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Amelie's father lives in a place called 'Enghien' (or Enghien-les-Bains). IMDB states it's been filmed in Eaubonne, a city nearby. I can't find any detail about the choice of fictively setting Amelie's father house in Enghien but I guess the explanation may be that Enghien is one of the few suburban cities left untouched by the years which was also the whole point of the atmosphere created in the film.
There are no huge council flats towers for instance which is rare in the Paris suburbs. I assume they did take great care in order to keep the city green and tidy. When sat on the West banks of the lake, 5/6th of the sight is the sky and the rest is a long stretch of green and water. There's not a single thing that hurts your eyes. Les Bains means the Baths as it is the only Spa location in the Paris region. The other main feature is the casino. It contributes a lot to the wealth of the city thanks to the taxes collected.
Enghien-les-Bains (Val d'Oise, 11km West of Paris)
Coat of arms:
It'd take more than a single page to pay an honest tribute to the eclectic and beautiful style of Enghien (anything from Art Deco, English cottage, Scottish castle to Breuer or Normand style houses) but here's a little compilation I made yesterday:
My favourite of all, ultimate home fantasy!
This is not the famous Scottish castle though it does look very Scottish to me
The gates of the now sadly infamous Scottish castle. It's almost impossible to take a proper picture of the estate unless you're on a bark on the lake:
In the early 00's, this place was owned by a couple of business partners from Lebanon (see the Peggy Maaz and Nadim Khouri Klink case). I don't know whose property it is now. It may have been seized after they were sentenced and vanished in the Lebanese haze to never return. The value of the property is estimated at € 4 millions!
Let's have a closer look at that roof...
Yes indeed it's a horse!
The casino seen from the esplanade, they recently built some sort of window panels which unfortunately hide the architecture. It looks kind of ok inside but I think it's a shame.
An vintage advertisement poster
The Patenôtre-Desnoyers esplanade
All pics by me except the Scottish castle (http://fr.topic-topos.com), Amelie Poulain poster, casino (www.gamblingworld.com), vintage poster (www.artgalleryofgreatneck.com) and esplanade (www.wikipedia.fr)
Wikipedia states: 'enclosed in a maze of parks, artificial rivers and lakes, leafy avenues'. With 1/5 of the town being parks, trees and greens, this is certainly one of the most beautiful suburban cities to live in. Despite I hated visiting my grand-mother like the rest of my siblings, I still have fond memories of the surroundings. The name 'Vésinet' actually sounds terrible to the ear, an endless laughing stock particularly for my elder brother ('Le petit Vésinet qui se gratte', le 'Vésimoche'...)
Le Vésinet (Yvelines, roughly 16km West of Paris)
Coat of arms:
My grand-parents'house. 6 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (maybe 3 in fact), a huge garden with a massive shed. Don't be fooled, it was plain ugly and depressing!
Edit: My parents told me that they would have bought the house when it went on sale last year (owned by my grandma who died a couple of years ago) but they didn't because it reminded them of too many painful memories! Aaargh
Built on the banks of one of the artifical lakes, this house was used in the French popular TV serie from the 60's 'Belphegor, le fantôme du Louvre' (the Ghost of the Louvre museum) as 'Lady Hodwin's mansion'.
Belphegor (that leather mask always freaked me out!)
The front side of the house, as seen in the serie
The artificial lake
I also remember a house covered with fake concrete branches but I wasn't able to find it during my virtual visit (Frangin, tu vois peut-être de quoi je parle ?). Time for a little trip back to Le Vésinet!
Pics from Google maps street view and http://www.blog-vesinet.fr
Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine, 7km West of Paris)
Coat of arms:
First house I lived in. In my street, there used to be a baker's, a convenience shop, a cobbler's, a café-restaurant with an open garden, another café, and a butcher's. Very unsual though for a residential area of that kind.
The butcher's, converted into a house. Most of the interesting architectural details have unfortunately been removed.
There used to be a railroad crossing our street with an old iron bridge and a small station house (above). Now converted into a leafy walkway (the rails stayed for a while until the path was covered in asphalt).
The small newsagent's shop on the other end of the street. Still there!
