January 2011

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A propos d'Henry (Regarding Henry) is a slightly laborious but quite good film about a big city lawyer who disposes of the world about him with brisk ruthlessness until the day when fate drops a ton of bricks on his head

I nearly didn't include this extract from Comment c'est fait, because machines that give change - monnayeurs - are becoming less common in our societies. However, it turned out to be full of unusual vocabulary. A solid bit of engineering and a good exercise.

Elisabeth, L'Âge d'Or is the second film about the Queen of England. Unashamedly romantic and centred on the alleged relationship with Walter Raleigh, it is actually rather well-written, and benefits from the presence of Cate Blanchett.  All in all, a good film.

A spate of classic films over the Christmas holiday. We have to have the famous scene from The Graduate, don't we ?

No surprise that the French do a dubbed version of the A-team. But I was delighted to find that they'd taken the trouble to re-record the title song. It shows how popular this sort of thing is...

Another film that I thought would make an easy exercise - The Battle of Britain, which the French call, correctly, La Bataille d'Angleterre. In fact it wasn't the French that was difficult but the RAF pilot's slang which, translated into French sounds rather odd.

The Island is one of a long series of future dystopias which enable film makers to create interesting setting, costumes and special effects. But this one is rather good. If you don't know the film, read about it here.

Angel is one of these strange, but rather creative American series, which mixes the supernatural and the terribly ordinary, for the pleasure of young audiences all over the world. Nothing wrong with that...

François Mitterrand was the only socialist to become President in the last sixty years. His first - socialist government - was not a great success - and was followed by a return of the Right to Parliament and the start of a long and un easy cohabitation with a right-wing Prime Minister, but he remains a figure of fascination. He was cultivated, Machiavellian, maintained a mistress and a natural daughter in parallel with his own family, and fought very bravely against the cancer which finally killed him. This was a good documentary from La chaîne parlementaire

Good ol' ET - l'extraterrestre... It works nicely in French, I think. I was fascinated to see on the credits at the end that a French actor had been engaged to dub the voice of the little extraterrestrial into French... And I had an awful time with the names of the Star Wars characters.

Michel Cerdan, middleweight champion of the world and companion of Edith Piaf, died in 1949 in a plane accident. Here is a clip from an excellent documentary on this very modest man.

It's a pity that Arte television is only a partnership between France and Germany, and not Europe-wide. It broadcasts a very great deal of British material, and of very good quality. As, for instance Le tour de l'ecrou, the film version of Henry James The turn of the screw. Very much the sort of thing we are looking for as listening exercises of intermediate level between documentaries and modern French films.

I can't say I understood precisely what Dollhouse was all about, but it didn't matter. It is a series that exudes scientific futurist  menace, and it is really quite nasty.  You can read about it here.

Sherlock Holmes continues to inspire film and TV makers. Here is a traditional version, 19th century, with a very correct Watson, and a young Holmes very much in the Conan Doyle tradition

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