rebness

Met up with Chris in Liverpool yesterday. He works for (insert hellish telecommunications company here) at the Albert Dock on the waterfront. The Liverpool docks are, dude, the most amazing things ever. The Liverpool-New York link was established here; today, shipping from all over the world still carries cargoes to and from the port. Abraham Lincoln was a guest there, as was everyone from Herman Melville to Tennessee Williams-- a gateway linking Europe to the New World. We should also be grateful for Fred's cork Weather Map o'D00m, visible in this picture. (Did anyone else watch the weather live in the hope of seeing him fall in when hopping onto Ireland?)

Albert Dock

I won't go into predictable rantage about the state of one of these historic buildings now, with bland wall-to-wall carpets and floors of call centres and canteens and strip-lighting, because I think that says it all.

Being a hypocrite, went to a funky bar where they charge like £5 for a glass of standard Italian wine, but where you're paying for the splendid ambience of drinking in an old dock building. Yes.

After American doppelganger wickedmanifesto recommended A Very Long Engagement to me, I determined to see it.

One of the coolest things about the regeneration of Liverpool is FACT (the meaning of the acronym escapes me right now.) This is an excellent "artsy" cinema the city has sorely lacked for years; it has a wine bar, exhibitions, world cinema screens... the height of pretension. I love it.

Anyway, it is there specifically to promote European cinema. Well, except for the part where the trailer shown before the film was for Wes Anderson's new American epic, but the thought's what counts.

( And, my God. What a film. )