huh?

I don't think that a sleepy, sunny Saturday afternoon is quite the right time to see a Charlie Kaufman movie. I'm not sure when is the right time to see a Charlie Kaufman movie--possibly whenever accompanied by someone far better analysing headtrip movies than myself. I loathed both Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine the first time I saw them but after a second or third viewing, I came round to them a little.

Synecdoche, New York, however, won me over with its title: how could I resist a title that combines an obscure linguistic term with my favourite US state? I first came across the term synecdoche about four years ago while researching an essay on the role of metaphor and metonymy in semantic change. Metaphor is, of course, a well known process involving a comparison of two concepts or objects between which there is some similarity of meaning and an imaginative--but not real world--link. The English word muscle, for example, comes from the Latin musculus "little mouse." Musculus was then used figuratively to refer to certain kinds of muscle that resemble the shape of a mouse (of course, there are plenty more examples; George Lakoff wrote a whole book on the subject, which is pretty interesting). 

Metonymy, on the other hand, has been described as, "intrinsically less interesting than metaphor since it does not discover new relations but arises between words already related to each other. In this case, the comparison is made between two concepts between which there is a real-world link. For example, the spatial relationship between the Latin word coxa "hip" which became the French cuisse "thigh." Synecdoche is a sub-type of metonymy. As I wrote in my essay (ah, the banalities of undergrad essays):

One common subcategory of metonymy is synecdoche, which involves the substitution of a part of an object or idea for its whole, such as redbreast for "robin," or skirt for "girl." It can also involve the substitution of an inventor for her invention (e.g. the French for "hot air balloon" is montgolfier, after its inventor), place for origin of a product or food (e.g. Camembert, Champagne), or the name of a quality for the person who possesses it (e.g. beauty > a beauty). Champagne originally referred to that geographical region in France and although it retains that meaning, it has acquired the additional meaning of "white sparkling wine from the Champagne region in NE France."

Of course, my ability to churn out multiple examples of synecdoche in action didn't go too far to help me appreciate the film, which could equally have been called Caden Cotard et Ses 8 Femmes; other than Philip Seymour Hoffman-- who plays the talented but mid-life-crisis-ridden theatre director who takes it upon himself to create a life-size reconstruction of the city of New York in a warehouse as his swan song (hence the synecdoche: his warehouse represents the whole of NYC)--most of the other main characters are women. Michelle Williams and Samantha Morton are both good as the rivals and sometime lovers and long-time friends of Herr Direktor. It makes sense, though, that there are a lot of women once the director, Caden Cotard, gets started on his synecdochal opus because when he starts to create a play of his life (and the life in NYC in general), he needs actors to play the parts of his nearest and dearest and this is when the film starts to become more complicated than a set of Russian dolls created by someone who has drunk far too much vodka. 

There is, for example, an actor playing Cotard--a guy named Sammy who has been (somewhat creepily) following Cotard for many years--but once this actor starts to become part of the real Cotard's life, a new actor must be recruited to play the part of Sammy, and so on. This is also true of his women. Indeed, after his artist wife and her lesbian lover run off to Berlin with their daughter, Cotard eventually hooks up with and, later, marries Michelle Williams's character, Claire, who has acted in some of Cotard's plays. When they get married, though, and have a daughter who is very similar to the original daughter who was sequestered in Berlin, it becomes unclear as to whether Claire and Cotard actually did get married in "real life" or whether it was all just part of the script. And what is "real life" anyway?

I don't think I'm going to recount any more of the plot as I don't think I am likely to clarify anything. Suffice to say the film was weird and creepy but also funny and quite poignant in places ("everyone is disappointing, the more you get to know them," says Cotard's (first) wife prior to her departure for Berlin). I might be able to get my head around it after a night's sleep...but then again, maybe I won't...

The Paradox of the Last Picture Show

I'm beginning to wonder whether I will ever get even halfway through my goal of watching all of the movies in the IMDb Top 250. I have been hovering at around 120 for quite a while now but never quite seem able to make it to 125. Actually, looking at the list, I'm fairly certain I'll never get above 200 given the number of weird Japanese films that aren't really to my taste. It doesn't help that none of the films released this year so far are in the top 250 at the moment (apart from Star Trek, which isn't at the top of my must-see list), which means visits to the cinema don't help. Nor does it help that the BFI doesn't seem to be doing seasons that interest me at the moment (at least, if they're going to do Nouvelle Vague season, can't they at least show A bout de souffle and Bande à part [edit: actually neither of those are in the top 250 at the moment anyway]).