The primary school (reads 'school for girls' as boys and girls used to be split into different buildings until the 60's)
Some beautiful houses:
Enamel plate (reading the knickname of the house)
Other view of the previous house
Various interesting buildings:
A movie theatre converted into a supermarket (like most of them in the region)
My local tobacconist's (also a café), used to be called 'Le Balto'. If you click to enlarge the picture, you'll notice the 'Carotte', a typical advertising sign for tobacconists. It's meant to be the shape of a carrot but looks more like two traffic cones stuck together.
Ironmonger's: the best around. The owner ran that business all of his life with his brother (I think). They wore dark blue coats like in the good old times and the wife looked after the till locked in a small 'cage' in the back of the shop. Famously known for having absolutely 'everything' (possibly even condoms!), a first-class retailer.
A magnificent building (1930's?) with a huge square yard and the same building again behind.
I used to gaze at that building when I was visiting my grand-mother. Despite the stately outlook, these are council flats.
Below, a detail on the facade:
All pics from Google maps street view
I can't believe I forgot Snow-White house! Here it is:
The little granny who lived there had a whole set of Snow-White and her 7 dwarves in display. I was amazed!
As it's been a long time I actually haven't learned anything (that's what 9-5 jobs do), I thought my brains would be unresponsive as well as my left-hand fingers (damn ring finger still is) but slowly the learning process is kicking again. Here are the chords I can now play by heart without even looking at my hand:
A/A7/Am/Bb/C/Csus4/C7/D/Dm/Em/Em7/E7/Fsh
These are very easy chords to play but I'm quite proud after just a month of practice. The strumming is not easy on the other side and juggling with all '3' (chords, strumming, singing) is a real challenge (how did I ever manage to once be able to read two key charts, coordinate two playing hands and sing at the same time, I don't know!).
The most helpful websites I've found are:
Pineapple's Pete Uke School: http://www.ukeschool.com
Very good online lessons (a shame there are not more), an online tuner, play-along sections and step-by-step instructions
Chordie: www.chordie.net
Chords and tabs with the possibility to select your instrument and transpose the song to different keys. The layout is very appealing however some chords are not very accurate
Ukulele chord finder: http://www.sheep-entertainment.nl/ukulel
Useful to find out what a set of chords sound like. Helps when you're trying to figure out a song by hear
Chords transposer: http://www.logue.net/xp/
One of the greatest tools around. You simply copy and paste the song with the keys and it automatically transposes it to another key
Strumming exercises: http://guitar.about.com/od/freebeginnerl
Chord chart: www.kiwiukulele.co.nz
An excellent chord chart classified in groups (all the time played/sometimes played/hardly ever played) and are finger-numbered
Shortly after I got my ukelele, I also bought a chromatic tuner that turns out to be handy to find keys out in a song. Ukuleles are very touchy little things, they love to get out of tune. The chromatic tuner enables perfect tuning (much better than the still good online tuner above). I also bought a pack of Aquila strings (Italian made!) as they're supposed to improve the sound quite noticeably. The strings are still laying about in a drawer because I can't be bothered changing the strings. My Stagg sounds ok to me for the moment. But I'll give it a try when I can play a bit better.
I also started to track down the songs I liked and wanted to play. Funnily enough, they don't necessarily sound great on a ukelele. They can even be disappointing. However, some pop songs of bands of singers I don't particularly like sound absolutely stunning. Pop songs have another advantage for beginners: They practically all use easy chords like A/C/G/D/F.
So far I gathered the following songs in my songbook and I can play them fairly ok!
- Wish you were here/Pink Floyd (great great song)
- Hung up/Madonna
- Don't speak/No Doubt
- Confide in me/Kylie Minogue
- Can't get you out of my head/Kylie Minogue
- Toxic/Britney Spears
- Everytime/Britney Spears
- Baby one more time/Britney Spears (Travis who did an acoustic cover of it a few years ago opened the way for turning cheesy pop songs into really interesting sounding stuff)
- Honey honey/Abba
- Does your mother know/Abba
- Elisa/Serge Gainsbourg (for my little niece Lisa and the only french song I can bear playing, really tried hard to find anything else but apart from Gainsbourg, it's pathetic)
- Suspicious minds/Elvis Presley
- Cool/Gwen Stefani
- Call the shots/Girls Aloud (god knows how much I dislike girls bands especially that one)
- What goes round/Justin Timberlake (the original is already a gem, the ukulele loves it too)
- What's up/4 Non Blondes (ouch, I know...)
