Half Light II (No Celebration)

Arcade Fire’s latest album, The Suburbs, is sooooo good. It took me less time to appreciate this one than Neon Bible. In some ways, there seems to be a lot more going on in The Suburbs than in the last two albums. The tracks I like a lot are « Ready to Start », « Modern Man », « Half Light II (No Celebration) », « Deep Blue » and « We Used to Wait ». For once, I also like the tracks where Régine Chassagne is the main singer, i.e. « Empty Room » and « Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) ». The Suburbs is one of the two new releases that have been in heavy rotation in my car this summer. The other one is High Violet by The National, which came out at the beginning of the summer. It is pretty depressing for a summer album, but it is also incredibly good. Another CD which has been playing a lot in my car lately is Carla Bruni’s first CD, Quelqu’un m’a dit. Also depressing, but that is some really pretty music.

Lights

Wow, I saw Salt yesterday and it was amazing. Okay, maybe not amazing, but it was a good little action movie, and good action movies are always awesome. It's always a pleasure to see a crazy chick pull off insane Spiderman-like stunts. The movie's catchy tagline, "Who is Salt?", is very accurate: during the whole movie, the only question running through my head was, "Who the fuck is Salt?" Angelina Jolie is pretty scary in this role, you literally never know what she's going to do next. I'll leave you with a slight spoiler, i.e. the message of this movie: Do not fuck with a girl's man.

Conversation 16

Shutter Island was HORRIBLE. The ending was incredibly obvious.

And I watched a really disturbing English independent movie, Fish Tank. Lots of inappropriate moments.

Biological

Recently read Yann Martel's latest book, Beatrice & Virgil, and it was great!

Recently saw French movie De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté and it was beautiful!

Recently went to La Banquise and had a novelty poutine (fries, cheese, BBQ sauce, sour cream, guacamole and tomatoes) and it was delicious!

Sorry, feel more or less like blogging these days.

Sleepwalker

I'm going to one of my favorite restaurants tonight, and this prompted me to do a round-up of all of my favorite restaurants. After all, I have been writing about restaurants for some time now. So, let's start with the ones that are more

On the expensive side

Le Piémontais: This is the one I'm going to tonight. Fine Italian food. We always eat the same thing: veal with cream pasta, and it's to die for. They also give us free chicken at the beginning, and the bread is always good and warm, which is always a great thing. It's really kind of expensive, though.

M sur Masson: It's expensive, but the portions are huge, and it is always delicious. We have a great relationship with the staff. I love the salad with the half-cooked egg! I have a previous post on this restaurant here.

La Porte and Laloux: Also expensive, smaller portions, but really delicious. My posts on those restaurants are here and here.

On the medium side

Dima: Really far, but killer appetizers. Syrian food. Previous post here.

On the cheaper side

M & M Legend: I'm not even sure of its proper name. We keep calling it "the pink restaurant". It used to be a very sketchy-looking place with pink walls in Chinatown. It has recently been renovated, and now my friend doesn't like it as much because he says it has sold out and that the prices are higher than before. It could be true, but it still is pretty cheap. There are Chinese buns, some more dessert-like and others with meat. The portions are huge, so it's a great place for eating with friends.

And, why not? My favorite fast food places

I love Thaï Express. It's what I eat when I'm depressed. I like the taste of McDonald's, KFC and Taco Bell, although I feel terribly guilty once I'm done eating at those places. And on the Canadian side, I like Harvey's and Tim Hortons. At Tim Hortons, I can get great coffee, great bagels, and great donuts when I feel like splurging.

I started with pretty well-rated restaurant and ended with McDonald's. Classy.

Take It Or Leave It

I'm pretty much done with classes, so it's back to Having A Lot Of Time To Read time. For a long time, I tried to find the edition of Salinger's Nine Stories that I wanted, but I finally gave in and bought a different edition. I wanted to reread it before tackling the only Salinger I hadn't read yet,Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. (I bought it last summer in Vancouver: it has been sitting on a shelf ever since.)

My rereading of Nine Stories was unsatisfying. Understanding those stories correctly would require me to read exterior analyses of them. I'll probably do that sooner or later, but I wish I didn't have to.

Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters was more satisfying. It is the detailed story of Seymour Glass' wedding day. It is often very funny. With this story, I decided Buddy Glass was my favorite of the Glass children. (Zooey is not bad either, and Boo Boo is cool, too.)

Unfortunately, I was very bored with the beginning of Seymour: An Introduction. The narrator goes on and on about very abstract ideas. I eventually realized that the narrator was actually Buddy Glass, whom I had previously been proud to proclaim my favorite Glass child. The story got better, though. It became a detailed portrait of Seymour Glass, Buddy's older brother. Seymour Glass annoys the hell out of me, though. But it is endearing to see how much his brothers and sisters love him. It is equally endearing how Buddy always doubts what he is writing.

I have now come to the conclusion that my appreciation of Salinger's work, from my favorite to my least favorite, goes like this: Franny and Zooey, Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters, Seymour: An Introduction, and Nine Stories. The Catcher In The Rye goes into another category entirely, the category of Books I Have A Love-Hate Relationship With. It probably stands alone in its category, actually.

(I have to mention, though, that the stories in Nine Stories are still all enjoyable. I tried to rank them from my favorite to my least favorite, and I realized that I actually kind of like them all. I usually like either the beginning or the end of the story only, though. I like the beginnings of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and of "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut". "Just Before the War with the Eskimos", "The Laughing Man" and "Down at the Dinghy" are terrific stories. I liked the end of "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor". I didn't like the end of "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes." I didn't like the beginning of "De Daudier-Smith's Blue Period", but its end is terrific. "Teddy" is an interesting story.)

The edition of "Nine Stories" that I wanted is pictured below.

Windowsill

Yesterday I watched a terrific movie. It is called Entre les murs, and its American title is The Class. It is a movie that feels like a documentary, as it is based on a book written by a French high school teacher and this teacher plays a version of himself in the movie. We follow him through a year of teaching a class mostly filled with ethnic students from a less fortunate part of Paris. The classroom scenes will feel very familiar to any viewer, as they reflect something everyone has gone through: high school. It is interesting to watch these fifteen-year-old students who all seem to think they rule the world and to remember that we had similar feelings at that age. The movie is a great reflection on education. Both the students and the teacher are not perfect: they both have great moments, and they both have obvious flaws. There are times when one wants to scream at the teacher: "That is not how you should do it! I know a much better way of dealing with this student!" The movie is very funny at times and truly heartbreaking at others. A great moment.