Oh, I’ve just remembered another film I saw many years ago that made a real impression on me. In English it’s called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - which is a pretty rubbish title. It’s the true story of a high-flying magazine editor (Cosmo, iirc) who is diagnosed with locked-in syndrome after suffering a stroke. It’s sad yet bizarrely uplifting too.
Also enjoyable is a film called Rust and Bone, about a woman who works with killer whales at Marineland in Antibes and suffers an accident that changes her life.
Here’s another thing. These flat panel TV’s are now very affordable - sub €750 - in sizes that 2-3 years ago were €2k+. The rule for screen size is 2 - 2.5x the diagonal of the screen = your viewing distance. You want to be as close as poss without inducing the ‘Wimbledon Effect’. For most homes, that ideal is difficult to achieve. It does seem very close. The remedy is to get a bigger screen!
Did you see Dr Zhivago when it was released? I saw it at one of the Leicester Sq cinemas. I will never forget the amazement, seeing the opening scene, the funeral procession, a group of people, tiny in the bottom left corner of the huge screen, making its way across a vast landscape. Size counts.
Minimum 55". If it was a painting you wouldn’t think it to be big.
I cut out the story of friends [but here it is] - Mrs and two daughters - who insisted, for sentimental reasons, on bringing a 1940’s grey enamelled gas stove with them from their rented home to their new place, which had a vast AGA.
This old stove took up space in the kitchen to no purpose and was usually hidden by great piles of laundry on top of it.
On day, when I was visiting and the 3 women were out, Mr said, “Chris! Quick! I’ll get the car round the back alley and we can get it out the back gate of the garden!”
Ten minutes later it was in the dump. “Gas stove?” What gas stove?"
Some young friends of ours have quit having a TV at all, and we will go the same way when our current one needs to be replaced. Having one is so ugly, so ours is normally hidden.
They have a drop down sceen (very neat - press button and appears from ceiling) and a discretely fixed projector they can link to from all their devices.
That sounds very sensible. I loathe TVs as they are, as you say, ugly. I don’t have one and haven’t had for many years. They have a tendency to dominate a room and in a small house the impression I get is reminiscent of poor old Winston Smith …
Fortunately we have a brilliant local cinema and going there is a great deal more fun
Our cinema is great too, thumbs up for french gov support for the arts! 1960’s building that hasn’t been messed with so original design.although it seats 200 the films we tend to see attract a stalwart band of around 10-20 people. So very sociable as we now all chat.
And loathe sitting rooms arranged around the TV…. Reminiscent of awful sitcoms somehow.
I must admit that the filnms we see at the cinema rarely attract more than about 30 people but they are lovely and the volunteers at the cinema are also great. I think the low turnout may be because we deliberately pick unpopular times to go
I think @andyw can vouch for the cinema too as I know he goes there regularly…
That is really fascinating info. I guess we will get a ‘smart’ TV for France, though even the name brings me out in a cold sweat. I will definitely refer to this post when we’re doing that. Where we watch in France is not a large space between sofa and screen so that will help.
Agree re paintings but they don’t flash about or make noise.
I have seen Dr Zhivago but not on a big screen and envy you seeing it on release. I looked up the release date of 1965 and so I was only 6 so that’s my excuse.
Totally agree that size counts and it’s why we go to the cinema. I lived without a TV for quite a long time and it’s taken me 20 years to be able to appreciate watching a film on it. I’d always rather go out and see a film than slump in front of the TV not quite keyed up enough for it.
It’s not just the screen and the sound in the cinema, it’s the whole communal experience that I love and we’ve been fortunate to live near good arthouse cinemas for a long time.
I love this story! And I like the sound of a grey enamelled 1940s gas stove but not as much as I love Agas, even though I don’t have one and never will.
Totally agree. Even though we often go the cinema twice a week during the winter (so that’s about 8 months in the UK), if I ever lose that frisson of excitement when entering a cinema, I’ll know I’ve died.
You can always go back into your post and edit. Just click on the pencil (bottom righthand corner ) and it brings up the type in box for you to make changes.
CRT TVs were ugly great lumps, true. But a panel with virtually no bezel [frame] with a ‘slide show’ of paintings*, or in my case, my own photographs, I would describe as an asset to a room. I’m looking forward to seeing my photographs as I have never seen them before. Large, brilliant, punchy, crisp …
I do have some 110cm wide canvas prints and they look great but do not give the depth of colour and sharpness of detail of a print or a screen.
Samsung have taken the idea of a TV being ‘an artwork’ to its logical conclusion. Their TV ‘The Frame’ comes in a variety of sizes and with a choice of frames, as per a painting or mounted photo.
When it’s not being a telly, it is whatever you want. Here’s a detail of Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’, - one of their examples
Here’s the lily pool in Monet’s garden at Giverny, after I eliminated the people in un-Monet-coloured clothing, including pillar box red, crowded into the dark space, upper right. About 140cms wide on a 16:9 screen, it’s going to look fab
This, amongst other, will [eventually!] make a great addition to other actual framed prints and paintings in my sitting room
These flat panel TVs will all end up as displays of a rolling selection of images. It’s already easy to do - the retailers’ displays all do it now - but the TV manufacturers are being a little slow on marketing this aspect, except Samsung. It will become the norm.
When last I had a CRT TV, a lump the size of an armchair for just a 32" screen, I used to drape a Balinese sarong over it. A friend visiting, who wanted to watch something half way thru’ dinner [rude] went into the sitting room “Where’s the telly?!” Hahaha!
The Electric Cinema Club on Portobello Rd used to have late night double bills 7/7. I used to go to 5 or 6 p.w. My prep school had a feature film alternating weekly with documentaries all term, every term.
I have neglected the cinema. The one in Vire is a walk away - up A Very Steep Hill
FWIW we haven’t had a TV since getting married in 1981, and have no plans to change that although we do watch films on laptops and sometimes a bigger computer screen.
I will try to look up some of the films listed here. Pre-covid we had a village film club that would often show foreign language films. The best of these was a French movie about a bunch of guys in a port town who raise money for a refugee to get across to England - search as I might, I can’t find the name. Worst was Le Vacance de M Hulot, which made me want to run out of the room and find a stiff drink - the humour of that did not make it across the divides of time and culture.
The local cinemas are absolutely brilliant in the main. I’ve no idea what the one in Vire is like but definitely worth a try. Incredibly cheap too, at least ours is, as they are highly subsidised.
As for the walk up the hill - when I lived in Stroud, the walk into town from my house was also up a steep hill, but after a couple of weeks you honestly don’t notice - and just think what that will do for your general fitness level if you did it every day…
(PS I dislike the modern flat screens just as much as I disliked the CRT ones - possibly because of the Winston Smith connection…)
It most certainly is Definitely kept me fit at the time as I didn’t really need to use the car to get anywhere except when visiting friends in e.g. Cheltenham - used the local shops and the great market!
Stroud and Nailsworth are great places to live if you do have to live in the UK…
I lived just the other side of Cirencester on the way to Bibury but worked in Stonehouse. My then husband was a student at the RAC. Lovely lovely area.
