Lost In Translation

Cleo From 5 To 7

Agnes Varda's Cleo From 5 To 7 (1962) is  a French New Wave classic. It is an insular tale about a distracted, hypercondirac and self involved young female pop singer Cleo (Corinne Marhand) that expands in the scope of the Paris, which acts almost as a character in this film, that she travels through. There are side stories involving the people she encounters as well as points where we overhear conversations by spectators in a cafe and elsewhere in the film. Varda has said to have described the film as "the portrait of a woman painted on to a documentary about Paris." There's also a great silent film-within-the-film section with Jean-Luc Goddard, Anna Karina, and Jean-Claude Brialy. In addition, there's a great musical interlude, "Sans toi" (Without You) with with Bob (Michel Legrand, the film’s composer) and Plumitif (Serge Korber). Vargas breaks rules with the hand held camera and focuses on Paris as a subject while following the story of a shallow young woman's concerns about her health that may be put aside just long enough to fall in love.

Green Book

Peter Farrelly's Green Book (2018) is probably the most infamous film of the last year since it won the Academy Award for Best Picture. That being said, it's not a "bad" film, but now after having seeing it-it wouldn't have made my list of the top 20 films of 2018. There's nothing exceptional about it-save the two lead performances from Viggo Mortenson (Tony Lip) and Masherala Ali (Dr. Donald Shirley). The story is pretty conventional as are the direction and cinematic features. It's a perfectly good "airplane movie."

Happy Birthday To John

Happy Birthday To John (1997) is another brief (24 minutes) experimental film by recently deceased Jonas Mekas that focuses on a celebrity-this time John Lennon. There are multi-cuts throughout and a soundtrack of "He Got the Whole Wolrd in His Hands" others songs and drumming throughout after a brief voice over by Lennon. The first part of the takes place at the Syracuse Museum of Art, where the couple are celebrating the Master of the Fluxus movement designed by George Maciunas. Then it's off to Lennon's birthday celebration where fellow former Beatle Ringo Starr and photographer/artist Andy Warhol are in attendance among others. Then we're at Madison Square Garden where John and Yoko as well as Sha-na-na and Stevie Wonder are giving a concert. I would have liked to have heard the audio from this section, but it dos not occur. Most of these events took place around 1972. The last section takes place in Central Park on December 8, 1980-the day Lennon was shot and people are gathering in crowds to celebrate the late legend-there's no soundtrack to this section.

Hanoi (2019): Part Two

On Tuesday morning I decided to visit Thang Long Citadel before my scheduled food tour.

There is a re-created Vietnamese village in the entrance hall.

Vietnamese wood block prints not unlike ukiyo-e.

Meeting room bunker.

Beer Street-north of the lake.

My dinner for the night banh xeo, a kind of savory, crispy omelet.

Then onto The Alchemist Cocktail Bar for properly mixed cocktails (a Manhattan above) and sultry jazz in a speakeasy setting. One of the best bars in town that I've visited so far.

Breakfast pho (beef noodle soup).

And the first stop of the morning was the Vietnam Military History Museum, which is located next to the citadel, but I didn't have time to visit it yesterday since I had a food tour at noon. This time I was trying to make my visit to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum close to the noon closing time in hopes of spending less time waiting.

Next up queuing up to see the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. It turns out that it didn't matter, there were massive lines with tour buses full of tourists, school children, and every other Tom, Dick, and Harry were waiting to see Uncle Ho. The guards were very strict about the line-up: separating us into two distinct lines, no chewing gum, no bags, no photos, they made women cover up bare shoulders and when we got in the mausoleum they told me to take my hands out of my pockets.

The Ho Chi Minh Museum-which I didn't enter because I was too tired from waiting in line to explore.

Next I was planning on visiting an art museum, but then I spotted this structure that turned out to be the impressive Temple Of Literature while stopping for a coffee in the area. So I decided to skip the museum as I was running out of steam at this point. These days I can't do more than three attractions a day usually.

I stumbled across this cool little cafe, Salt-n- Pepper, with outdoor seating on my way back to the hotel and decided to stop in for a snack.

Since I had pho for breakfast I couldn't resit a brunch option, a scrambled egg croissant with bacon and cheese.

Followed by a beer stop at iBiero, of which the tasting set of beers were pretty mediocre.

Hanoi train station.

After a bit of a rest I was off for a pre-dinner cocktail, a gin tonic, at The Metropole's Bamboo Bar in homage to Graham Greene and Somerset Maugham.

For my final dinner I decided to try a French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant called Porte D'Annam.

The appetizers were a mix of fusion fresh spring rolls and a selection of fusion fried spring rolls.

