Voyage du ballon rouge

We watched this film in my third french class last spring and I really enjoyed it! This is my newest french film recommendation. Well, it is actually directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien and is his first "western film" so I am not sure if you can technically classify this as a "french" film. Je ne sais pas. anyways, if you ever watched The Red Balloon by Albert Lamorisse, you will find this film at least interesting in the simple sense that this red balloon is back; and the themes the film pulls from Albert's film, as well as the new ones, will keep you captivated. It is very multifaceted.

Classics

I am in desperate need of good literature- please someone help me!

I have some suggestions from a mystery man: Verne, Doyle, and Marquez.

Verne: a french author who helped pioneer the science- fiction genre. Hmm, sounds interesting- I love french and I love science fiction.... maybe if I read The Mysterious Island in french I'll enjoy it

Doyle: British mystery author and physician- ah, Sherlock Holmes- actually quite interested in this- what better combination than mystery and medicine. I used to watch the old Sherlock Holmes movies growing up and really enjoyed them. Book list: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of Baskervilles, The Return of Sherlock Holmes

Marquez: one hundred years of solitude--- pioneering the work of magical realism

so new reading list

India

I never thought I would travel to the East- I was always afraid that I wouldn't survive my trip and was more interested in visiting Europe or some other more "American friendly" place. When I was growing up, I was friends with three girls who would come visit their aunt and uncle at the house next door every summer from England. The grandparents lived there too and they were from India. I was fascinated by the sarees the grandmother would wear and hang on a line to dry in the backyard. I love all the sparkles and colors. I loved the smells in the house- to me it smelled of a place far far away (now I know it was the curry, cumin, daal,etc)! My sister and I would go over and have Hindu classes and eat yummy foods with our hands- it was wonderful and felt like magic. So now in my life I feel the pull to the East, perhaps a trip with Krithika is in my near future :P

Nothing mattered

"'But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing and I had done another.And so? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he.'"
-Albert Camus,
The Stranger
Page 120"

I read The Stranger about four years ago and never appreciated or understood it much until now. It's amazing how many things change in the time of four years, or even two. I read this quote and I wonder if he was vindicated? He waited for so long for this one moment and did not even realize it was what he was waiting for. 'Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he.' What did he feel after that moment was gone? It was the climax, the precipice of vindication. It leaves you hanging- much like life is I guess. If you experience a moment with somebody that makes you feel like Albert; what is left afterward? I like how Albert talks, unwillingly almost, about regrets. 'I had been right, I was still right, I was always right' he says this as though he is very unsure of himself and almost with disdain. It is painful to go so long, for years, thinking that what you have chosen was right, is right, will always be right? And for you to have a moment where you are with someone and realize that everything you thought was best actually had all come together and didn't even come close to comparing to what you really want, or could have had, it is a very tragic feeling.