This blog is moving! / Ce blogue déménage!

I've decided to hone my blogging skills in French (since all my other blogs are in English). I've always found Blogger to be a tad annoying and not-quite-right in terms of user-friendliness. So, even though it's not July 1st yet, I decided to move my blog to Wordpress, with a brand-new name: L'escalier dérapé. See you there!

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J'ai décidé de peaufiner mes talents d'écriture en français, surtout que mes autres blogues sont en anglais. De plus, j'ai toujours trouvé que Blogger manquait un peu de convivialité pour être vraiment satisfaisant comme hébergeur de blogues. Par conséquent, même si ce n'est pas encore le 1er juillet, j'ai décidé de déménager mon blogue chez Wordpress, avec un tout nouveau nom: L'escalier dérapé. J'espère que vous aimerez mon nouveau blogue!

http://escalierderape.wordpress.com/

Free access to the MFA

In the métro, I saw ads to let people know that full access to the Montreal Fine Arts museum is free till next January. So, if you have some free time and haven't been to the MFA in a while (I believe that the last time I was there was during the Hitchcock exhibition, a few years ago), you have no more excuse. Besides, it's hard to say no to free stuff, especially when it's not limited to a day or two (like the Journées de la culture -- great concept, but too crowded to my taste).

http://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/activites/gratuit.html

Montreal playgrounds of the 1970s...

*post cross-posted on my Livejournal blog*

I've been watching the first Passe-Partout boxset and in one of the real-life movie segment, there's a group of kids playing in a Montreal playground. There was concrete everywhere (with maybe a very thin covering of sand in the summer). Nowadays, the city playgrounds are different -- the ground is covered with a rubber mat of sorts, merry-go-rounds no longer exist and exposed metal parts (think slides) have often been covered or replaced by other materials like hard plastic. Maybe the city of Montreal was influenced by the movie Kramer vs. Kramer (in a particular scene, the son falls off the monkey bars in a playground and Dustin Hoffman rushes him to the hospital in those pre-911 days).

Similar to the Passe-Partout DVD sets, there's also the Sesame Street Old School DVD (vol. 2 to come out late summer or in the fall!). On it, there's a disclaimer reminding people that the DVD may not be suitable for today's kids (betcha this is due to this one movie where kids play Follow the leader in a dump, in which they walk on a unsteady plank, go through a pipe, etc.). In the "wussification" of childhood (as some people call this trend), people become so scared of their little kid risking a scraped knee that more and more schools in the US are banning the good ole game of tag.

Freak accidents will happen, but kids need to learn that sometimes you do fall off and hurt yourself. Is a scraped knee a much bigger deal to today's kids than it was for us back in the 70s and early 80s? Personally, I only had a few truly memorable injuries due to rough playing: one concerned my teeth in grade 1 or 2 when I fell off the wooden ladder in gym class, another was a broken arm in grade 2 when I slipped on an icy patch in the schoolyard. Guess what? I survived both incidents.

Happy 40th anniversary, Expo 67!

40 years ago tomorrow, Expo 67 opened its doors to visitors from around the world. Man And His World (or Terre des hommes in French, named after the novel by Antoine de St-Exupéry) was a great showcase for Montreal. Although the Expo grounds are a shadow of its glorious past, some legacy persists.

First, there's the métro. Our subway system was built first and foremost with the Expo in mind. Interestingly, in 2 days, the official opening of the 3 new Laval stations (the first new stations in 20 years -- the last batch of stations completing the Blue and Orange lines were inaugurated in 1986-1988).

La Ronde, our own theme park, still stands after all these years. With time, it underwent many changes (especially since its purchase by Six Flags), but the Ferris Wheel can still be seen from Notre-Dame street and Jacques-Cartier Bridge. The mini-rail is still there, although it's now confined to La Ronde.

The French pavilion now houses the Montreal Casino and the US pavilion (yes, that big spherical structure that still stands as the symbol of Expo 67) is now an ecological museum called the Biosphère.

Above all, the Expo brought international visibility to Montreal and it represented the start of a decade of grandeur that ended with the 1976 Olympics.

Incidentally, various activities are planned this summer to commemorate the Expo's 40th anniversary.

The CBC's website also has some vintage videos about Expo 67.

Long-gone Montreal movie theatres

Over the past few years, many movie theatres in Montreal closed their doors, only to be replaced by megaplexes. Some of them were decrepit and run-down (like the Atwater and the Palace) but some of them, although not very old, just were too small for this era of megaplexes (such as the Faubourg Ste-Catherine and the Eaton Centre). It is a shame that so many of these theatres have disappeared, especially since I have so many memories of unforgettable movie experiences I had there, some good, some bad.

Here are some good memories of movies past:

• Seeing Wings of Desire at the Cinéma de Paris with my mom in 1993 or 94. After coming out of the theatre, we were crossing Ste-Catherine Street when my mom exclaimed that it was the kind of movie she'd make if she were a filmmaker.
• Meeting with a friend to see The Englishman Who Went Up A Mountain But Came Down A Hill also at the Cinéma de Paris, only to see that it was replaced by Four Weddings and a Funeral, as The Englishman's first run was extended in the wake of the Hugh Grant scandal.
• Seeing the Star Wars Special Edition trilogy (Star Wars and Empire at the Faubourg, Jedi at the Atwater) as well as the new Star Wars trilogy (Episode 1 at the Faubourg, twice!, and Episodes 2 and 3 at the Paramount).
• Seeing Trois Couleurs: Bleu at the Nouvel Élysée (which was located in the current Softimage building, next to where the Ex-Centris is currently located).
• Christmas 1990, seeing Cyrano de Bergerac with my parents at the (then brand-new) Eaton Centre theatre, before heading out for dinner at the Commensal on St-Denis.

Some not so good memories:

• Seeing Saving Private Ryan in a sold-out crowd at the Palace, and being stuck in a broken seat that gave me a neck cramp.
• Watching the Matrix at the Centre-Ville with my mom: we went down countless stairs to make it to the screening room and minutes into the movie, the projector stopped, putting us all in the dark. We had to wait 5-10 minutes for someone to get an employee to resume to movie (the projector was being run automatically).
• Seeing Mortal Kombat on the premiere night at the Pointe-Claire theatre (the one that was located near the Maxi). It was a double-date that didn't work too well (losing my wallet that night didn't exactly help matters either).

These are but a few examples of memories linked to Montreal theatres. Of all these theatres, the Paramount is the only one still there. Incidentally, I dunno if it's the impersonal nature of the multiplex, but I don't find that my experiences going to the Paramount, the AMC or even the Guzzo theatres (although I do like Guzzo) to be nearly as memorable as the theatres of the past.

Sure, I could still enjoy going to the Ex-Centris or the Cinéma du Parc, but the downtown core just isn't covered in that way anymore. As tiny and inconvenient as the Cinéma de Paris was, I still miss it, 13 years after its closing.

I strongly suggest to visit the website Montreal Cinema History. On that site, you will find, among other things, a series of PDFs showing the locations of Montreal movie theatres through the decades.