29 November 2009

2012



Today we visited Cinéma Lux in La Châtre in order to see the film 2012, directed by Roland Emmerich, with John Cusack in the leading role.

We were quite sure that we knew what we were going to see before seing the movie and of course we got what we expected. "Nous étions prévenus"/"We were warned" as the texts declare.
No surprises, only the cinematically recurrent history of Americans saving the world, or in this case a part of it.
John Cusack was the main character - Jackson Curtis - and 'hero', white and American, of course. His wife - Kate Curtis (Amanda Peet) and children survives - of course.
His Indian friend and colleague, dr Satnam Tsurutani (Jimi Mistry) and his family dies - of course.

Emmerich tried to mix 'white' with 'yellow' and 'brown' or 'black' but as a whole this was the same, rather ethnocentric, story we've seen over and over again in different American catastrophy films.
The ethnocentricity concerns the description of who is actually able to save the world, making the right decisions etc, even though one had tried to ameliorate this by depicting a black president - Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover).
He also dies however!
When all other people aorund him dies in similar situations, our hero makes it, sometimes even with a smile on his lips!

The main female characters always remains well dressed, almost no stains on their clothes with a great make-up and perfect hair, even if sulphur is falling over their heads.
This makes the film look more like a comedy than a dramatic story.

How come, not least American actresses, are so afraid of looking dirty, lacking make up or rather why doesn't directors let them look that way? Would this spoil their 'star image'?
Yes of course, as so much within the American film industry is focused on the surface: 'Perfect looking' actors, 'perfect' technical machinery, 'perfect' light and all to often perfectly uninteresting.

The film nearly made us feel that the end of the world must be a rather fascinating event and sometimes even amusing! Of course hundreds of millions of people die but that's only 'collateral damage'.

The music accompanying the story was a carbon copy of other musical scores from similar films, (do Hollywood only have one or two composers to musical scores in films?) not to mention the plot, the characters and the Biblical story of Noah's Ark (Evan Almighty)!

Only one thing impressed on us: The technical skill! It won't be easy making a film with catastrophical scenes made in such a brilliant way!

Well, now we've seen it and that was that!




(Poster with monk at the mountain copied from: http://media.zoom-cinema.fr/photos/3509/affiche-2012.jpg)
(Poster 2 with the flooded city copied from: http://fin-du-monde.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/film-2012-fin-du-monde-8.jpg)
(Poster 3 with the plane going through the town with falling skyscrapers copied from: http://www.dinosoria.com/cinema/2012-7.jpg)

28 November 2009

Aux frontières du génie chez George Sand

Today at the museum in La Châtre - partly dedicated to the author George Sand - we visited a lecture with the above title: 'At the borders of genius of George Sand' or in French:

"Une heure, une œuvre au Musée de La Châtre : "Aux frontières du Génie chez George Sand". Conférence sur une œuvre du musée George Sand et de la Vallée Noire, animée par le Docteur Baum et Franck Lloyd"

Psychiatrist, doctor Baum and teacher and director Frank Lloyd, talked about the bipolarity (bipolar disorder) George Sand had to struggle with.
I write "struggle" but her bipolarity was, according to these two gentlemen, in part also an explanation to her enormous creativity and explains how she managed to achieve so many things in her life. This mostly during her manic periods of course.

Besides writing almost 70 novels, she wrote novellettes, stage plays, fairy tales, literary critic, autobiographies and some 20 000 letters, that is to say 3-4 letters per day at an average.
The person to whom she wrote most frequently was Alfred de Musset.

She also helped other writers and musicians as being their foremost patron, friend and maecenas. Many of them should, perhaps, not even have survived without her help.
Among the men around her we found Frédéric Chopin, Eugène Delacroix, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Honoré de Balzac and many others.
Of course she also had female friends, of whom we, unfortunately, know less.
She is said to have had at least 19 lovers, of both sexes.

Among both past time generations and contemporaries she was and is considered being a feminist although she didn't characterise herself as such.
Besides her extensive writing, socializing and her engagement in the welfare of other writers and musicians, she also engaged herself in politics, although not within a specific political organisation.

In the audience (the museum totally filled up with people) there were a great number of people knowing the works and life of George Sand very well and a quite vivid discussion came about.

As being a Swede, I would like to say that George Sand deserves becoming more well known as a writer in Sweden. Most Swedes know her as the muse of Frédéric Chopin and as a rather marginal writer. This picture need to be revised.