It certainly doesn't help that at the top of what would be my next-DVD-mailed-to-me list if I subscribed to Netflix are a range of different films, some in the top 250, some not. I've been having a bit of a Hitchcock season recently, having watched Psycho, Dial "M" for Murder, To Catch a Thief and The Birds (to add to my existing list of Rebecca, Notorious, Rear Window, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest and Vertigo). Some of these (and those in my Hitchcock to-see list) are in the top 250, some are not. As for the others, some have been selected because of their rank in the top 250 in the first place and because I think I will enjoy them in the second place (The Great Escape, for example, has been sitting on my DVD shelf for several months, unwatched); others aren't in the top 250 but I want to watch them anyway.

The trouble with my rapid efforts to watch as many movies from the top 250 as possible and also as many Hitchcock movies as possible is that although at the time, I paid the utmost attention to the film, trying to remember the actors' and characters' names, a lot of them are quite similar or have different combinations of the same set of actors and as such, although I could recount the plot of each film, I might struggle with the characters' and actors' names. This means that in theory, I should probably watch the ones I really enjoyed again. But when is there time for that? Without a TV, I don't tend to just turn on, discover that Channel 4 is showing Vertigo one night, tune in part-way through to refresh my memory.

My self-imposed challenge is beginning to sound like some kind of paradox of the Grand Picture Palace: I will never see as many films as I want to see and as many times as I would like. This is very irritating, which means that I have to stick to trying to watch at least 125 films on the list at least once. Once I have done that, I can forget about trying to watch films on the list and just see whatever the hell I want (though I won't of course). Still, as long as I enjoy each film I watch and don't break away from my rule of cinematic confirmation bias, all will be well. Probably.

Anvil! the Teenage Years

I missed the Eurovision Song Contest last night. Actually, I didn't miss it in the slightest; not now that Wogan is no longer presenting the show in the UK, anyway. I only really got into watching it while at university, anyway, when a bunch of us could all gather in someone's room playing some Eurovision-themed drinking game or other; watching it by yourself isn't quite the same. However, it did have its merits (very few of them relating to the music)--I enjoyed the political voting blocs, for example, and the often flustered people in each of the countries whose sole job was to announce the points awarded by their country and yet who often managed to mess up.

I also like documentaries--also, mockumentaries, (dogumentaries? I just coined that one!), rockumentaries and, most recently, popumentaries, the latter being the tagline for Sounds Like Teen Spirit, the latest documentary on the cinematic block. Sounds Like Teen Spirit follows several hopefuls in the 2007 Junior Eurovision Song Contest--a contest that probably isn't on many British radars (given that we don't compete), certainly not mine. Effectively, it's the same as the real Eurovision except the contestants are all aged 10-15 and all write the lyrics and music of the songs they perform (i.e. some form of musical talent is required).

So, we meet Trust, the grungy band of 14 year olds from Ypres where the girl just wants to meet a nice guy who likes her and will fulfill her every romantic fantasy while the two/three guys in the band (it's hard to tell as they all have the same longish, scruffyish hair and the same ambivalent and/or self-deprecating manner); Marina, the 14-year-old singer-songwriter of the Bulgarian act, Bon Bon, who is like totally Californian in her accent and mannerisms (although her Buffy obsession is possibly a little too last season for California) and who hopes that if her act wins, her father (who owns "three bowling alleys and a shopping mall") will be so proud he will leave his lover and return to the family home; an incredibly cute and precocious 11-year-old Cypriot called Giorgos, who was bullied because he liked singing not football and who is, by turns, wise beyond his years (though perhaps not so much as his younger sister, who couldn't be older than eight) and very much 11 ("this is the fridge. This is where we keep the food. We spend a lot of time in here"); and a 13-year-old from Georgia who feels the heavy burden of trying to represent her country in a positive light so that it finally receives some recognition.

