Archive for into the wild
into the mild [jatp]
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Running with tags alpine marsh, Alpine meadows, boardwalk, clouds, Hakuba, hiking, into the wild, Japan, Japanese Alps, jatp, Nagano, Tsugaike Nature Park, vacations on August 3, 2026 by xi'an
Libé’s Cannes’tionaire
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Running, Travel with tags 8 Miles, A Clockwork Orange, Alien, Blade Runner, Casablanca, Chaplin, Desperately Seeking Susan, Eine Liebe in Deutschland, Festival de Cannes 2025, Forest Gump, If..., into the wild, Isabelle Huppert, Kazuo Ishiguro, La Haine, Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, Les 400 coups, Libé, memories, Moby Dick, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, Mylène Farmer, O Brother, questionnaire, Rashomon, Shoplifters, Shrek, Spirited Away, Sweet Bean, Tampopo, The Blues Brothers, The Circus, The Dead, The Grapes of Wrath, The Hobbit, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Martian, Tirez sur le Pianiste, trainspotting, Twenty-Thousand Leagues under the Sea were, Where Art Thou?, Young Frankenstein on May 30, 2025 by xi'an
The French newspaper Libé(ration) is submitting some participants to the 2025 Cannes film festival to a questionnaire akin to Proust’s literary questionnaire and I found myself hard-pressed to answer, as it took a few on-line searches to fit the questions. Obviously the answers are of little interest and definitely not going to appear in Libé!
La première image ?
Hard to remember, rally, since (paradoxically) we were hardly ever going out to see films in the cinema of the small Norman town where we lived when I was a kid (and with no TV at home). Once in a (long) while a projectionist would come to our primary school so it may be Moby Dick (1956) or Twenty-Thousand Leagues under the Sea were among the first films I saw. As well as The Grapes of Wrath on a neighbour’s television, down the street. I actually remember most vividly a time when we all went to this local cinema for a family film (possibly Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus) and I got terrified by the teaser for an incoming film about vampires!
Le chef-d’œuvre dont tout le monde vous parle et que vous n’avez jamais vu ?
An incredible number of masterpieces, in fact, like Les 400 coups or La Haine to stick to the French production—and neither I have watched Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, but I am uncertain it qualifies as a masterpiece. Which reflects my lack of cinematographic culture, getting worse in the recent years where I only listen to the film critic show on the French public radio, France Inter. I tried to catch up during COVID, but somehow got distracted by series. Partly because watching on-line older, more classical movies, is often a challenge. (I managed to bag Tirez sur le Pianiste last year.)
Un film secret qui en sait long sur vous ?
If… a 1968 vitriolesque depiction of boarding schools, with A Clockwork Orange‘s Malcom McDowell. Reflecting my mood about said schools at the time I saw it.
La bande originale qui vous trotte dans la tête ?
The music of Blade Runner by Vangelis is just fitting the movie so well. Albeit not something I would keep in my head for days. If I skip films involving music one way or another like 8 Miles, The Blues Brothers, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, or Desperately Seeking Susan, the (not original) soundtracks of, to name just a few, Trainspotting, Shrek and The Hobbit (Misty Mountains) certainly stayed there for a while!
Un film où il ferait bon vivre ? Ou un film qui fait aimer les gens ?
Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し), by Miyazaki Hayao. Even though the episode of Chihiro’s parents being turned into pigs traumatised my very young daughter when we watched it in a cinema! As well as (pardoxically) Shoplifters.
Votre palme d’or favorite (ou un film qui ne l’a pas eue et c’est un scandale !)
Rashomon, obviously. Although it was withdrawn from the Cannes 1951 competition for copyright worries.
Votre vie devient un biopic. Qui dans votre rôle ? Et qui derrière la caméra ?
No interest whatsoever, a waste of time and money. Unless I decide to get Into the Wild..! But I would dream of a movie in the spirit of Andrezj Walda’s Eine Liebe in Deutschland (which I never watched!), that would evoke the story of the Macé’s, a couple who were friends to my grandparents and went through an exceptional life and love that started in a German farm during WWII.
Le monstre ou le psychopathe de cinéma dont vous vous sentez le plus proche ?
Alien! I mean, why did they have to come and bother it?! And, in a less serious mood, The Monster (with no name, poor thing!, not even for his Abe Normal’s brain…) in Young Frankenstein. [Answer that I share with Isabelle Huppert, as I realised after writing this! And she also mentions Blade Runner, albeit as the masterpiece she did not watch.]
La scène qui vous fait pleurer à tous les coups ?
The finale of (John Huston’s) The Dead. And Tokue’s death in Sweet Bean (あん). And many others! Plus, while this is not the question per se, I have fainted during a few films, like The Last Temptation of Christ (and not because the protesters at the entrance of the Ithaca cinema!) and The Martian (during a flight to Boston). But would not necessarily faint again were I to watch them a second time.
Le film le plus drôle de tous les temps ?
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, no doubt! [Shared with Mylène Farmer, a posteriori.]A un-Monthy-esque seconder would be Almodovar’s Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios. Or Tampopo, as I have not watched either in years.
Quelle réplique peut résumer votre humeur du moment ?
I felt like running (Forest Gump) [which was a missed masterpiece for Kazuo Ishiguro, another interviewee!].
La dernière image ?
The final scene of Casablanca, with this forever obscure quote Here’s looking at you, kid.
out of the wild
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags Alaska, bus, Denali, Denali National Park, into the wild, Jon Krakauer, school bus on June 25, 2020 by xi'an
Thin Air [book review]
Posted in Books with tags Altered Carbon, book review, bookstore, Canada, COVID-19, into the wild, Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer, Netflix, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler, Richard K. Morgan, The Guardian, thirteen, Vancouver on April 3, 2020 by xi'an
When visiting Vancouver last December [at a time when traveling was still possible], I had the opportunity to revisit White Dwarf Books [thirty years after my first visit] and among other books bought a Richard Morgan‘s novel, Thin Air, that I did not know existed and which was recommended by the [friendly] book seller. As superior to Morgan’s foray into dark fantasy (that I did not dislike so much). As I had really enjoyed the Altered Carbon series, I jumped on this new novel, which is a form of sequel to Th1rt3en, and very very similar in its futuristic pastiche of tough detectives à la Marlowe, dry humour included. A form of space noir, as The Guardian puts it. I sort of got quickly lost in the plot and (unusually) could not keep track of some characters, which made reading the book a chore towards the end. Thanks to the COVID-19 quarantine, I still managed to finish it, while home cycling!, the very end being more exciting than the beginning drudgery and the predictable sex scenes bound to occur in every of his novels. The Martian world in the novel is only alluded to, which makes it more appealing, despite the invasive jargon, however it sounds too much like a copy of our 20th century with car chase and gun/knife fights. Enhanced by an embedded AI when one can afford it. Certainly not the best read in the series but enough to tempt me into looking at the first episodes of Altered Carbon on Netflix. [Note: the book is not to be confused with the bestselling Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, which relates the 1996 Everest disaster, soon turned into a rather poor movie. I had not realised till today that the same Krakauer wrote Into the Wild…!]
art brut
Posted in Statistics with tags blackberry, fruit pie, gardening, into the wild, jatp on August 6, 2017 by xi'an