This was one of the signature dishes. The vegetables in the front were meant to be eaten with rice in the little pot. There is a soup and fish sausage that was cooked in the beer can, which the waiter poured out the soup into a bowl and cut opened the can and cut up the fish sausage for serving. I put the lime, chili peppers, noodles, and herbs in the soup much like I would for pho.

Middle-aged women doing aerobics in the park in the early evening.

Finally, after-dinner cocktails and more live jazz at Binh Minh Jazz Club.

Hanoi Street Food Tours

I signed up for Hanoi Street Food Tours and met another couple near my hotel and then walked to The Metropole to pick up another couple to start our tour. The tour operator Tu charges $95, which is a bit steep considering the price of the food, but he offers a quick jump into the world of street food that would take much time to obtain that knowledge and that's what we tourist don't have. Many of the foods that we sampled were new to me, in fact the banh mi sandwich was probably the only thing besides traditional Vietnamese coffee I've had before. I was happy to pay it and felt it was worthwhile, but food is probably more important to me than to others.

First stop was a crab fried spring roll shop in the Old Quarter. This may have been my favorite stop.

Deep fried bread with mung bean filling.

Cha ruoi, our guide didn't tell us what this was until after we ate it-it has palolo worm in it and it’s mixed together with tangerine peel, herbs, minced pork and beaten egg before being fried over low heat. What results is an omelet that’s infused with a fruity zest and the rich, caviar-like flavor of rươi.

The Gate in the Old Quarter.

At the market in the Old Quarter.

Yes, that is a bag of frogs.

Char sui pork noodles with Tuc Bach beer-my first of each.

A banh mi sandwich.

Colorful desserts at a sweets shop.

Wild rice with yogurt, a cold dessert.

A warm dessert with mung bean filled mochi-like patties.

Fish (perch) and pork fried spring roll.

Pork delivery service.

Vietnamese coffee known for the use of condensed milk.

Egg Coffee-egg yolks, sugar, condensed milk, and robusta coffee, a Hanoi specialty.

Eating Vietnam

I really enjoyed Graham Holliday's Eating Vietnam: Dispatches from a Blue Plastic Table (2015), it is one of those books hard to categorize since ti is something of a memoir and something of a paean to Vietnamese street food. I read it while on Vacation in Vietnam and found hit useful and inspiring. It was published on the Anthony Bourdain Ecco imprint and Bourdain provides the Foreword. The first half of the book explains how an Englishman from Rugby, England found himself to become of the foremost experts on Vietnamese street food. Oddly enough it started in Korea where he did his first stint as an English teacher and developed a love of Korean food culture and street food in particular (subsequently he has also written a book on Korean food as well-Eating Korea: Reports on a Culinary Renaissance-which I plan to read). Holliday gets an opportunity to move to Hanoi, which was his original plan anyway. And eventually he becomes smitten with the food culture of the north. At one stage, when he is on his way back to Korea when he meets an equally besotted foodie in the second generation French-Vietnamese Sophie (who will eventually become his wife) and is lured back to Vietnam. So he returns and then another big shift occurs when he moves south to Saigon for his wife's job and decides to become a freelance journalist and start a blog noodlepie (a blog which I did discover back in the 00s-probably when preparing for my first trip to Hanoi in 2005). There is very much a culinary divide between the north and south and Holliday suspects he will never be won over by the south's cooking style, but eventually he succumbs. noodlepie becomes extremely popular and changes Holliday's life-as he becomes many the journalist's main source in Vietnam when reporting on food culture. Another big change occurs in the birth of his son. The third section of the book is Holliday's forays into the stalls of operators he admires as he gets down to he nitty gritty of what makes the food so memorable as well as how daily production of the meals takes place and how the food was established. I think this is a great companion to a traveler in Vietnam, but I suspect it would be attractive to anyone with an interest in Vietnam.

Hanoi (2019): Part One

Kids cars near Hoam Kiem Lake and my hotel in Hanoi. This is my second visit to Hanoi, the first time was 14 years ago in 2005. I've been to Vietnam a couple of times since and have been in the south, so I thought I would come back up to the north to see how it had changed. Also, I love big cities and I expected that Hanoi would have lots of good eats, cool bars, and nice cafes. On my first trip I visited most of the "can't miss" day trips such as The Perfume Pagoda and Halong Bay. This time I'll focus on sites within the city that I missed and search out delicious food, charming cafes, and cool bars.

Pagoda in the lake.

My room in the Zephyr Hotel, which is $100 a night and not as big as the one in Hue, but I got, perhaps, my first upgrade to a lake-view room..

One of Hanoi's iconic monuments, St. Joseph's Cathedral.

First stop, Pasteur Street Brewing Company.

Burin’ Down the House Double IPA-pretty, pretty good.

