The study group with industry ended a bit after 1pm today, which gave me most of today, all of tomorrow, and part of Sunday to explore a bit (or, more precisely, to continue my Montreal escapades from 2003 and 2004). Accordingly, I headed to downtown after we were done to explore the eastern half of St. Catherine's street. (This is the main happening street downtown.) The metro station I went to was the one that turned out to connect to their grand central station and is where the buses from the airport go if one is heading downtown. (This time, I just took a cab because University of Montreal is paying for my travels. Hence, I didn't want to deal with the luggage-dragging---and the having to figure out where I actually needed to go at various stages---that the bus + metro option would have entailed.) This therefore touched me down amidst the familiar hotels from 2003 and 2004.
Upon exploring the eastern part of St. Catherine's (a street which goes on forever and is basically open all night), I ran into the Montreal film festival, which I didn't realize was happening now. (It started last night.) This is excellent, because it allows me to see some indie films long before they come out in theatres. (Some of these probably won't come out in UK or US theatres at all.) I saw a really good Japenese film called something like "The 100 Million Yen Woman." Various types of social awkwardness play pretty important roles in it, so while it was a bit too heavy-handed and predictable at times, it definitely resonated with me somewhat. (There were also some brief comedic moments, like a judge's/police official's voiceover proclaiming how bad it was to throw out a person's "Nintendo DS, as well as his other possessions" (the quote is approximate). I'll bring up the film again in a very belated entertainment review blog entry that will include films, theatre, etc. from the past several months. There are quite a few other films I'm interested in seeing (though only a fraction of those are playing while I'm still in town), so my current plans are to see 1-2 tomorrow. (I have already walked around a decent bit and I don't typically do things like museums unless I'm doing that with someone else. I just don't typically like going to museums on my own.) I was going to see a regular movie tonight, but once I found out that the film festival was going on, I threw out that option. (P.S. As far as I can tell, Philip Seymour Hoffman is not in any of the films being shown at this festival.)
As I have mentioned in the past (though maybe not in this blog), Montreal has tons and tons of very good coffee places. One of the ones near the university is in fact among the most pretentious coffee places I've ever been. (It's name is stupid---"Java U"---but its espresso drinks are fantastic! Ergo, I approve!) It might even be the 2nd most pretentious coffee place I've ever been to, although it is nowhere close to as pretentious as the venue occupying the top spot on the list (Equator Cafe in Pasadena). However, it has much better coffee than Equator (which has good coffee), which is what really counts. I went to another pretentious coffee place as well today---its barristas also seemed to range from dressed-in-black to very goth. I was also going to have crepes today, but it didn't work out. There's a crepes place near the theatre I went to and one or both of the films I'm seeing tomorrow are at that specific theatre as well, so I'll definitely make up for that tomorrow. It would be a crime to have my third trip to Montreal without having had a crepe in any of the three.
Fun fact: In high school, I was voted most likely to see independent films and drink pretentious coffee drinks while having crepres. (OK, not really---but I would have been if we had that category.)
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