There are other contestants too, although we don't see so much of their back story: a scary, blond, Russian  girl with a mullet; an 11-year-old Ukrainian girl whose "sexy librarian" act raised some eyebrows (her costume, part of which gets stripped off, mid-act, was eventually edited heavily); and the very nice, very normal 13-year-old Bab, who was the runner up in the Belgian contest (she should have won, although she wouldn't have made such good popumentary fodder as she just seemed like a nice girl). The film is interspersed from time to time with soundbites from journalists covering the event and the coaches and parents (although pushy parents are notably absent; these kids all seem to really want to win for themselves); "at least he'll get 12 points from Greece," said one reporter of the Cypriot act (he did).

Sounds Like Teen Spirit is very much a hybrid of Spellbound and Anvil!, with a dash of This Is Spinal Tap (though very little of Drop Dead Gorgeous). It is very funny and the featured contestants range from being hilarious to sweet to talented to highly sympathetic. Tears from the contestants were always going to be inevitable and there were some poignant moments, although the kids were usually shown to bounce back well from the set-backs. 

I felt it would have benefited from an extra half an hour or for the film-makers to have focused on only three of the acts instead to allow more time for the film to be framed better. As it was, the final of the Belgian competition was shown first (and in a way that makes you think that Bab will win), before we see the contestants telling us their story and preparing for the competition and then, finally, the week in the glamorous Rotterdam (where the final was held)--for some of the contestants, Rotterdam sounded like the most exotic place in the world. The film was also interspersed with a few very brief, humorous fragments on the history of the contest and how while Europeans used to fight a lot, now they make music, not war, but I'm not sure they added much to the film and its structure certainly wasn't its strong point.

Watching the movie did seem to bear quite a tangible relationship with watching Eurovision. Firstly, because the voting was the best bit of the TV show and we only saw a few, tense minutes in the film. Secondly, because some of the kids really could sing in the film whereas "ability to sing" seems fairly optional in the adult contest where often, the "best" act will win rather than the best song or the best singer. Thirdly, because you get to know the kids in the movie and find they are actually pretty likable; I'm not sure I could say the same about the adult Eurovision contestants. Like the adult contest, though, it's not usually the act with the best song or the best voice(s) that wins, although the "Since Junior Eurovision..." subtitles at the end do reassure us that the good ones have made moves towards a career in music since the contest, which, ultimately, will do them a lot more good than winning the perspex trophy awarded by Junior Eurovision.

When in Paris (Part 2)

Sundays in France always used to be pretty boring--all of the shops and most of the museums, mouments and other attractions were closed and so options for entertainment were generally limited to a long lunch followed by a long walk. Luckily, some shops do now open on Sundays, as well as various exhibitions and so on but, more importantly, the tradition of le brunch is now more ubiquitous in Paris than anywhere else in the world (spawning a verb bruncher as well as the extension--drunch--which is the meal you eat at 3 or 4 p.m. soon after you wake up after returning from clubbing at about 7 a.m., therefore encompassing breakfast, lunch and tea). Not every Sunday in Paris is quite so Sunday-like anymore then:

1. Bruncher. We went to Little Georgette, Monsieur E's favourite brunch spot, just off the place du Marché St Honoré, a square populated almost entirely by restaurants and bruncherias. Parisian brunch is like an American brunch on steroids--it's not just a matter of having a really big pancake dish washed down with coffee and OJ; instead, it's a multicourse meal, involving a pre-main course pudding as well as a post-main pudding, in the case of Little Georgette. They offer various different brunch options, all wittily titled. We went for the, "Georgette chante, Born in the USA," option, consisting of: (N)espresso (or other hot drink), freshly squeezed OJ, "house cakes" (chocolate cake and lemon cake, randomly served instead of bread to keep you going until the main course), bacon cheesburger (burger and cheese were excellent; the bacon, not so much), and a pudding (we had mini US-style pancakes served with a shot glass of slightly warm Nutella; you could also opt for cheesecake, fruit salad or ice cream). Brunch don't come cheap in Paris, compared to the price of, say, a two-course dinner. Our selection was 25 euros each! Luckily, I hadn't eaten breakfast and probably won't be eating dinner so it wasn't such bad value for a whole day's worth of (very unhealthy food).

