Halloween season in Brittany

(The pic today is actually not an October pic - this was taken sometime after midnight last Christmas while walking through the medieval city section of Guerande. But, I thought it was appropriate)

Halloween does exist in Europe. I've spoken with people who have lived here in decades past, and they usually commented that there was no such thing here - that mainland Europeans did not celebrate Halloween. This is not true today, however, and it seems to have gotten more popular through the last three years that we've lived here. I just visited the Mini-Fouine yesterday (a sort of dollar store), and they had a bustling Halloween aisle out, full of costumes and masks. We need to drive down to St. Nazaire, where lots of shops have big sections of Halloween goodies, just to get our seasonal "fix". It's an interesting thing to watch the progress of this imported holiday. There seems to be some ambivalence about exactly what to do with it - one Frenchman once told me it was "too Parisien" and he didn't enjoy it. I have NO idea what this means in cultural context (Generally calling things "Parisien" seems to suggest that they are snobby, or too full of themselves, but I don't see how this could apply to a holiday). Unfortunately, Halloween here is still just a pale shadow of what it's like in the US, where entire houses and streets are decorated, whole shops dedicated to Halloween open in every mall, and troops of kids in costume are everywhere (I won't even get into the terrible lack of haunted houses here - one of the key attractions of the season). Overall, it seems like there is a sort of hesitancy about the season, as if they want to enjoy it but aren't quite sure how to go about it. If I had the time and money, I would definitely run Herbignac's first Haunted House show. As a friend once told me, he'd love to watch me pitch that idea to the mairie - "See, it's a huge scary house filled with threatening monsters who chase the children and do their best to traumatize them and even send them out crying and screaming. It's fun, really!"

October movie of the day - "Escape from LA" Not exactly a horror film, but something I'd been wanting to see again. One thing I have noticed about John Carpenter's films is that they are nearly all ten or more years ahead of their time - they come out, receive mediocre reviews and low box office, vanish, and then are rediscovered as genre classics a decade later, when they suddenly seem "better". I recall especially "The Thing", which was released in the aftermath of ET and Close Encounters, when aliens were all warm and friendly, and the film just seemed too dark and bleak for the time. On a second look in the 90's, it was revealed to be a horror classic, and in my opinion one of the best horror films ever made. Anyway, Escape was soundly trashed on release, particularly by fans of the first film, "Escape from New York", compared to which it was goofy, silly, lacking in tension, and generally blah. I'd read, however, that it was all in the expectation - going in expecting to see a serious continuation of EFNY was wrong, because the new film was a tongue-firmly-in-cheek comedy, a parody of both US politics and action films in general. Seen on this level, it is great fun, full of both laughs and witty observations on American life. And it has one of the very best endings in all cinema history! I'll sign off with this classic exchange, which is really relevant to smokers in the US today...
Snake Plissken: Got a smoke?
Malloy: The United States is a non-smoking nation! No smoking, no drugs, no alcohol, no women - unless you're married - no foul language, no red meat!
Snake Plissken: Land of the free.