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You are here: Home » Arts + Culture + Fashion » Archive » December 2007-3
December 2007-3
French Arts + Culture Archive: December 20-31, 2007
A chat with Chaplin’s French grandson
NewYorker. Dec. 31, 2007
James Thiérrée is the thirty-three-year-old creator and star of “Au
Revoir Parapluie", a surrealistic mime-acrobatic-dance piece that just
finished a run in New York. Theatre smarts are in his genes: His
father, Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée, created Le Cirque Imaginaire, in
France, in the early nineteen-seventies. His mother, Victoria
Chaplin—the fourth child of Charlie Chaplin and Oona O’Neill—worked
with him in the circus from the start.
> More
Claude Chabrol: "I am incapable of making a masterpiece"
ParisVoice. Dec. 31, 2007
French film director Claude Chabrol has helmed over 60 films, including
many potboilers that strike Americans as “made for TV.” In an interview
on the occasion of his latest film "La fille coupée en deux”, he admits
he loves TV “because television tells the truth.” Chabrol also prefers
to see films on dvd, not in the theatre. He says he is satisfied with
producing films in quantity: “I am incapable of making a masterpiece.”
> More
Gondry’s next film is a post-modern take on visual culture
LosAngelesTimes. Dec. 31, 2007
In French director Michel Gondry's upcoming comedy "Be Kind Rewind”
(opening Jan. 25, 2008), Jack Black and Mos Def play a couple of
knock-around film novices who end up making movie magic with a minimum
of resources. The film echoes Gondry’s own aesthetic, a “handmade
quality” that allows his props and sets to be shown in art galleries
like Deitch Projects in New York.
> More
Who will replace Baudrillaird?
UKTimes. Dec. 30, 2007
This year saw the loss of many big cultural names. In France, the death
of philosopher Jean Baudrillard left a gaping hole in the cultural
landscape. Suddenly, we lack a great POFT — a Pointlessly Obscure
French Thinker. But he might be replace by new figures such as Michel
Onfray and Pierre Manent.
> More
Pierre Bayard:
How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read
UkTimes. Dec. 30, 2007
Bayard is a playful, clever French academic and psychoanalyst. This is
a rich, meaty and immensely enjoyable essay that challenges the
“artificial distinction” between “I have read that book” and “I have
not read that book”. It is about where legitimate critical opinions
really come from. Between reading a book cover to cover and not picking
it up at all, there are umpteen normal and valid critical responses to
books.
> More
Book review: Martin Evans and John Phillips’s “Algeria, Anger of the Dispossessed”
UKTimes. Dec. 30, 2007
This “stunningly important” book deconstructs the myth that the winners
in the French-Algerian war -- bloodiest of French colonial wars -- were
victims, martyrs, and saints. Evans and Phillips have an enviable grasp
of the complexities of Algerian identities and the country’s often
opaque high politics and are alive to the multiple ironies of Algerian
history.
> More
Is Bruni’s affair with Sarkozy a marketing ploy?
UKTimes. Dec. 30, 2007
Far from giving up her guitar to play the Sarkozy’s presidential
consort, Carla Bruni is working on a new album of love songs to be
released by Naïve next year and is already booking dates for a world
tour. The Italian singer and former supermodel had a hit with her 2002
album Quelqu'un m'a Dit (Someone Told Me) but her last album flopped.
> More
Book review: Peter Gay’s “Modernism”
New York Times. December 30, 2007
Peter Gay’s “Modernism: The Lure of Heresy” is a massive history of the
movement in all its artistic forms: painting, sculpture, fiction,
poetry, music, architecture, design, and film. He gives pride of place
to the French as catalysts of modern art, as they provided the most
extreme assaults on Western rationality, via Rimbaud’s “disorientation
of the senses,” Breton’s celebration of primal instincts stored in the
unconscious, Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty,” and Blanchot’s declaration
of the death of the author.
> More
Chicago schools stop teaching French
Chicago Tribune. Dec. 28, 2007
The French language, taught for a decade at two of the five elementary
schools in Illinois’s Park Ridge-Niles School District 64, will be
discontinued next year. Spanish will be the only foreign language
taught in the district, in conformity to the wishes of parents, who
question the value of French in a country that is becoming steadily
more Spanish-speaking.
> More
French director: Britney Spears as Virgin Mary?
HindustanTimes. Dec. 28, 2007
In an extreme case of casting against type, French producer Phillippe
Rebboah has asked troubled pop diva Britney Spears to play the Virgin
Mary in a modern movie remake of the Bible story. He wants her to play
a young woman who goes into labour on Christmas Eve in Bethlehem,
Maryland, prompting rumours that the child is the new Messiah, reports
dailysnack.com. Wouldn’t Mary Magdalene be a better vehicle for the
morally-challenged Spears?
> More
Louis Vuitton Auctions “Charity Bag”
FashionNews. December 2007
Luxury label Louis Vuitton joined forces with Lisa Armstrong, Fashion
Editor of The London Times to design the Ultimate Travel Bag for
charity to be auctioned in aid of CLIC Sargent, a London-based charity
benefiting children with cancer. The starting reserve is set at about
$20,500.
> More
French prefer Japanese manga to Asterix
Businessweek. Dec. 27, 2007
The Japan External Trade Organization says German and French sales of
manga totaled $212.6 million last year. Almost two-thirds of the sales
are in France, where adults and youngsters alike have been avid readers
of comic books known as bandes dessinées. There are now 40 francophone
publishers of manga, up one-third in the past year alone, according to
the French Association of Comic Critics and Journalists. In 2007, a
total of 1,152 mangas from Japan were published in France, 42 more than
last year.
