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.