Highway Four in the Old Quarter for dinner. There were some challenging items on the menu, such as snail meatloaf, locusts roasted with lemon leaves, and crickets roasted with lemon leaves and pork fat. I chose to go with more traditional fare.

A local rice liquor, Moc Sa Pa-described as having a balanced character with notes of rice straw & dried plums, hints of smoked cinnamon in the finsih.

Be Chao Chay Toi Mock Chau-sauteed veal in marinated in ginger and lemongrass.

De Suan Nuaong Ruou Moc Sa Pa Son Tinh-spare ribs grilled with Sa Tinh Moc Sa pa liquor.

A cultural performance taking place near the lake.

Lights on the lake.

I stopped in at GC bar, as it was one of the closet according to the Google Maps explore option, and was turned off by the heavy smoker next to me, the raucous crowd, and sports on the TV. (Later I learned it was a gay bar-not that there's anything wrong with that, but I was surprised to hear that since there was a tourist couple next to me and a mixed group of Vietnamese on the other side).

Next door was a cool cocktail bar, Polite & Co, that immediately caught my fancy with a live jazz band, a professional bar staff with signature cocktails, and Fellini's La Dolce Vita showing on the TV. On my left there were two Japanese people, so after the band stopped playing I started chatting with them and learned that they were both from Tokyo and one lived one station away from me (Ogikubo) and the other had a friend in common with me-small world.

One of the few museums open on a Monday was Hola Lo Prison Museum aka the infamous "Hanoi Hilton", where John McCain was a resident for six years. Previously it was used by colonials to jail Vietnamese rebels as well.

A picture of John McCain being captured after being shot down.

McCain's profile at the museum.

History is written by the victors, this does not ring true to what I know about the prison.

The Hanoi Opera House.

Sofitel Legend Metropole Hano where Graham Greene wrote his classic novel The Quiet American.

Cafe Pho Co with a rooftop lake-view.

Temple on Lake Hoan Kiem.

Riverside lunch bahn mi for 25,000 dong ($1).

I decided to go to the bun cha restaurant that President Barack Obama ate at with Anthony Bourdain on his show Parts Unknown in 2016, Bun Cha Huong Lien.

I got the "Obama Combo" which was bun cha with two deep-fried seafood spring rolls and a beer for 90,000 dong ($4). I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've had bun cha and it was great-chewy pork in a flavorful broth to which you add noodles and herbs and pickled chili to taste.

After dinner off to try another craft beer bar, Peachy Craft Beer Pub, which looks out over a shopping area near the north side of the lake. They had an extensive collection of local beers, I went with the Lemongrass Weizen, Barett Craft Beer.

Temple on the walk to the next venue.

A gin and tonic at The Mad Botanist, which is situated across from St. Joseph's Cathedral-an excellent night view, but pricey.

Another cocktail stop on the way back to the hotel at a bar across from the lake-Pina Colada time-dessert.

Producing Hiroshima And Nagasaki

Hiroshima and Nagasaki have become synonymous with the worst destruction of war and thus, have strong associations in the world’s collective memory. Meiji Gakuen Professor Yuko Shibata analyzes these associations in the context of literature, film, and transnational politics in her recent book from University of Hawai’i Press, Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Literature, Film and Transnational Politics (2018). Shibata examines canonical and repressed texts about how these two tragedies are remembered and forgotten. The starting focal point is French New Wave auteur Alain Resnais’ much lauded film Hiroshima Mon Amour, (1959) because it is probably the best known and most discussed film about the after effects of the atomic bomb today. It is often cited as one of the 100 greatest films of all-time, but it was not well-received at the time of its release in Japan due to the “’imbalance’ between depictions of Hiroshima and Nevers, France.”

The Introduction, “Knowledge Production on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Politics of Representation and a Critique of Canonization” sets the tone for the discussion and previews the forthcoming chapters. Then in Chapter 1: “Postcolonial Hiroshima Mon Amour: Franco-Japanese Collaboration in the American Shadow,” the complex issues of colonial violence and war touching on the Nanjing Incident, Pearl Harbor, and the Holocaust are discussed in context of the brief love affair between the visiting French actress and the French speaking Japanese architect repatriated to his home of Hiroshima after the war. The second half of the chapter focuses on Margaret Duras’ screenplay and how it shaped Renais’ vision of the film. Shibata focuses on Duras’ connection with the colonial legacy in terms of her past work at he Colonial Office in Paris during the Vichy regime and how that affects her view of French Indochina that was briefly occupied by the Japanese in the war. She goes on to discuss how Duras’ script creates alienation of Japan by focusing on how different the woman from France is in all ways from the man in Japan. Furthermore, Shibata suggest that Duras others the Japanese man in the film which leads to more complicated responses to the coupling of the French woman with the Japanese man in the film and how they are seen which is the central aspect of the film.

