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Post by tod2 on Oct 30, 2014 8:01:03 GMT
She has started her thread Kerouac ...and it's a knockout!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2014 6:04:36 GMT
One thing that makes it very clear that major differences exist between the cultures of neighbouring countries of Europe is their taste in cinema and music. It is exceedingly rare that the #1 film in one country is also #1 next door, except in the case of crush-all-competition blockbusters like Titanic or Avatar which are not local productions in any case. Intouchables was a notable exception since it was just as big a hit in Germany as in France.
I was therefore curious to see Germany's #1 film from last year Fack ju Göhte which finally got a 'confidential' release in Paris (a grand total of 3 screens compared to 40-50 for a big release). It mixes two reliable sub-genres which seem to exist in every country: 1. the non-teacher who has to pretend to be a teacher and 2. trying to recover the buried loot on top of which a building has been built.
Briefly, here we have a very pleasant thief (Elyas M'Barek) who gets released from prison. His hooker friend (but not girlfriend) buried the bag of money for him, but in the meantime a school gymnasium has been built on top of the spot. While casing the joint, the protagonist sees a tribute on a bulletin board to the school janitor who has just died, so he decides to apply for the job. I need not tell you that due to a mixup, he gets hired as a teacher since the school is desperate. He just forges a few documents and clearly the school is not in any condition to verify them. Naturally, he himself was a junior high dropout with absolutely no culture and just as little education, so all of the elements of a screwball comedy are now in place.
I very much enjoyed the movie, even if some of the situations were a little too screwball for me (but that's the case in about 95% of comedies, isn't it?). At the same time, it was easy to understand why such a movie cannot really be a success outside of its home territory due to private jokes* and also the fact that no matter how brilliant the subtitling is, trash talk and ghetto-speak lose about 80% of their humour in translation, just as no other country is going to literally translate a film title like Fuck You, Goethe. The French title is the extremely insipid "Un prof pas comme les autres" and I saw on IMDb that the 'English' title is Suck Me Shakespeer so I don't think you can expect to see it at your local multiplex... ever.
*One of the private jokes was quite funny when the students are complaining about unbearable television and one of them mentions 'that horrible channel where they're speaking French all the time' to which the others guess 'Arte' immediately. Arte is the Franco-German cultural channel based in Strasbourg and is held in great respect in intellectual cirles in France (and probably in Germany) because it is the only channel that presents exactly the same entertainment programmes in both countries at the same time, available in either language. The point is to bring the two countries together although it only has a 2% viewership in France and just 1% in Germany.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2014 15:36:41 GMT
I've never seen a film advertised as "two hours...of entertainment". What a ringing endorsement.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2014 19:09:16 GMT
Well, those English subtitles are totally abominable anyway. Just the fact that every noun is capitalised like in German means that the person in charge already had no idea there is any difference between English and German.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Nov 20, 2014 21:23:46 GMT
We went to see Interstellar last week and loved it.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 25, 2014 20:58:35 GMT
Internationally controversial movies are always interesting, even when just two countries are involved. This week the movie L'Oranais opened in Paris, two weeks after opening in Algeria. It follows the lives of some Algerian independence militants from the late 1950's until the late 1980's (Algeria became independent in 1962.) The director is Algerian and his earlier movies (as an actor) have been French. This is basically a French movie, even though it is a coproduction, but the fact that the Algerian ministry of culture helped to finance the film is a sign of unusual bravery on their part. As the years pass, the freedom fighters become comfortable and corrupt while not really helping the new country to develop. Good people are crushed and bribes are accepted with a smile. There are also a few subplots. The main character was in hiding for 5 years, but after the NLF wins, he returns home to find that his wife was killed but also that he has a son. Small problem -- the son is blond with blue eyes. This is not at all impossible among the non-Arab Kabyles of Algeria, but both parents were dark with brown eyes. Naturally, the truth comes out at last and it does not make anybody happy.