2. Promener au bord de la Seine. Having brunched, we attempted to walk off some of the calories, down through the Louvre and across onto the Left Bank, which was pleasant in the afternoon sunshine, although the incompetent mass tourists did get on our nerves. We ended up strolling all the way over to the Grand Palais for our culcha injection and then back along the Champs Elysées to Monsieur E's house. Paris is a very walkable city, both in terms of its size and its attractiveness; it is thus a shame to see so many tourists spending their entire visit on a coach tour.

3. Visiter Shakespeare & Co. OK, so it's now become a ginormous cliché to visit the famous Left Bank bookshop but they do have a good selection of books, including some American editions with interesting covers or bindings and a wide variety of second-hand things. It's just a shame that the number (and size) of the American tourists in the shop make browsing more difficult than it ought to be. Plus, the sales assistants tend to look at you down their more-cultured-than-thou noses unless you a) buy something suitably intellectual and/or b) speak in your best RP.

4. Voir une expo. The Grand Palais is the Crystal Palace of Paris, only it is still standing and currently holds a range of cool exhibitions in its grand, glass-roofed building. We went to see Le Grand Monde d'Andy Warhol, which was very well done and interesting. We wished our parents had known Andy in the '80s and had commissioned him to do a portrait of us. Having purchased my art yesterday, I refrained from purchasing a blue-toned print of Jackie O and one of a generic, blonde American woman from 1976, who bore a strong resemblance to Mrs Don Draper.

Adventures in Cocktails

I think I have found the Parisian equivalent of Employees Only: the Experimental Cocktail Club, located in the up and coming Montorgeuil ("mountain of pride") neighbourhood. Walking down rue Saint-Sauveur, you come across a building with a plain blue sign but no text. Apart from the bouncer, it could be anywhere or nowhere and the windows provide no clues from the inside. Once the bouncer has determined that you are cool enough to enter, you walk through the door and through the red curtains into a small, funky bar with a small number of tables, a few lucky people perching at the bar and many more 20- and 30-somethings crammed into the remaining elbow room.

The cocktails were impeccable. The bar, being experimental, offers a menu with a selection of 11 experimental cocktails (although the brilliantly stocked, mirrored bar allows the skilled bar staff to whip up almost anything that might take your fancy). I started with a Bee's Kiss (being B, of course): Appleton VX Jamaican Rum, cream, organic honey, "poivre long concasse d'Indonesie" (some kind of Indonesian pepper). I then moved on to the Old Cuban (pictured: Havana Club aged 3 years, Champagne, Ginger cordial, fresh lime juice, fresh mint, cane sugar and bitter truth aromatic), while Monsieur E went for the Rye Tobacco Sour, which sounded horrible (containing tobacco liqueur, rye whiskey and egg white, among other things) but tasted pretty palatable. On my to-try list for the next visit are the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Unusual Gin and Tonic (not actually that unusual--it just uses Hendrick's gin, freshly squeezed lime and a slice of cucumber--but how cool is the name?), although the menu changes every year so I might have to find something else by then. 

The vibe of the bar, the quality of the cocktails, its discreet exterior and intimate, stylish interior are all worthy of Employees Only. I would almost certainly have walked past both without a second glance had I not been guided there. Monsieur E and I were lucky to secure at least half a bar stool each so that we could perch while we soaked up the atmosphere (not to mention the random juices and splashes of cocktail that would occasionally fall from the shaker in the capable hands of the hot, Colombian barman (everyone says that).

When in Paris (Part 1)

When in Paris, there are certain things one must do, even if it is a somewhat grey and drizzly, if warm, May day. From today's agenda:

1. Acheter le petit déj à une boulangerie. Luckily, the boulangerie at the foot of Monsieur E's building is one of the best in Paris and so we bought a croissant (me), a pain au chocolat (Monsieur E) and some delicious baguette and ate breakfast in his (then) sun-filled living room.

2. Visiter les monuments célèbres. OK, so we didn't actually go in or up them, but we did watch the vast crowds of miserable-looking tourists queueing outside the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame in the drizzle earlier and took some more (also obligatory) leaping photos.