Chapter 2: “Validating and Invalidating the National Sentiment: Kamei Fumio and the Early Days of Japanese Cinema on Hiroshima and Nagasaki” contrasts Resnais’ film with Japanese director Fumio Kamei’s somewhat obscure documentary “Still It’s Good to Live” (1956) in which Shibata suggests that the main purpose of the film was to show how survivors were suffering from radiation damage 10 years after the atomic bombings. The main focus of Chapter 3: “’You Saw Nothing in Hiroshima’: Performing Atomic Bomb Victimhood and the Visibility of the Hibakusha (survivors)” seeks to unravel the question of visibility and recognition depicted in Hiroshima Mon Amour. Chapter 4: “Entangled Discourses: John Hersey and Nagai Takashi” analyzes two seminal texts about the bombings, Hersey’s nonfiction account, Hiroshima (1946) and Takashi’s more obscure nonfiction account, The Bells of Nagasaki (1949). Hersey’s book in particular is notable for its immediate success propelled by The New Yorker’s decision to publish it all at once in stead of serializing it over the course of a few issues due to the editors concern that readers losing interest in the middle of the middle of the story. The book focuses on six victims: four males and two females; five Japanese and one German; two priests, two doctors, one seamstress, and one clerk at a tin factory. Hersey personalizes the tragedy by putting human faces on the suffering. Nagai’s book does the same for Nagasaki with his mix of first person and third person narratives. However, Nagai’s book, The Bells of Nagasaki, is distinguished by being a controversial redemptive narrative that embraces the atomic bombing and reflects the Christian idea of that long-suffering is seen as a “virtue”.

The Afterword ties up some loose ends by addressing such issues as the 2001 film by Nobohiro Suwa, H Story, that revisits Resnais’ film and the differences between the atomic bombings and the more recent nuclear disaster in Fukushima. Shibata does an excellent job of referring to primary and secondary sources to support her acceptations. Admittedly it is somewhat academic in tone and style, but should be accessible to readers interested in Japan given that the two main primary sources (Hiroshima Mon Amour and Hiroshima) are easily attainable and well-known globally.

Scenes From The Life Of Andy Warhol: Friendships And Intersections

I don't know much about avant-garde documentary film maker and poet Jonas Mekas, but saw that he died earlier this year. MUBI is featuring several of his shorts as a tribute. So when I saw Scenes From The Life Of Andy Warhol: Friendships And Intersections (1990) I was compelled to see it since it featured Andy Warhol and several other cultural icons such as Alain Ginsberg, John Lennon, Caroline Kennedy and a pulsating soundtrack by The Velvet Underground. The film is a series of small moments and images from Warhol's life, filmed between 1966 and 1982 and completed in 1990, after Warhol's death, with a postscript that features audio from Warhol's memorial service at St. Patrick's Cathedral. It is not a conventional documentary as there is no narrative and most of the footage is shaky hand held camera shots with no audio save the soundtrack. It clocks in at 38 minutes total, so a small investment of time, but compelling given the subject.

Sleepy Eyes Of Death (4): Sword Of Seduction

The fourth film in the Sleepy eyes of Death series, Sleepy Eyes Of Death (4): Sword Of Seduction (1964), is something of a turning point in the series. And 1964 was a busy year for the film's director, Kazuo Ikehiro. He was the director on not one but three different epic film series: Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold, Zatoichi’s Flashing Sword, Shinobi No Mono 5 and the fourth installment of Sleepy Eyes Of Death. As usual there is a lot going on in this film: a group corrupt merchants, led by Bizenya (Yoshio Inaba who played Gorobei in Seven Samurai) are smuggling opium into Japan, Bizenya is working with Chen Sun (Tomisaburo Wakayama), the thirteenth descendant of Gen Ping (who introduced Shorinji Kempo to the Japanese), one of the people who happens to be addicted is princess Kiku, a sadistic daughter of the Shogun who gets joy from watching her drug starved opium addict courtesans writhe in pain, and Kyoshiro runs into Torizo early in the film, a Christian on the run who begs Kyoshiro to help him protect the Virgin Shima (Naoko Kubo), a saint to the Japanese converts. This films shows the anti-heroic side of Kyoshiro-he maybe an early proto-type of the anti-hero. He shames a treacherous woman by having his way with her, but he also kills an unarmed witch in cold blood (apparently one of the first films in Japanese history that has its protagonist cut down an unarmed female). He’s nihilistic, conceited and egotistical, and yet, he’s the protagonist. Cinematographer Chishi Makiura keeps the visual style more or less consistent. However, that’s not to say that he didn’t push the visual boundaries. He uses some theatrical uses of splits screen, as well as numerous other psychedelic effects which mirror the religious, narcotic, and evil undertones in the film.