It has been a smash success in Algeria with religious authorities denouncing it with vehemence. Oddly enough, it is not really the corruption of "national heroes" that bothers them the most but the fact that the main characters drink wine, champagne and whisky in great quantities throughout the film. It was pointed out to them by Algerian critics that at the time of independence, the new government gave exclusive rights for the alcohol industry to the heroes of the revolution and in any case, alcohol is still allowed in Algeria and it is a major producer of wine. But the new Islamic fundamentalists want to erase such things, even if it means contradicting historical truth. Naturally, these same imams say that they have of course not even seen the film, but they just know that it is wrong.
It cannot be called a smash success in France, because there are so many other things to see, but at least it is touching the target community here, who rarely go to see French movies.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2014 20:25:03 GMT
Ever since the Cannes film festival, I have been waiting for the Franco-Mauritanian film Timbuktu, which many people felt was completely robbed in the awards department. It's about the Islamic extremist occupation of Mali and what the population endured until France finally sent troops to liberate the area. Unfortunately, the movie had to be made in Mauritania because that region of Mali is still not safe enough for any sort of film crew.
Anyway, just two more weeks and I will be able to see it.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2014 18:18:38 GMT
I am normally not a big fan of Christmas movies because they are generally unbearably goody-goody, but I am actually looking forward to this one starring Tahar Rahim, who was so incredible in A Prophet. Obviously, it is about a burglar in disguise who has to face the unexpected dilemma of encountering a little boy whose dream is to take a sled ride because his father is up in the stars.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2015 0:18:37 GMT
I was extremely pleased that Les Combattants (Love at First Fight) won the awards for Best Actress and Best Male Newcomer tonight. I think it was my favourite film of the year.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2015 6:10:41 GMT
This movie is the biggest success of the year in France, far ahead of movies like American Sniper, 50 Shades of Grey, etc. The trailer is much longer than a normal trailer (and reveals more of the plot) because it is actually aimed at worldwide distributors rather than the general public.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2015 14:47:20 GMT
It looks very sweet. I'm not sold on the girl's voice (what kind of Paris academy teaches pop vocals?), and the clip gives away all of the plot points I'm sure, but I would go to see it.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2015 15:34:41 GMT
It's the young people's chorus of Radio France and it really exists. As for the girl, she was a semi-finalist on The Voice in France when she was 16 (now she is 18). She just released her first album, which is selling very well, but it is more for her own age group than adult listeners.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2015 15:47:40 GMT
Aah, now I get it, thanks. That all makes sense. I thought she looked a trifle, ahem, substantial to be a struggling, ambitious actress.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2015 17:48:33 GMT
Well, she was a farm girl!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2015 18:07:41 GMT
Of course. And as an actress with the shoulders of an Eastern European swim champion, I know whereof I speak!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2015 14:16:27 GMT
I am rarely disturbed by anything in the movies, but I found myself quite upset by the excellent Indésirables. It's a subject that has been treated plenty of times already in American, German, Belgian, French, etc., but it is usually handled with a bit of prudery and, dare I say, too much tact. This is a movie about sexual assistance to the handicapped. Jérémie Elkaïm (seen an movies like Polisse and Declaration of War, among others) plays a young nurse who suddenly finds himself unemployed. He and his girlfriend take in a blind brother and sister as flatmates. The blind sister is very exuberant so it isn't long before she is giving the nurse a handjob in a clothing store dressing room, where she pays for his jacket in appreciation of his cooperation. Meanwhile the blind brother spends a lot of his time in a foyer for the disabled and soon tells the nurse that if he has money problems, there are a lot of needy women who would willingly "lend" him some money if he took them out a bit. After some initial hesitation, the nurse becomes quite proficient in helping these women out, often in wheelchairs but sometimes with more difficult conditions. One woman looks normal, but when she takes off her clothes, all of her flesh looks like it is rotting away, withered breasts looking like extremely spoiled fruit. Then there is a woman who brings her inseparable male friend because they are never ever apart. The man wears one of those cages on his shoulders to hold up his head and neck. Later, he makes it clear that he would like some help, too, starting with "may I kiss your hand" to "may I kiss your penis" and finally moving on to a rather vigorous sodomy session.
