July 2011
Good old Comment c'est fait... Maybe it's a male thing, but I can always watch programmes about how you actually make the ordinary objects that fill our lives. The immense care with which CDs are made inspires with the thought - thank God someone invented the mp3 ! It also occurs to me that I should really search out a series of cooking programmes on French TV. That would exercise our vocabulary, woudn't it ?
24H Buzz is a cheerful bit of nonsense where two over-excited presenters introduce a little documentary telling us how stars were spotted in the road, in hamburger joints, outside their schools. Considering the age at which some of these people are 'spotted' it surprises me that the head-hunters don't get arrested...
I rather liked Legend of the Seeker whose title the French television company decided not to translate - something we see more and more in adverts also. You can read all about it here. There's no shortage of American material on French telly, is there. When you think of the size of the French dubbing industry...
Ooops, here we go again. Another frightening lady professional. I joke about it, but I find it entirely admirable that America practises this form of 'feminist cultural positive discrimination'. Anyway, she's a top surgeon who has decided to work for the private sector, and is not willing to take no for an answer. What is also interesting is that France Télévisions has puffed this series as being a major acquisition, because its precursor, Grays Anatomy, was owned by TF1. Anyway, it's useful for us....
Peur Primal (American title, Primal Fear is a pretty good film starring Richard Gere as a Chicago lawyer who decides to defend a young drop-out accused of murdering a bishop... But it's absolutely the right level as a listening exercise at a reasonably modest level
I came across this as an item in an evening news programme. A play currently running in Paris was based on the 1964 film Repas des fauves, which I had recorded some time ago but never got around to viewing. It turns out to be an excellent French film set in Paris during the Occupation. A group of friends are having dinner, when a German officer is killed by the Resistance just outside their flat. A German officer arrives to take hostages.... And the French is extremely clear
I always enjoy Arte's series Mystères d'archives. Here is one on the coronation of Elizabeth II. No mystery, but a very impressive account of the different parts of the ceremony, and a little word on the disappearance of the famous Stone of Scone. A straightforward level-1
I always record discussions on the French language. This one was promising, between Daniel Pivot, Claude Hagège the haughty linguist, and Richard Bohringer. In the event, it was an odd discussion... you'll see why
Mid-July 2011 and French Television news is reporting with glee on the News of The World scandal in London. Here is John Hanley of the Guardian who is asked if this means that the gutter press is finished in Britain, and replies that no, despite these scandals, a country needs a free press to act as a contre-pouvoir to the men who run the country. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, of course... not Rupert Murdoch, that's for sure.
Here's Comment c'est fait on the subject of airline food. Of course, they spend a long time explaining how carefully the business class meals are prepared, and then add casually, 'Of course, economy class doesn't get the same care'. You can say that again...
Monaco, le rocher des princes was a pleasant documentary on France 5 on the relationship between the Grimaldi family and the magazine POaris Match - one whose photographers was apparently responsible for introducing Grace Kelly to Rainier. Linguistically, as so often, the voice-over is very easy to follow, but the journalists who speak rather less so
La chasse à courre, à cor et à cri, is what in Britain we call fox-hunting, and which was banned in 2004, not without opposition. "The unspeakable in full pursuit of the inedible" was what Oscar wittily called it, and it is interesting that the deputé Yves Cochet, who has espoused the cause of the anti-hunting lobby, describes the French version in much the same terms. He makes a distinction between the ordinary hunters, who hunt as men have done for millions of years, and the bourgeois - indeed aristocratic - ritual of hounding an exhausted animal to death. It makes for a nice piece for us, though
30Rock refers to an address in New York, 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The series is about the people who work for a TV show, but that is less important than the humour, which is what Americans call off-the-wall. Whatever we may call it, it made me smile
There was some nice archive footage in these moments from Années '60 mythologiques part of an ongoing popular culture series from France Télévisions. I liked particularly the shots of the launching of le France, that grand old liner, at the end
