To begin ...

at the beginning.

Movies repeated twice thrice over can make a shared evening sometimes unbelievably better. Especially if you've got a six pack, a few buddies, and a slow cooked meal for dinner after! While you savor the experience a little bit deeper, a lot more richer ...

But hollywood has let us down, throughout the movies they've been churning out lately.

A Corporate entertainment machine does not a movie make ... a movie worth experiencing I mean. Yeah, sure they can manipulate your emotions shamelessly, get you all addicted to adrenaline rushes, and crank it all out by formula but what about the feeling that you haven't just been insulted in the cranium, and cheated out of the money for a good set of IPOD downloads?

Sometimes there are guys who come out with good movies, but the powers that be decide to not take chances ... Gillam's version of Brazil and the hollywood released version are in such start contrast this point needs no further underlining on my part. Go out and rent (good luck in finding it though *grin*) the Criterion Collection version to get both cuts.

But talking about director's cuts Bladerunner that is I mean Ridley Scott's vesion proves that even the better made movies can be made brilliant if they can somehow escape the potholes of production politics ...

And on the other side story telling gems such as Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, noir thrillers such as Jean Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, biographical masterpieces such as Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy, human experience made visual poetry in movies like Satyajit's Pather Panchali all speak to how the ordinary human condition can become the vehicle for extraordinary movies in the hands of the masters ...

But where do you find these movies anyways? On the shelves of Blockbuster, on the discount sections of Walmart, on the rows and rows of A-Z of movies at the Future Shop?

Yeah we tried ... but

... but that was the prelude. We needed after all to tell you about our problem before we explain the elegance of the solution

Peter a friend and a coinnosseur of the fine art of living which in his list includes movies, gourmet meals, and local er glamour came up with the Wednesday fixture, a boy's night out that was centered around a cultural icon he'd discovered in his neighborhood, a video store that was the complete anti-thesis of the usual Hollywood stocking chain video store a la Blockbuster and Rogers ... A mom and pop okay just the pop in this case (and the occasional visit from the son) store that specialized in movies ... an entire rack of Criterion collection DVDs, a documentary of Kurosawa, Animes animes animes including Japanese, Chinese, Korean I repeat Korean Animes, spaghetti (italian) westerns staring no not eastwood but rather Giulianno Gemma, old Terence Hill/Bud Spencer classics such as They call me trinity and entire stacks of similarly forgotten but thankfully not forsaken DVDs lying around all over the place for lack of space and time to put them up in racks. This place is a treasure trove of movies for the more eclectic viewer, literally a midweek paradise for somebody like me and Peter to combat the ennui of decompression from work, who've been longing to strike off the beaten track for a while to indulge our need for old masterworks from Kurosawa, for Seishun Suzuki's surrealistic classic gangsta flicks ...

In our first visit there we ended up buying Inagaki's Samurai trilogy, and Terry Gillam's Brazil both Criterion Collection boxed sets. Wasn't cheap, but hey some movies are not worth putting a price on right?

But what makes these trips rather special are the restaurants in the neighborhood. We visited a rather Italiano kinda place where we had sandwiches made old country style, washed down with Steamwhistle a local microbrew, with salads and bruschettas earlier for appetizers. The use of authentic balsamic vinegar in their dressing, and the unusual thin but crusty Italian style bread made using grain with real character along with grilled vegetables marinated in a pesto made for a great dining experience.

The second time around we went to a Peruvian restaurant, where we ended up doing a gourmet meal starting with an exquisite consomme, followed by an exquisitely grilled set of veggie kebabs, accompanied by baked potatoes covered with a peruvian sauce made from cheese, capers and some other ingredients we weren't able to place. The hazelnut torte that topped the meal was an unrepeatable experience. Just the way she brought in an assortment of desserts on a round tray for us to make the choice was enough to make us wanna order everything in sight ... and the waitress herself was so easy on the eyes as she swayed away we wanted to do this over and over ... As we ate we were blocks away from the oldest jewish gated community in Toronto, with houses that are still marvellous examples of the classic warm-hewed brick exterior that extended the house from one street to the other.

This time around we rented the movies ... Dragon Inn, the de-rigeur lavishly produced sword and sorcery epic that is staple diet at asian filmfests, Chungking Express an unusual cop movie which was more about the cop than about the usual thrills ... a love story done differently, Ugetsu ... a Japanese style ghost story, El Mariachi/Desperado the modern classic take on mexican westerns, and The Third Man an old style who dun it classic.

Along the way we dropped into a CD store that once again in character with the neighborhood stocked anything but the usual ... more about this in a future episode.

Across the road was a bookstore ...

to be contd ...