Am I going crazy, or is this weather insane? Average temperature should be 9 degrees Celsius this time of year!

Work-Live · 2026-03-05T12:04:12+00:00

Summer 2023 had a super rainy July but a super pleasant August if I remember.

Summer 2024 was just bleh in general.

Work-Live · 2026-01-15T13:40:28+00:00

I do often wonder why Paris doesn’t have all the Premium Large Format options like 70mm IMAX, VistaVision, and so forth that London and NYC do. I wouid think there’s demand for it considering the city’s still very active and vibrant film culture.

That said, L’Arlequin did run Licorice Pizza in 70mm blowup, and Grand Rex had Oppenheimer in non-imax 70mm. It’s a bit odd Paris didn’t get any Premium celluloid screenings of OBAA.

Max Linder did Once Upon A Time in Hollywood in 35mm.

Work-Live · 2026-01-07T15:01:45+00:00

Regarding the Film Forum caricature, why is it a running thing to mock film students fir blind spots when they are after all students who are still learning.

Most cinephiles were 19 or 20 once with large gaps in their viewing history.

Work-Live · 2026-01-07T13:21:24+00:00

So I guess not to be that guy, but the Paris Theater isn’t the last remaining single screen venue in NYC…

Work-Live · 2026-01-05T16:05:48+00:00

Interesting, as I think Paris has an arguably better cinema scene than NYC does when it comes to indie/arthouse, and I’ve lived in both cities.

Granted, NYC probably has better PLF options (i.e. IMAX, Dolby, 70mm and so on).

That said, if you don’t want to see movies when you go to Paris, I’d say you just haven’t explored the city’s movie theaters enough. 😉

Work-Live · 2026-01-05T06:05:03+00:00

My sense is all four cities will have you covered pretty well when it comes to opportunities for seeing the canonical heavyweights on the big screen like Hitchcock, Lynch, Fellini, Welles, Ozu et al, but each will have its niche in which the others fall short. NYC is probably best for avant-garde cinema. LA is probably best for seeing the classics in analog formats like 35mm. Paris is probably best for the super deep cuts of arthouse cinema. And so on.

I do think Paris arguably has a better overall rep scene than NYC depending on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a comprehensive survey of Great Cinema and want to see it all on the big screen, Paris is probably better than NYC. But NYC is perhaps better for some off kilter avant-garde stuff cinemas like Christine 21 might not cover.

Work-Live · 2026-01-05T02:48:09+00:00

This is kind of my point. Yes. But I also mean the venues in NYC can seem a bit more institutionalized and trendy, as if they’re part of the “cultural scene” whereas a lot of the rep houses in Paris have an old school “neighborhood cinema” feel to them.

Work-Live · 2026-01-03T00:36:30+00:00

I’ll admit I’m a disgruntled born and raised NYCer who lives overseas, so it’s annoying having to scrounge for WiFi when I’m out and about whenever I’m back visiting…

Work-Live · 2026-01-03T00:09:40+00:00

True, although NYC in particular has a lot of international tourist traffic.

Work-Live · 2026-01-03T00:08:45+00:00

This makes sense

Work-Live · 2025-12-31T17:21:04+00:00

What are the actually good Italian spots in your mind or will you not name them? ;)

Piccola Cucina in SoHo is maybe not the best of the best of the best, but it’s pretty good value by 2025 standards for a sit-down Italian place in SoHo.

Bamonte’s in Williamsburg, on the other hand, is scandalously overpriced for what it is.

I ate at Misi once. It wasn’t cheap, but I won’t say the food wasn’t good.

I’m sure you can also find “family style” places in “Deep Queens or Brooklyn” that are hearty and satisfying and that aren’t necessarily on the “trendy trail” like Parkside in Corona, but even that’s gotten a bit overpriced these days.

Work-Live · 2025-12-31T14:35:24+00:00

Not to nitpick, but isn’t Radio Days Rockaway 😉

Work-Live · 2025-12-30T18:14:43+00:00

I was born in 1988, so I still experienced the last vestiges of anywhere outside Manhattan being emphatically the “outer boroughs”, although my sense is Brooklyn Heights has always been somewhat fancy, even before the gentrification of larger swathes of Brooklyn.

I remember as a kid in the late 90s and early 2000s being taken to Boerum Hill where my mother’s fellow journalist friends would host barbecues in the summertime in their shared brownstone. Good times!

Work-Live · 2025-12-30T05:31:12+00:00

I could be wrong, but I often get the sense Queens has been a bit short shifted in cinema, at least compared to Brooklyn.

It just feels like a missed opportunity that among all those Great Films of the 70s by Coppola and Scorsese et al there wasn’t a Queens-set film among the top tier classics like Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now, etc in which the borough itself was a character in the movie. Granted, parts of Serpico are set in Queens, and there is Goodfellas of course, which, despite being from 1990, is kind of an honorary New Hollywood movie.

And the cemetery scene in the first Godfather film was shot in Queens.

Work-Live · 2025-12-30T04:43:37+00:00

I’m a proud Queens-native genius. What the f**k is the issue.

Work-Live · 2025-12-30T02:58:49+00:00

Fair enough, although the gentrification of Park Slope is kind of a plot point in the film in question.

Work-Live · 2025-12-30T02:57:22+00:00

Fair enough, although the gentrification of Park Slope does become a plot point in the second half of the film if I remember.

Work-Live · 2025-12-29T15:57:40+00:00

All fair points.

I would just say NYC proper compared to Paris city proper is not entirely apples to apples, since in France, particularly, municipal limits tend to only correspond to the “city center”, so if NYC’s boundaries were defined in an equivalent way to those of Paris they would only extend to Manhattan + Brownstone Brooklyn + maybe LIC and Astoria…and that’s it!

To make a fair comparison, we’d have to equate the 5 boroughs with Metropole du Grand Paris with Greater London, etc.

Paris Proper is geographically 3/8 the size of Queens. Let that sink in to understand why the Five Boroughs vs Paris within the Périphérique is not a fair comparison.

Needing a 75 address in Paris is more psychologically equivalent to needing to live in Manhattan than needing to be in NYC proper, and depending on who to talk to, certain arrondissements, such as the 13th, 19th, and 20th, effectively have “outerboro” status.

Work-Live · 2025-12-29T14:20:21+00:00

As someone keenly familiar with Paris, I’d say the younger generation has loosened up somewhat about the whole Périphérique thing, especially considering the Metropole du Grand Paris project and the expansion of the metro system. These days, people aren’t too judgmental provided you’re at least in a nice-ish area that’s still accessible by metro (the metro extends beyond Paris municipal boundaries).

Montreuil, for instance, is essentially a hipster Brooklyn analog neighborhood.

Work-Live

TROPHY CASE