All that is the more comical part of the movie. Later things get grim, because these people from the foyer are not always very nice because they're just like people everywhere else, and they have some issues... Even though it does not get that extreme, I inevitably thought of Tod Browning's Freaks at the end.
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Post by Deleted on May 15, 2015 17:26:32 GMT
This movie at Cannes definitely piques my interest: The Lobster
starring Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, etc.
"In a dystopian near future, single people are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days or are transformed into animals and released into the woods."
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Post by Deleted on May 15, 2015 17:45:59 GMT
Yes, the Guardian had a review of it today, another one that sounds interesting.
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2015 20:43:50 GMT
It looks like this year's first awards buzz is for Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre, about a dying mother and her daughter who is a film director undergoing creative difficulties while making a film. Apparently, an enormous number of tears are shed while seeing this movie. That was already pretty much the case when he won the Palme d'Or in 2001 for The Son's Room. The odd thing about this is that the vast majority of Nanni Moretti's movies are acidic comedies and not heart wrenching dramas.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2015 5:38:50 GMT
Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle has finally been adapted for the screen. It looks promising.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2015 16:51:01 GMT
One of the movies to which I am looking forward the most is Jacques Audiard's Dheepan, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes festival. It's about 3 Tamil refugees to France who form a fictitious family to replace a family that died. Apparently, the vast majority of the movie is in Tamil with just a bit of French. I don't know if it is a coincidence or not, but it is being released here the same week as the Ganesh procession in Paris.
Anybody looking for excellent French movies to watch should look for any movie that Jacques Audiard has ever done. They are all sensational.
1994 See How They Fall (Regarde les hommes tomber) 1996 A Self-Made Hero (Un héros très discret) 2001 Read My Lips (Sur mes lèvres) 2005 The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De battre mon cœur s'est arrêté) 2009 A Prophet (Un prophète). 2012 Rust and Bone (De rouille et d'os) 2015 Dheepan
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2015 14:28:27 GMT
Jaco van Dormael makes the most amazing and unusual Belgian films. Of course sometimes they flop horribly like Mr. Nobody starring Jared Leto which got tiniest of U.S. releases about 5 years later but only after Leto won an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club.
His new movie Le tout nouveau testament (The Brand New Testament) is about god, who is a Belgian man with a young daughter. She is fed up with his little pranks like making the telephone ring when people get in the bathtub, so to get back at him, she broadcasts the death date of everybody on earth. This sort of upsets the way of the world and Catherine Deneuve (age 71) even gets to sleep with a gorilla. I can't wait to see it.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2015 4:57:46 GMT
This seems like a very bad idea to me. The dead should not be resurrected.
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Post by htmb on Sept 21, 2015 5:10:36 GMT
Okay. This is really weird.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2015 6:08:04 GMT
Luckily it is a hoax. That's why the trailer makes no sense.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 22, 2015 0:41:15 GMT
I just looked at The Man in the High Castle trailer, which looks excellent but harrowing. One of my favorite movies of all time was made from one of Dick's works -- Blade Runner, of course.
However I am somewhat confused. Isn't the trailer announcing a series for tv, rather than a movie?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2015 4:32:25 GMT
Yes, that's what it says, but a mini series is just a long movie.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 22, 2015 4:59:14 GMT
Split those hairs!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2015 18:56:42 GMT
Well, France just gave itself the kiss of death for any hope at the Oscars next year. Mustang has been chosen to represent France, so it will probably be eliminated by the Academy before the final nominations simply because it is in Turkish instead of French. It is an excellent movie, but the Academy seems to think that "foreign language" movies submitted by countries should be in the language of that country. It's a shame, because Mustang is a wonderful movie. Of course one of the other top contenders was Dheepan, which is 90% in Tamil, so that wouldn't have worked either.
Amusingly enough, for the second year in a row, it appears that China will be submitting a movie made by a French director.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 30, 2015 18:03:53 GMT
This looks interesting.
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