HOT CHOCOLATE FOR THESE COLD DAYS

For years I've believed  that Angelina's on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris was the absolute, unbeatable best place for hot chocolate on the planet.  The setting under the stone arcades, the view out onto the stark, pollarded trees in the Tuileries gardens, the lights of the whirling "manège" in the winter twilight and the vast, elegant room with its frescoes of a French Riviera that is only a memory in 2013. Then there was the chocolate - thick dark brown served in a jug with a little pot of whipped cream.  It remains one of the loveliest places to wile away a cold hour in January.

 I can't say the same of any of the "L'Artisan du Chocolat" venues that I've visited so far - one in a little nook in Selfridge's, one in Notting Hill and one at Borough Market.  The Notting Hill location on Westbourne Grove does have comfortable seating and is not unattractive in a clean, sharp, bright, white sort of a way. But the chocolate - oh the chocolate! It's fabulous - rich and thick and dark  and with a smooth, very slight hint of vanilla and caramel in the aftertaste. But it's not sickeningly sweet and cloying. Since I fell for that Parisian hot chocolate, I've lost my taste for sweets in general so the whole business of hot chocolate was off

 my radar - until a lovely lady in the Artisan's outlet in Selfridge's offered me a sample. And that was it.....Since then I've taken to wandering through the snows of London, hoping to relive that first experience. And here I am above, in Notting Hill, after a brave trek all the way from Ealing.  And there's on the right is the delicious chocolate. In Notting Hill, the cup of chocolate plus 2 chocolates from their selection, will cost you £3. In the little nook in Selfridge's, you can get a good sized paper cup of the stuff for £2.

Mike Figgis at the ICA - the baffling new world that awaits the movies

Heard Mike Figgis on 'Start the Week' talking about the very different future that awaits movies. He elaborated later that evening at the ICA. After a week of working on loglines, synopses etc for my novel adaptation and finally submitting them to the traditional Hollywood system this weekend, I was not sure that I wanted to hear what he had to say. But Figgis and his ideas turned out to be strangely heartening and quietly inspiring - even if what he had to say about Hollywood was absolutely damning.
"Film", said Figgis, "is a very over-rated, shallow medium that humanity has taken to because we worship our own image - and the sight of that image blown-up on a screen is irresistible to us."

He recalled his own early experiences of making big money in Hollywood and having the sense that one day he would be 'found out'. And he talked of film studios the size of Bideford "actually owning bricks and mortar to produce the kind of crap they are currently churning out." And of studio execs who, like bankers, had no sense of reality when it came to money - a loss of $200,000,000 barely registering with the head of one major studio.

But Figgis is convinced that the era of celluloid is over 'romantic debates about it are a red herring.' Digital film has changed everything -and there is no going back. Soon we will be rethinking everything about our experience of film - its length, where it is shown, who makes them, performs in them and how they are funded. "We are living in sci-fi world right now,' contiinued Figgis. "The cork came of the bottle and the genie popped out so dynamically," that we are all still dealing with the implications.

Figgis echoed something that I have been hearing since October. People in the arts are feeling a sense of relief over the financial collapse. We sense (or perhaps just hope) that a cleansing will come about from the sudden lack of money. Bloated industries like Hollywood studios will be forced to change if they are to survive.

In the meantime, he advised the rest of us who, thanks to digital photography, can now make a small film to 'get a space - preferably a space that is kind of fun. Run your film for a few showings - get the crits and public in' and let the thing build organically. With the internet there are more and more opportunities to connect and make money.

I agreed with everything he said. It felt like a refreshing new way to tell stories. On the tube on the way home, I still felt excited by this new vision. It is, as Michael Rouse, a Canadian film-maker friend says, a matter of learning to let go of the "great producer/distributer/agents/parental guide (mental state) God that even the most ardent atheists and agnostics bow and pray to". My Canadian friend is right. Figgis is right. But this new way will require immense imagination and energy. Back at the house, at midnight, I found myself checking to see if any of the big West Coast agents had reacted to my script.....
Rouse, in the meantime is making a movie about jobs in the environmental sector and has struck out on the route advised by Figgis: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/129902

Sunday -with and without the Sunday papers

I'd been going back and forth to Vancouver for 7 years when I suddenly realized why Sundays in Vancouver felt lighter and cheerier than Sundays in London. Of course, in the Canadian city I can see the snow on the mountains when I wake up. And in winter there's the prospect of sno-shoeing on those peaks - in summer there's a dip in the Pacific at the end of the road. But all the Lotus-land pleasures of BC aside, the one enormous difference is that nobody bothers with Sunday papers in Vancouver. This pathetic ritual of loading a stonking great pile of dead tree into your supermarket trolley and lugging it home to read all those opinions of all those dried-up poseurs  would be unthinkable in Canada. The leading national paper, The Globe and Mail doesn't even bother publishing a Sunday edition. 

I remember once reading a Stephen Fry column (in something like the Spectator NOT a Sunday paper) where he said that he had found himself becoming increasingly more depressed by the Sunday press - all those dismissive opinions - all the cynicism - and had finally called a halt and felt better for it. The prospect of a hike up Mt Seymour makes it easy to ignore the press but even in London, I think the time would be better spent picking dry skin of the soles of my feet.

When did blue become a Christmas colour?

Yes, I know Elvis Presley sang about a "Blue Christmas" but he was looking with dread towards a loveless season of abject misery. We weren't supposed to be aspiring to a few winter weeks of glacial, icy, freezing, cheerless blue. But the good burghers of Ealing, west London (where I'm writing this) , Vancouver, some arrondissements of Paris and various other spots across the globe don't seem to know this. 

Blue lights are draped over trees, atop department stores, across shopping malls and in houses on either side of the Atlantic. They are awful and I speak as one whose favourite colour has always been blue. But it doesn't belong at Christmas. Energy saving 'led' lights are blue, I am told. And when they first appeared on the scene several years ago, they were. But since then we have red and green and gold. After all, if we can put a man on the....etc etc, well surely we can make some  energy friendly white gold lights?

When I lived in Chicago, the small white/gold lights covered the trees on Michigan Avenue and were known as Italian lights. They cover New York's Tavern on the Green year round and give off magic and warmth. And they are all over the 'historical centres' of most Italian towns at this time of year. I'm guessing at a market ploy for the garish bright blue.  The poor old consumer couldn't be allowed to go through the ritual of pulling out the old white lights, testing them, finding out which bulbs had failed, replacing them so a new colour was foisted upon the public and the poor old public bought it. Too bad...like many adults, despite the inevitable disappointment and cynicism that will eventually accompany the season, I still find the first days of Christmas lights in even the most depressed centre to be strangely cheering. But a lot less so when they are the colour of an Alaskan iceberg