France
Interview: 10 Questions for Clotilde HesmeWednesday, 02 May 2012
Earlier this year Clotilde Hesme won the César, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, for “most promising actress” in the excellent, atypical love story Angel & Tony. One wonders if the voters have some kind of collective myopia, or simply don’t... Read more... |
iPads and smartphones go live with hip-hop dancingMonday, 30 April 2012
A new publicly funded UK web channel for performing arts opens tomorrow morning, preparing for a major launch this weekend streaming top international streetdancers to the web audience and publishing John Peel's notes on his record collection. The... Read more... |
Braquo, FXMonday, 30 April 2012
The first series of the French cops gone-to-pot drama ended with Lieutenant Eddy Caplan about to blow the head off his nemesis Serge Lemoine. Offing him was supposed to solve all Caplan and his team’s problems. Unfortunately, Lemoine was fitted with... Read more... |
Le MoineMonday, 23 April 2012
Incest, rape, torture and matricide, as well as an obligatory spot of cross-dressing, all played their part in making Matthew Lewis’s Gothic novel The Monk the scandalous success of its day. But with such stuff the bread and butter of Hollywood’s... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Cumbia Cumbia 1 & 2, Etienne de Crecy, The O'JaysSunday, 15 April 2012
Various: Cumbia Cumbia 1 & 2 Peter CulshawThese totally irresisitible compilations were originally issued as separate albums in 1989 and 1993, and were for many (including me) a first taste of this loping, vivacious sound, which originated... Read more... |
DVD: La Grande IllusionTuesday, 10 April 2012
Although only a couple of shots are fired in Jean Renoir’s 1937 La Grande Illusion, its stature as one of the greatest of anti-war films is unquestioned; perhaps only All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Paths of Glory (1957) are comparable.... Read more... |
France Remembers Claude FrançoisSunday, 08 April 2012
If you’re not French, there are probably two things you know about Claude François: that he wrote “My Way” and that he died from electrocution when fiddling with a lighting fixture while in the bath. In France, however, he’s been part of pop-... Read more... |
Le HavreThursday, 05 April 2012
“Feel good” is a description applied far too frequently in reviews, often to movies which are formulaic and saccharine in the extreme. However, Le Havre is a film that’s begging to be described as just that, though it’s far from conventional or... Read more... |
The Kid With a BikeThursday, 22 March 2012
There are many directors who profess (or have claimed for them) one sort of naturalistic cinema or another, from Ken Loach in the UK, to Bruno Dumont in France and Lisandro Alonso in Argentina. It’s an odd characteristic of the Belgian brothers Luc... Read more... |
The Devils: A Masterpiece ResurrectedSaturday, 17 March 2012
“The film is a series of very curious, strange and macabre unbelievable incidents,” said director Ken Russell of The Devils in 1971. "The point of the film really is the sinner who becomes a saint." The tribulations surrounding its release, still... Read more... |
Bel AmiThursday, 08 March 2012
Many a redoubtable British theatre talent has stumbled at the altar of cinema before, which is another way of saying that Bel Ami is hardly the first film to suggest that not every heavyweight of the London and international stage - in this case two... Read more... |
DVD: TomboyTuesday, 28 February 2012
On the face of it, a low-budget French film featuring the story of a pre-pubescent girl who pretends to be a boy promises little more than an off-centre tale of gender envy. Hardly edge-of-your-seat stuff, but Céline Sciamma’s second feature is... Read more... |