3. Traîner au Marais avec tes copains hipsters. The Marais doesn't look its best in the rain but it's still a fun place to hang out and there are more Bexquisite-friendly shops there than in most other parts of the city. We wandered in and out of many almost identical boutiques all offering overpriced, minimalist-chic clothes in a wide variety of neutral colours. I didn't buy, of course. I did, however, buy when we got to Yellow Korner, an art and photo gallery with an interesting concept: the art is all by a variety of up-and-coming artists and you can buy each image in a range of sizes, from an A4-size, ready framed print to a 150X100 cm image ready-mounted on an aluminium back. Each one is "limited edition" so there are only about 500 copies of each one. I went one better because the 50x40 piece I bought was numbered 1 of 500.

4. Manger des crêpes. As the rain started to come down more heavily, we ducked intoCrêperie Suzette for some lunch (I actually had a chicken-nuts-egg-pesto-romaine salad instead of a crêpe but this is acceptable). Of course, this being Paris, the two waiters made a concerted effort to ignore us, failing to take our order féor almost 30 minutes, even though several "regulars" came in, were seated immediately and were then brought their food before they had even had to wait to receive a menu. Never mind; the food was good and the crêperie was dry.

5. Qu'ils mangent des macarons. Ladurée is generally agreed to produce the best macaroons in Paris, so we stopped into the Left Bank branch for an afternoon snack. Although I was tempted by the pretty pinks, yellows and oranges from an aesthetic point of view, I was always going to choose the caramel (filled with a little of salt-caramel) and praliné options (two mini macaroons allows you to sample more flavours than one big one; it also makes you feel less greedy, I find). 

6. Acheter de la lingerie. Although Chantal Thomass and Sabbia Rose usually provide among the finest lacy, silky unmentionables, my current budget prevented me from even going in to have a look and a try. Instead, I headed to Bon Marché, which has a huge selection of pretty underthings. French brands are about the only ones that it makes any sense to buy in Paris rather than in the UK, given the current exchange rate, and so I made a beeline for the Princesse Tam-Tam collection, which I had been eyeing up last week in Harvey Nicks. The sales assistants were even a) polite and b) helpful, so there was plenty of win to go around.

7. Après la tombée de la nuit. We're off for dinner (to an Italian, this being Paris...), followed by glamorous cocktails at either the Experimental Cocktail Club or the Chacha Club. Being Paris, the cocktails will be very pricey so it's probably a good thing that each one will no doubt be obscenely strong. Errors will certainly result...

Plenty of Firing but Not Among My Neurons

After a long week, including an unplanned sleepover in Nowheresville last night, my addled brain couldn't cope with very much this evening. I was practically jogging back from the tube station this evening so keen was I to make it back chez moi in one piece. Obviously, this level of zombie-dom could only be treated with a dose of The Apprentice and some of my favourite fresh pasta--tomato and mozzarella girasoli from M&S (and not just because girasole means "sunflower").

I'm not sure whether I watch The Apprentice for its strangely addictive, train-wreck awfulness or because I enjoy reading the snarky liveblogging on the Grauniad's Organ Grinder blog, but watch it I usually do and it is entertaining to watch the cunning editing which manages each week to make me to hate another character candidate more than all the others.

This week, though, in the midst of attempting to find the value of and then flog ten random items, my favourite bookshop on the Charing Cross Road was invaded by a bluff of apprentices attempting to flog a James Bond first edition without wanting to be bovvered with the endless banter and deliberations of "the book people." I won't be able to look at that shop in the same light again now, even though it's a great bookshop with a great collection of cheap, second-hand fiction in its slightly damp basement and the friendly guys who run the place curating upstairs. I'll definitely have to avoid it on Saturday, anyway, as the publicity will probably mean it's even more rammed than usual.

As the episode was aired on Wednesday, I have been careful to avoid the entertainment page of the BBC News website for the past two days as they have a habit of revealing who got fired and therefore also which team loses. It's far more interesting to watch the show when you don't know which team loses because then you can play spot-the-oh-so-subtle-editing-hints yourself. Unfortunately, I forgot to open up the main iPlayer website (which doesn't reveal any information about the firee), instead going to the show website, which had a big banner announcing who had been fired, alongside the "rewatch on iPlayer" link. Slight error but in the circumstances, it wasn't too incompetent of me.