Comfortably Numb

For Christmas, F and I got a gift certificate for a recently opened restaurant, so we wanted to go there this week. We decided to simply show up there, knowing that we wouldn't mind eating at the bar if ever the restaurant was full. Unfortunately, the whole place had been taken up by a group, so we went to our go-to restaurant, La Souche. It is one of my favorite places in Quebec. They brew their own beer and make great food with ingredients bought locally. The name of the place means "the stump", and a lot of the tables are made with parts of tree stumps. As for the food, there are new specials every week. During the winter, one of the specials is usually a comforting stew. That is what I took, and this week it was a pork stew with cranberries, camembert and aragula. Adding cheese to a stew makes it a bit intense, but since it wasn't a very strong cheese, i.e. camembert, it was okay. The cranberries were a nice touch, especially since the holidays are not that far behind us. The stew usually comes with some nice, hot bread. F had a burger, and since I am addicted to La Souche's fries with mayo, I pretty much wiped those out.

Search and Destroy

I watched Vi är bäst!, a Swedish movie about three young girls starting a punk band in the 80s. Nothing much happens in the first half of the movie. Things pick up when two of the girls decide to cut the third girl's hair. I don't watch movies in Scandinavian languages very often, so hearing some Swedish was fun. Throughout the movie, we hear old Swedish punk, and some of it sounds pretty good.

Knights of Cydonia

I finally finished the whole Dragonball series. It was a very satisfying read. I had mostly read the earlier volumes as a child and I was afraid that the series would get less funny once Sangoku would start fighting aliens, but that didn't happen. I think Sangoku is a great childhood hero. He always goes further in his training, and he makes you want to take up martial arts. My favorite characters aside from him are Tenshinhan, Piccolo and Vegeta. I like characters who have been enemies before becoming allies. The last arc is a bit ridiculous, and it is sometimes tiring to see the characters rely so heavily on the Dragon Balls, the senzus and new incredible levels of training, but all in all, I had a really great time reading these books.

Go Hard

This weekend, I watched The Man with the Iron Fists. It was entertaining enough, but it had quite a few flaws. The action starts to slow down when the movie starts to show where the character played by RZA comes from. The directing gets weird at the end, with the screen separating itself. The concept of mixing martial arts and hip-hop together could have been pushed further. In the first half of the movie, a lot of battle scenes are acted out to hip-hop music, but in the second half, there are fewer battle scenes, and the ones remaining are acted out to an anonymous score. The portrayal of women in this movie is pretty bad. It was also bizarre to hear Asian actors speak with such strong American accents. The bloody scenes can get really gross. So, quite a few flaws.

A Beautiful Mine

Yesterday F and I didn't feel like eating at home, so we went out to Charbon Steakhouse. We have been there a few times already. It is a bit expensive, but the portions are enormous and they give you plenty of freebies, so it is all worth it. This is the second time we have taken the soup of the day as a starter, and they are pretty good with their soups. This time, it was carrot, turnip, maple syrup and some spice which the waiter couldn't remember. It comes in a really huge dish! Afterwards I had an 8 oz filet mignon with parmesan fries and a truffle mayo. I usually don't like truffles, but I always order those fries, even though I have to pay a little extra. The last time, I had taken an 10 oz steak and it was too much, so I reduced my steak's size a bit, but I think I will have to reduce it once again next time. They simply give you too much food. We managed to cram in a bit of dessert. I had a maple crème brûlée, which was delicious, but it became impossible for me to finish it. All in all, I would gladly return there, but I would order less food. I love this place because of its coziness: it is full of dark corners and red velvet and it looks just like the kind of place where Roger Sterling and Don Draper would have a lengthy lunch (yes, "Mad Men" once again).

Ashes to Ashes

It has been a bit more than four years since I wrote my last blog post. I won't be going to school for this winter semester, and so I have decided to start blogging again. As my old readers know (if there are any of them left), the subjects I used to cover were books, CDs, movies, TV shows, and restaurants/bars. Since my last blog post, I have had less and less time to read books, my music listening goes in phases (there are phases where I am listening to a lot of new music, and phases where I am listening to anything much), Netflix has become a fixture in my life, and I have moved to Quebec City where I try to convince my boyfriend F to try out new restaurants with me. I will continue to cover the same subjects, although the proportions in which they are covered in my blog might vary from their previous proportions.

