Paris, capital of cinema?

I've had three very different cinema experiences in the past week.

First up was Burn After Reading, the new Coen brothers movie with Brad Pitt, John Malkovitch, Frances McDormand, George Clooney and Tilda Swinton. With such a big name cast and the buzz following No Country For Old Men, I was expecting crowds, especially as this was at the main evening showing just a week after release, and in one of Paris' biggest and best cinemas, the Max Linder.

Despite generally good reviews, I was surprised to find that only 30 people braved the cold to see the film that night. The cinema seats 700... So is it just an odd movie that people are not sure about? Did the distributors deliberately release it just before Xmas, knowing that it's a 'minor' Coen that no-one will really want to see? Either way, I enjoyed it. Every character in the film is a complete moron! Judge for yourself...



My second film of the week was Lola Montès by Max Ophuls. I don't really know my classics, but Lola Montès is supposed to be one. This vividly-coloured cinemascope epic was butchered upon release and left to moulder away. It has just been re-cut to conform to the director's original vision, restored and re-released. A whole site is dedicated to the intensive work done! Restoration has cleaned everything up to a point previously unimaginable...

The film is astounding, unnerving and rightly described as a chef d'oeuvre. It was being projected digitally in the best, most comfortable cinema on the Champs Elysées, the Publicis. On Saturday afternoon, in this 400-seat cinema, only fifteen people were there to watch (including us). Makes you wonder why they bothered... Have a look at the trailer to see whether you think it's your cup of tea.



And my third and final experience was altogether different. For my birthday I was lucky enough to receive a large flatscreen Full HD TV and a Playstation 3. The world of Blu-Ray is now mine! So, I ordered Hellboy II from the UK. UK DVDs always used to lack French subtitles, probably to avoid imports (the film isn't released on video in France until May 2009, because cinema release was at the end of October, and French law requires a gap of six months afterwards before video release). However, the UK Blu-Ray of Hellboy II has French subtitles for the films and all the bonus material. Plus, with the exchange rate, it costs a lot less than the French release will! It's the first film I've seen all the way through on Blu-Ray, and although it's quite obviously a silly film, it does look great.

So which film deserves more attention? Which film deserves a bigger audience? And which is the better film; a success or a 'chef d'oeuvre'? I'm not sure I have the answer to any of those questions, but it did make me a little sad to be in the capital of film-lovers and find so few people interested in real cinema...

My CD and vinyl collection is a huge, worthless waste of space

Following other blogs can be a sobering experience sometimes. For quite a while I couldn't find any current music I liked. My hypemachine thread was coming up with duds. Nothing on junodownload was doing it for me.

Then I came across some amazing blogs with music from the period I love. '92, 93', '94. Places like 90s Club CD Maxi Singles (run by a guy called Mark S) and Finest Def Mix. After having already bought everything I thought I liked from that time (thanks, eBay), these tireless bloggers were coming up with endless gems, day after day after day, that I'd never heard before.

At the same time, I had been tidying up my CD collection and hoping desperately to find time to get my vinyl organised. I set some CDs aside to sell them. Checking on Discogs and eBay, I have now understood that they are almost all completely worthless. All the stuff I thought was rare turns out to be commonplace. I do not have a large, priceless collection of music. I have a huge, worthless waste of space.

Of course I'm exaggerating. Many of my CDs aren't worth euros, but they are priceless to me, and the upside is that even if the other blogs put my paltry selection into perspective, I can still bring something to the table and get pleasure from some real discoveries.


Like Meli'sa Morgan (love that apostrophe). I came across a vinyl rip of her track "Still In Love With You" on the Gotta Have House blog. It blew me away. Firstly, both the mix and dub were great, secondly they are from the golden period of Masters At Work (early nineties) and thirdly I'd never heard of them before.

There was quite a lot of noise on the mp3's, which was a shame, so I de-clicked them with ClickRepair, took out the excess empty space at the beginning and end of the tracks and re-posted them for anyone to download. Mark S saw my comment, did a bit of research and found out that - in theory - a CD-single of it existed. In the meantime, I has gone mad about the track, e-mailing Meli'sa's old label and leaving a message on her Myspace page (neither ever replied).

But Mark came up trumps. Finding a CD-single for sale on amazon.de, but with no tracklisting, he chanced his luck and ordered it. A few days later, he received the CD and it contained all the Masters At Work mixes in top quality. For a househead and MAW-lover like me, it was as dream come true. He very kindly posted them to me for a porject I had in mind...

Like many MAW mixes of the time, the vocal and dub were different but could be combined easily into one long track. Which, of course, I couldn't resist. So here's my Fist fusion of the Meli'sa's In The House and Hard Love dub mixes by Masters At Work. Top quality sound, top quality mixes, and my humble input. Perhaps I have something to offer to music after all.

Download Meli'sa Morgan - Still In Love With You (Meli'sa's In The House mix & Hard Luv dub Fist fusion) here.