George Sand. Confidences de la Dame de Nohant
envoyé par efiestas. - Découvrez plus de vidéos créatives.










(Picture of George Sand copied from: http://thebsreport.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/georgesand.jpg)


22 November 2009

Micmacs à Tire-Larigot



We primarily watch films on TV in France but the week-ends we try to visit the cinema in La Châtre, as today.

Micmacs à Tire-Larigot is a film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director who - among other films - directed Amélie (Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain).

In this film the story circles around the main character Bazil (not John Cleese's character in Fawlty Towers), a role created by the popular comedian Dany Boon.

Bazil is working in a video store and one day he witnesses a gun fight between two men outside the shop and accidently gets hit by a bullet. The surgeons decide not to take the bullet out, as this could risk his life but this bullet turns him into another person, where previous memories and intellectual capacities are disrupted.
He meets a group of individuals living in a junk yard, made into a home and head quarter from where they try to make a living and take advantage of their different skills. Bazil becomes obsessed with revenging the weapon manufacturers selling the weapons and bullets, turning his life - and others - upside down and his friends are more than willing to help him destroying these two companies.

They come up with an intricate and very complicated plan aiming at the elimination of these two companies, taking advantage of each and everyones special 'gifts' in life.
One of them is extremely strong, another a former circus artist known as the canonball man, a third a woman being a human 'rubber person', being able to bend her body in all kinds of extraordinary ways.

This is a typical Jeunet film when it comes to aesthetics and the 'fantastic' story of extraordinary men and women, not being super heroes but unique in a multitude of ways. A story of friendship between people disregarded by society.
There is a quiet, mild humour with some almost 'slapstickian' moments but not hysterically funny.
The plot is rather predictable but it's however a rather charming film although the combination of moral statements and humour doesn't really merge too well.
It's as if Jeunet wanted us to bethink the atrocities the weapon manufacturers are responsible for, but dressed in a comedy it becomes a little bit of this and a little bit of that, overshadowing the serious message he seems having the ambition to convey.


(Poster displaying the different characters copied from: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WkKZJVG5wTk/TS1wL-UwBkI/AAAAAAAC8uc/TyFqsDz6kmo/s1600/micmacs-poster-3.jpg)
(Photo three of the friends copied from: http://www.twivi.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/micmacs-a-tire-larigot_dany-boon-465x310.jpg)
(Photo 'rubber woman' copied from: http://www.cinemovies.fr/images/data/photos/16303/micmacs-a-tire-larigot-2009-16303-2078441583.jpg)

15 November 2009

Lucky Luke, James Huth



Lucky Luke is one of many famous comics character we grew up with.
We expected no exceptional film adaptation but agreed about the fact that Jean Dujardin was a very good embodiment of 'John Luke'.
The slapstick aesthetics felt very old fashioned but we liked a lot the "one-armed bandit" segment.
The horse is also very good in the role as the horse!

To put it in a nutshell: I think we got enough of it and won't watch any sequels, even though we like Jean Dujardin as an actor.

1er salon du chocolat à Argenton-sur-Creuse


As we are chocolat lovers, we decided to visit the first Chocolat Festival in Argenton sur Creuse, a very charming city with - among other things - a museum displaying the history of the shirt and male elegance (Musée de la Chemiserie et de l'élégance masuline).

But today the chocolat was the most important subject in Argenton sur Creuse.
Manufacturers of chocolat from around France had gathered to exhibit their different specialities.

As being the first chocolat festival held in the 'salle des fêtes', there were only ten exhibitors and the size of the building was somewhat to small.

Afterwards though, we read that the festival had been visited by 5000 people during these two days. Quite impressing but the French love chocolat and delicacies as we know!

The last few years we've visited the Chocolat Festival in Stockholm, held in Nordiska Museet ('The Nordic Museum'), a much larger event of course but on the other hand a smaller event than the chocolat festival (Salon du Chocolat) in Paris, New York or Tokyo!

We talked with one of the exhibitors and he told us that his firm had visited the chocolat festival in Stockholm some years ago.


01 November 2009

G-Force, Hoyt Yeatman

Since we avoid reading most of the film critics revues, we were convinced we were about to watch a "children's film". It was not!

I (Aurore) was a bit disappointed after having seen this film since it looked like an action film from the 1990's starring guinea pigs and this was not what I had anticipated.
The guinea pigs were however cute!