French Movies

I heard that one of the artsy theatres here (Seattle has a LOT of artsy theatres - which is awesome!) was playing a re-released showing of two classic French films from the 1950s; The Red Balloon and The White Mane. J is not really interested in seeing things like this so I advertised it to my girlfriends as, "SO French! SO artsy! Anyone interested?" And, I actually got three of them to come along.

The Red Balloon was a wonderful movie experience - just a happy little (beautifully shot) film. Plus, the movie theatre had blown up all these red balloons to decorate the ceiling but one of them decided to float around aimlessly (much like the one on the screen) which was incredibly charming. At one point, it floated in front of the projector and made a giant balloon-shaped shadow on the screen while the movie played.

The White Mane, on the other hand, is one of those French movies that bores you to tears and then horribly, shockingly, goes awry. Ms. Cyclone and I had to cover our mouths to stifle a lot of inappropriate laughter during the showing and afterwards, all my friends were like "Thanks a lot M. That was really great." (heavy sarcasm). They aren't going to let me live that one down for a long time.

If you want to go see this (and why wouldn't you, after this blog post?!?!) here is where you can find it playing in a town near you: Click here for dates!. It's playing in Brooklyn, Portland, Atlanta, Pittsburg, and Boston (among others) and I know I have loyal readers in those cities!

The thing I liked about this photograph was how the letters were all crooked and how the SS and N were in red, not black. There's a little secret thing I like about this as well, that you can't see from this distance. You may see a small smudge in the bottom row of lights, halfway through the light block that is second from the left, about half an inch to the right of the tree trunk. When you look closely, you can clearly see that it's a paper clip, attached to the light bank. I remember reading this book when I was a kid, where there was a little spider hidden in every drawing and you had to look for it. I loved doing that! Does anyone remember what that book was??