For my first blog post of 2015, I have decided to talk about the movies I have watched in 2014. I used to feel guilty about watching so many movies, as I could be doing better things with my time, but I watched "Mad Men"'s second season over again this year and when some woman asks Don Draper what he likes in life, he answers "Movies". So now I don't feel guilty about matching so many movies, because it is something I truly love to do (yes, Don Draper has that much influence on me). Here are the movies I watched this year that have left a strong impression on me. Some were seen in theaters, others not. They are listed in the order in which I watched them:

Edge of Tomorrow: A good action/sci-fi movie, with just enough romance. I still love Tom Cruise, even though everybody hates him.

Starship Troopers: F made me watch this cult movie. I wasn't expecting much, but I liked it a lot. A lot of meaning can be given to this movie, but I enjoyed it as a simple action movie... my bad.

Boyhood: I was born a bit earlier than the protagonist, but this movie still made me incredibly nostalgic. The soundtrack is perfect: for every year depicted, the one hit of the year was chosen. I laughed out loud alone when "Soulja Boy" came on. We can also see the evolution of technology, which is pretty interesting.

Lars and the Real Girl: This movie made me long for a community.

La Vie d'Adèle: Chapitres 1 et 2: Probably overhyped, but the reunion scene made me cry, it looked so real.

Mommy: Our own Quebec genius' last movie. His directing didn't make me cringe anymore, and I was genuinely troubled at the end of the movie. The only movie of his that I haven't watched yet is Tom à la ferme. He really gets better with each movie. He's like Sangoku in that way (I am reading all of the Dragonball series currently. It was my Christmas gift from F. So romantic, haha. I will probably be doing a blog post on that subject when I am done).

Superbad: A great comedy.

On the Road: I am probably losing all credibility as a girl who likes books here. At least, the movie made me want to get back to reading Beats books. It is a very classical movie, nothing earth-shattering. Diarios de Motocicleta by the same director is one of my favorite movies. I also like Garrett Hedlund a lot, mainly because of TRON: Legacy.

Gone Girl: I am including this movie because it was one of the hyped movies of the year, but I mainly enjoyed it as a thriller, nothing more, really. The movie is pretty pessimistic about couples.

Zoolander: Another great comedy.

Interstellar: This movie had me watching with mouth agape and made me want to watch it again immediately with subtitles to better understand the parts where they talk about physics. I liked it better than Inception. Some people say that the love theory in the movie is ridiculous, but it perfectly appeals to sentimental girls like me.

Dazed and Confused: At first, I was thinking "Ok, yet another early Richard Linklater movie with a lack of structure". However, the movie got better as it went on and at the end, I was completely charmed by Linklater's portrayal of youth. This is the third movie of his to make it into my pretty exclusive list of favorite movies (mainly movies I could watch over and over again), along with Before Sunset and The School of Rock.

The Rock: Another cult movie F made me watch, another time where I didn't have much expectations. In the end, a very enjoyable thriller, with Nicolas Cage making you wonder whether he is a good actor or a completely ridiculous one.

Laurence Anyways: The third movie by Quebec genius Xavier Dolan. I didn't like the first part much, the directing was really hectic, but I guess that matched one of the characters' state of mind. It is a very long movie, but it didn't make me cringe as much as his two first movies, and it made me even more convinced of the importance of subventions for culture. We need subventions, so that movies like these can be made, so that people can feel less alone. Namely, the movie makes you realize that when some of the most important relationships in your life go awry, you are not the only person to whom this happens.

Appassionata

I saw a great German movie yesterday called Das Leben der Anderen. The English title is "The Lives of Others" and it won the Oscar for best foreign movie in 2007. But that's not important. What's important is that this is a pretty good story. It is not even a very complex story, it can be pretty hollywoodian if you want. The movie is kind of stressful. It is very insightful on the rampant paranoia that was going on in the DDR. I'm not sure I should base my impressions of life in the DDR on this movie, but it certainly strikes the imagination. I'm really glad I got to see this movie.