Just months after his May 2007 election, French president Nicolas Sarkozy faced growing criticism over his stalled reforms, flashy style, and stormy divorce. The last straw should have been his whirlwind remarriage, to an Italian heiress, ex-model, and singer who had past liaisons with Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, among others, and nude photos all over the Internet. But the lady in question, Carla Bruni, is proving an unexpected asset. At the Élysée Palace, Maureen Orth encounters a pair of romantic predators who appear to have met their matches.
From the recent archive:
Carla Bruni, first lady of France, has a new album.
And from the thread in 2005 about her first album:
For some, the idea of listening to songs in another language is akin to watching a ball game in which the ball is invisible: meaningless and frustrating. For me, it works the other way round. Freed from following the words, I am ready to be lured by the sound of the singer's voice, alert to the interplay between voice and instruments.
We've got comely shepherds and shepherdesses in pristine neo-Classical tunics standing around in their fields. They sing, they dance, they discourse on love. If they do any actual herding of sheep, we don't see it.
Second, on Ludivine Sagnier's new film (watch the video):
Arguably, "A Girl Cut in Two" is more fun around the edges, as an assemblage of bizarre supporting characters and throwaway comic bits, than it is down the middle, as a classic French morality tale about an innocent girl despoiled by two warring predators. Chabrol's intermittent parody of provincial French television is hilarious, and Cavalli, Silhol, Marie Bunel and the feral, dominatrix-like Mathilda May stand out amid a cast of amazing women. But Sagnier's luminous performance is in every way the heart of the picture; Gabrielle is the one real person, the one who strives, suffers, yearns and survives in this world of grotesque artifice.
Here's NYT on the film:
It is, in truth, a rich, textured divertissement from Claude Chabrol, a sinister master of the art, who, after a series of vague if invariably entertaining cinematic sketches, has returned to elegant tight form with an erotically charged, beautifully directed story of a woman preyed upon by different men and her own warring desires.
Next up, Woody Allen's new film:
In fact, for my money Cruz's modest supporting role is the best thing about the movie.
NYT:
Bathed in light so lusciously golden and honeyed that you might be tempted to lick the screen, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is a rueful comedy about two young American women who, during a summertime European idyll, savor many of the Continental delicacies that such travelers often take pleasure in: art, music, culture, yes, but also strange bodies and unexpected dreams.
Woody Allen’s new movie has an easy, flowing vitality to it, a sun-drenched splendor that never falters.
Now for the not:
The ossification of "Star Wars" continues with "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," an animated sub-chapter (appendix? owner's manual?) of George Lucas's cynically plundered saga. This one shucks off all pretense that "Star Wars" has a wonderfully universal appeal and instead unfolds with all the entertainment value of watching somebody else play a video game.
From what I have read it is everything I have feared in a Star Wars film. The plot centers around Jabba the Hutt’s son nicknamed Stinky (not making this up) getting kidnapped and Anakin Skywalker and his new, hip, cool, sassy, spunky, teenage female sidekick — who apparently refers to him as “Sky Guy” — try to rescue him. This addition is on the level of adding Poochie to The Itchy and Scratchy Show, only for real.
Charles Weever Cushman, amateur photographer and Indiana University alumnus, bequeathed approximately 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to his alma mater. The photographs in this collection bridge a thirty-two year span from 1938 to 1969, during which time he extensively documented the United States as well as other countries.
Check out the highlights. And for other samples, see here.
The Criterion Collection: Bottle Rocket by Wes Anderson
Topic: Arts
7:24 am EDT, Aug 19, 2008
Bottle Rocket enters the Criterion Collection!