> More
French Playboy offers more nude actresses
Frogsmoke. Dec. 27, 2007
After Juliette Binoche in the December issue, it’s Ludivine Sagnier who
takes the cover and the centerfold in the French January Playboy. As
usual, for those who never buy the magazine for the pictures, there’s
also an interview with the actress. The Frogsmoke blog offers a
retrospective of French female celebrities that show themselves at
their most beautiful (warning: nudity).
> More
Opéra-Comique Reopening Disappoints
MusicalAmerica. December 27, 2007
The Dec. 13, 2007 reopening of the Opéra-Comique after a
multi-million-Euro makeover was a let-down. The new boss Jérôme
Deschamps created a slow-motion production of Emmanuel Chabrier’s opera
buffa,“L’Etoile” (“The Star”) that failed to amuse, despite a cast of
good singers.
> More (Subscription only)
Bradbury honors France by accepting Arts and Letters award
WestSideToday. Dec. 26, 2007
On December 17, 2007 American sci-fi genius Ray Bradbury was named
Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in Los Angeles. The
connection between France and Bradbury is tenuous: Truffaut made a 1966
film of his novel "Fahrenheit 451." In a speech, French Ambassador
Pierre Vimont effused: “Dear Ray … you reveal the very soul of
humankind, in its irrational aspiration to become God.”
> More
Praise for Satrapi’s film Persepolis
Los Angeles Times. Dec. 25, 2007
Franco-Iranian author Marjane Satrapi's Golden Globe-nominated animated
film "Persepolis" has opened in wide release in the USA to good
reviews. The Los Angeles Times called it "a paean to the universality
of human experience, a testament to the endurance of individuality
during great political and fanatical upheaval." The New York Times
praised its "grace, intelligence and charm."
> More
Top Movies of 2007
New York Times. Dec. 24, 2007
The New York Times has named the usual
French
suspects
among its best movies of 2007: the animated feature Ratatouille and
Julian Schnable's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, with honorable
mention going to "Lady Chatterley" and “Into Great Silence."
> More
Bernard-Henri Lévy’s dress style
HuffPost. December 24, 2007
French pop-philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy is a millionaire who sports
signature dark suits and unbuttoned down-to-there white shirts. His
style icons are Jean-Paul Sartre and Ernest Hemingway.
> More
Author Julien Gracq dead at 97
AFP. Dec. 23, 2007
French novelist, poet, drama author and critic Julien Gracq, one of the
last links with the pre-World War II Surrealist movement, died on Dec.
22, 2007 at the age of 97. Gracq, whose real name was Louis Poirier,
was a reclusive genius who turned down the Prix Goncourt for his
best-known work "Le Rivage des Syrtes" (The Opposite Shore) in 1951.
> More
Art Review: Matisse: Painter as Sculptor
NewYorkTimes. Dec. 22, 2007
“Matisse: Painter as Sculptor” is a stunning exhibition at the
Baltimore Museum of Art. Probably the largest consideration of
Matisse’s sculpture mounted in this country in about 40 years, this
show has been organized by the Baltimore Museum, the Dallas Museum of
Art and its neighbor the Nasher Sculpture Center. It centers on nearly
50 of the 82 sculptures that Matisse completed.
> More
Shirley MacLaine to play Coco Chanel
Variety. Dec. 22, 2007
Shirley MacLaine is set to play Coco Chanel in a Lifetime miniseries
about the rise of the French fashion icon, starting with her upbringing
in an orphanage outside Paris. The first part of the series will
examine Ms. Chanel's move to reinvent herself in her 70s, after
spending years in exile. The show will premiere in 2008. Karl Lagerfeld
has given his blessing.
> More
Art show marks French rail history
UKGuardian. Dec. 22, 2007
To mark its 70th birthday, SNCF, the state-owned French national
railway, has commissioned an illuminating and lively exhibition
celebrating the love affair between French art and French railways.
Opening in Paris today in the airy splendour of the Grand Palais, L'Art
entre en Gare: quands les trains et les gares inspirent l'art, will
remain in Paris until January 6 2008.
> More
Artist Koons’s Sculpture to Versailles
Bloomberg. Dec. 21, 2007
From September 2008, American pop artist Jeff Koons will exhibit his
giant sculptures indoors and outdoors at the Palace of Versailles. “I
sincerely believe that this artist, who is a product of neo-Pop
culture, is very well suited to Versailles,'' said Jean- Jacques
Aillagon, president of the Chateau de Versailles, who until June ran
billionaire Francois Pinault's Palazzo Grassi exhibition venue in
Venice.
> More
Thousands enjoy French opera via Met Opera broadcasts
December 21, 2007
the Metropolitan Opera transmitted Gounod’s French opera
"Roméo et Juliette," starring Anna Netrebko, live via satellite to
high-definition screens at five New York City public high schools. Some
2,000 students and family members attended for free.
> More
Phantom of the Opera: New York Version
December 21, 2007
Jack O'Brien, the acclaimed director of the stage production of
Hairspray and Coast of Utopia, is working with Andrew Lloyd Webber on
his sequel to Phantom of the Opera in London. The Phantom sequel story
would be set 15 years after the events of the first show, based in
Paris. The Phantom has moved from France to New York and has set up a
fairground world on Coney Island.
> More
Book review: A Life of Picasso
New York Review of Books. Dec. 20, 2007
Volume three of John Richardson's A Life of Picasso has now appeared
and, like the first two installments of the biography, it is a work so
rich with information and insight that it will forever change our
understanding of the artist.
> More
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