- Lonely Girl/Pink
- Be my baby/Vanessa Paradis
Other songs I'm trying to figure out as no chords are available:
- Ballad of pure thought/Millionaire
- We've had enough/Michael Jackson
- Brendan Benson/Lesson learned
.
So far so good!
This would deserve another entry but I'll stick it in here. Youtube has an audioswap function that allows people to get tracks for free to go along with their videos. This often happens when a person has used a copyrighted track and YT has removed it. One artist had the great idea to let people audioswap therefore videos (even from other artists) are played with HIS songs. It's a very effective advertisement system because people looking for let's say Greenday end up watching a Greenday video with the track of someone else. If they want to buy the track, they're redirected to iTunes...
I understand the concept of copyright however I've always questioned myself whether paying £10/15 for a CD (that'd be the average price in France, UK is a bit luckier with places like Fopp) was really a fair price. I never thought it was. Stripped off the 'box, CD support and booklet', the price drops down at 89p or so on iTunes. What justifies such a price difference? Why people are so offensive towards executives or politicians' salaries when they have no issue purchasing CDs at that price? The music business has always been a complete rip off. In 1984, the average price for a LP was round £8 (so that's 25 years ago!). In the late 80's we were forced into the CD technology at double the price! Now people should ask themselves the right questions about illegal downloads and stop whining. I also think that no matter what, using a copyrighted track on a home-made video is a way of inciting people to buy. Me, the first! Countless times I had forgot about songs then bumped into them by chance on YT only to think "I need to get that!".
I'd say the same for movies. Who ruined the once enjoyable experience of going to the movies? What's all about these places where all you can hear is people eating, crunching, answering their mobile phones and just generally behave like they were at home with no consideration whatsoever for other people in the theatre? These are the reasons why I've become more and more reluctant to go to the movies with the time. I'm probably one of the few idiots who still buys DVDs (Thanks Fopp) because I have no interest to store so much data on my computer and see no enjoyment in watching a bad quality rip off on my tiny screen!
Vahine no to vi by Gaugin
I finally got my ukelele today after a lot of hassle. I've always tried to support small shops, small websites, small vendors as much as I can. However this time, I've learned my lesson. The website I used claimed that deliveries were made by a courier which was great as I wanted to avoid the national postal services at all costs. Pretty quickly I got a message saying the ukelele had been sent, along with my tracking number. It turned out that the tracking number was from the national post, not a courier. Five days later the number was still not recognized. To make things worse, the type of service used was 'economy delivery, no signature required'!! After an un-replied first e-mail and a few unsuccessful attempts to call this company (they were hanging up on me basically), I decided to add a little bit more pressure. I hate doing this but I had no choice considering how much money I had spent. I told the seller that if I didn't get a reply quickly, I'd get in touch with a watchdog consumer association that has been getting a growing reputation in terms of efficiency.
And guess what... Two hours later, I got a confirmation that the tracking number would be available shortly. In brief, until I started to use weapons of mass threatening, the ukelele was never sent! This morning, the postal service guy came in and knocked at my door. I didn't even have the time to put my shoes on, he was gone in thin air after leaving my parcel at the doorsteps...unattented and no way for me to be able to check the content. Damn... I'm glad I was home today and glad the ukelele was in perfect condition despite the rather -can't be arsed- wrapping. There was not even a receipt inside the box. So to say for the boring part, there will be reviews about this website.
For the happy part, it's been great to mess around with this little hawaiian guitar all day. My fingers hurt like hell despite the strings being in soft nylon. It's very small (60 cm long) and it feels much more natural than holding one of those big guitars. Especially for a girl with some assets on the front. The tricky part is to be able to remember the tabs, the strumming pattern (which gives the rhythm of the song) and the lyrics, all at the same time. I try to learn how to place my fingers without looking (that's what I did when I learned the piano and typing) and so far so good! My intermediate musical level is very handy even if I'm still confused about the English keynotes (Do=C, Re=D, Mi=E a.s.o.). I may just ditch the French/Latin system and carry on learning with the ABCDEFG notation.
The sound of the ukulele is quite loud and clear while soft and cheery at the same time. I thought I may be disappointed but this is definitely my new drug. Perfect to keep my hands busy, my mind busy and stay focused for a long period of time (this is something that in general I've found more and more difficult to do). The first two songs I've planned to learn are 'White sandy beach' (a classic for beginners apparently though I find the Bflat minor key excruciatingly hard to play) and 'Confide in me'. Thank god, that was worth the hassle...
