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Pro tip: A laptop aids in the pounds-per-hour to kilograms, and Fahrenheit to Celcius conversion.

Our correspondent Mindy Jones is a Seattleite living in Paris for two years. When she's not busy trying to figure out what the French are saying, she's busy trying to figure out what to say to the French. She posts frequently at An American Mom in Paris.

Holidays abroad can be lonely. When a holiday rolls around, we ache a little and talk about home a lot. We put on happy smiles for the Skype session involving every relative we have, plus a few we didn't know existed, all of them crammed into one room chatting and laughing and having drunken angry fistfights while we suffer the family togetherness from too far away. Then we crawl into the corner to cry and drink wine.

Thanksgiving, especially, can be bleak because it's a non-event here in pilgrim-free France. Christmas and New Year's are happy times because the city is full of fellow revelers but for Thanksgiving, you're on your own. You still have to go to work and you don't get the long weekend to eat cold turkey sandwiches and buy bigger pants.

Last year, determined to make Thanksgiving happen in the middle of Paris, we banded together with a group of fellow American ex-pats. New York Mom was in charge of procuring and cooking the bird. The butcher's eyes widened when she said she wanted to purchase the grandest turkey in all of France. He frowned and said the turkey she wanted was way too big for seven adults and a handful of children. She said, Duh, that was the point. He unhappily sold her the bird, probably assuming most of it would go to waste, but he doesn't know Americans like we know Americans. 

I was in charge of my specialty, midwestern cheesy potatoes--"midwestern" because the recipe calls for a can of cream of mushroom soup and a crunchy corn flake topping. I was also responsible for tracking down a jar of cranberry sauce. No one in our group liked cranberry sauce but we agreed it should still be present on the table, preferably plopped into a bowl and still in the shape of the can like mama used to make.... (more)

 

 

Yep, another week of SIFF here and gone.  All of us at The SunBreak weigh in with our picks and pans of the films shown at the festival this week.

Tony saw Ahead of Time, a concise, solid doc on the achievements of Ruth Gruber--arctic explorer, World War II Correspondent, and chronicler of the 1947 Exodus. At age 94, Gruber's more articulate and sharp than 99.9 percent of people a third her age; her restless streak, eloquence, and charm made her an enchanting documentary subject.

Josh had a shortish SIFF week: Waste Land, a meandering but discussion-provoking documentary about Vik Muniz and the garbage-pickers who inspired his portrait series. At times I couldn't tell if this film wanted to be about the artist, the gleaners, or the way that large-scale portraits made from materials found at the world's largest landfill could transform lives. It succeeds a little bit on each of those fronts, but could have used a stronger narrative focus and a critical voice stronger than the artist's wife (who falls out of the picture midway, via an off-screen mid-project divorce). Quibbles aside, the artwork is astounding and Muniz found incredibly charismatic subjects. We left wondering not about how to "save" the pickers of Jardim Gramacho, but curious about whether similar poverty-driven recycling efforts happen here.

I really enjoyed I Killed My Mother, a très style-y collage chronicling the growing pains between a temperamental teen artiste and his single mother. The explosive tantrums and outlandish verbal spats felt true to the spirit of adolescent angst; the mix of hypersaturated fantasy sequences, off-center camera angles, quick cuts, and philosophical confessionals captured the spirit of a young auteur. Against likely temptation, Xavier Dolan doesn't let himself off the hook too easily, revealing an awareness of his own childish behavior and rendering a sympathetic portrait of his mother. (June 6, 2010 7:00 PM @ the Egyptian)

Audrey also had Quebecois fun at I Killed my Mother, but I wonder if writer-director-lead actor Dolan has another film in him; this one is so personal. Coincidentally, Bilal's Stand is another intimately personal film, in which writer-director Sultan Sharrief has made his first feature, based on the story of how he, as a black Muslim teen, made it from an inner city Detroit taxi-stand to the University of Michigan, via an ice-carving college scholarship. It's a solid first film (and the community involvement it took to make it is inspiring), though of course it's not as OMG as I Killed My Mother.... (more)