Wes Anderson first illustrated his lovingly detailed, slightly surreal cinematic vision in this witty and warm portrait of three young middle-class misfits. Fresh out of a mental hospital, gentle Anthony (Luke Wilson) finds himself once again embroiled in the machinations of his best friend, elaborate schemer Dignan (Owen Wilson). With the aid of getaway driver Bob (Robert Musgrave), they develop a needlessly complex, mildly successful plan to rob a small bookstore—then go “on the lam.” Also featuring Lumi Cavazos as Inez, the South American housekeeper Anthony falls in love with, and James Caan as local thief extraordinaire Mr. Henry, Bottle Rocket is a charming, hilarious, affectionate look at the folly of dreamers. Shot against radiant southwestern backdrops, it’s the film that put Anderson and the Wilson brothers on the map.
For your enjoyment:
Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman Shop for CDs and DVDs
Novelist Neal Stephenson Once Again Proves He's the King of the Worlds
Topic: Arts
7:24 am EDT, Aug 19, 2008
Only a few months ago, another epic bubbled up from his basement. Anathem, Stephenson's ninth novel, is set for release on September 9. The Nealosphere, of course, is over the top with anticipation. This time, Stephenson has given himself the broadest stage yet: a world of his own creation, including a new language. Though he's been consistently ambitious in his work, this latest effort marks a high point in his risk-taking, daring to blend the elements of a barn-burner space opera with heavy dollops of philosophical dialog. It's got elements of Dune, The Name of the Rose, and Michael Frayn's quantum-physics talkathon, Copenhagen. Befitting a novel written by a founding member of the History Book Club, its leitmotif is time—and its message couldn't be more timely.
Oh, and Stephenson manages to do it all in only 960 pages.
From the archive:
Anathem is a magnificent creation: a work of great scope, intelligence, and imagination that ushers readers into a recognizable—yet strangely inverted—world.
From further back:
Each of these works is so large, so grand, so packed with detail, that the marketplace is unable to accommodate it all at one time. And so a story is broken into pieces, with the releases spaced apart in time, that the audience might take advantage of the intermission to savor the tasty bits of the first course while waiting in eager anticipation of the next.
A motion picture essay which takes a revealing and shocking look at modern life and its imbalances. The first film in a trilogy which was followed by Powaqatsi.
Who doesn't love a tasty skewer of roasted author, now and then?
Despite its thrilling material, “Kingmakers” gets off to a slow start. Although Meyer and Brysac are strong on the texture and detail of historical events, they simply do not appear to be very interested in the early part of their story about British imperialism. The first few chapters are a patchwork of glamorous and entertaining anecdotes without much to hold them together. The authors stray into lengthy digressions, some of which — like a five-page diversion into the filming of “Lawrence of Arabia” — tend to have the same effect on the flow of their story as Lawrence’s bombs had on the Ottoman railways.
These weak chapters show up the worst of Meyer and Brysac’s writing style, which is sometimes pretentious to the point of incomprehensibility and becomes more so when they seem to lack interest in their subject matter. The thesaurus takes a battering: Meyer and Brysac will not have half of something if they can have a moiety; they will not give a gift if they can give a lagniappe; they will not quote a saying if they can quote an apothegm.
Sometimes it’s almost impossible to make out what they mean, as when Gladstone is said to have “habitually lofted oratorical rockets into the unassailable empyrean,” when all the poor man actually did was to answer a few questions. Or when the British agent St. John Philby is said “to glare at the world through his owlish shrubbery.” What is owlish shrubbery? A shrubbery full of owls? A shrubbery shaped like an owl? A prop from Monty Python? As to what glaring through such a thing might signify, this reviewer is at a loss to imagine.
See also:
The book is subtly subtitled “A Novel of December 8th” to signal its attention to the Japanese point of view. On the basis of that detail, you might expect a high level of fastidiousness from “Pearl Harbor.”
And you would be spectacularly wrong. Because you would find phrases like “to withdraw backward was impossible,” sounds like “wretching noises” to accompany vomiting, or constructions like “incredulous as it seemed, America had not reacted.” Although the book has two authors, it could have used a third assigned to cleanup patrol.
From the archive:
And yes, it's also true that whenever Gingrich utters the word "frankly," the words that follow almost always involve rank deception. And frankly, he says "frankly" a lot.
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