Clips organised by level
Level 2 Page 5
Missing is (yet) another American series about people who bring offer their particular skills to the service of American justice. In this episode we are treated to a resolutely feminist and tough lady FBI agent, who wants none of that nonsense...
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...
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....
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
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
Sadly, YouTube, in their wisdom, won't let me embed this one on this page - doubtless for copyright reason. I will avoid sinning in the future, but having done the work of transcription I will upload the video here for download in the traditional way
TF1 gave us Les 30 histoires les plus extraordinaires. I have to say I was disappointed, most of the stories being American, not French. And given that France recently gave us the unbelievable story of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, I would have thought that that would have been the easy winner... However, here's a nice obsessed Frenchman who devoted his life to searching for his American GI dad.
I can't pretend that I understood what Gossip Girl was all about when I watched an episode: it seemed to be a group of American adolescents who were mysteriously rich and famous despite being well... adolescent. So here is the Wiki article.
But artistic quality is not what this site is about, and the bright, excited dialogue makes for a good listening exercise
You have to download this one, I'm afraid
Here is a tiny little video, less than two minutes, taken from TF1's evening news, about a shipyard welcoming tourists during the summer months. It's also a very good example of the listening difficulties we can encounter in even the easiest piece. The voice-over, most of the time, is clear enough.. but the comments of the tourists give the ear something to work on
TF1 screened something called La plus mystérieuse histoire... This was the winner, a story of mysterious knockings from an intelligent entity in a house ... all of this recorded and attested to by the captain of the local police. Good one. Because the policeman is a local lad, his voice is not always that easy to follow
This weekend, 18-19 September 2011, is in France Les journées du patrimoine, where the French can tour around the Elysée Palace, the Bank of France and other incredibly luxurious buildings for whose upkeep they pay but do not normally get to see. I recorded Un été à Versailles thinking it would make a nice relaxing level-1 exercise of the Des racines et des ailes type. Well, it starts like that, but we quickly are introduced to the problems of managing 28 000 visitors per day, with a queue one and a half kilometres long. Arrives a harassed guide called Dominique who has the job of interesting a public who think that Marie Antoinette was married to Louis XIV, and the listening exercise rapidly gets quite a lot harder...
I don't often see the breakfast show TéléMatin, because it runs from 5.30 am to 8 am GMT, and enthusiasm has its limits. However, every so often I like to record a contribution from one of their chroniqueurs. Here is Frédérick Gersal, whose style is excitable. I was a little surprised by his choice - the Munich Olympic Games Massacre when Palestinian terrorists of the group Black September made an unwelcome appearance at the Games. It is today 21st September 2011, and Palestine is trying to get the UN to agree to the foundation of a Palestinian state. French TV is usually discreet about things like that. However, deciphering the unfinished sentences of M. Gersal is the interest here, not world politics.
One of the very best programmes on FranceTélévisions at the moment is Un jour un destin presented by Laurent Delahousse. It presents the biographies of stars but without the mawkish sentimentality of a lot of these programmes. This one was on Simone Signoret, a very great lady of French cinema. This clip describes the success she and Yves Montand had in New York, when they finally woke up to the idea that communism wasn't a good idea and went to the States. Signoret was the first French actress ever to win an Oscar .
You will note that she got the award for her role in what is described as 'a little English film' which she had happened to make. Three times we hear about this 'little English film'. Well, it was Room at the Top, with Laurence Harvey, my friends and it wasn't so little...
It was one of my French friends who recommended this wonderful film Bouvard et Pécuchet. It is an adaptation of one of Flaubert's major works, and stars Jean-Pierre Marielle and Jean Carmet, two of France's greatest actors. It is a reflective, very beautiful film, and one of the very few that we will find that are not difficult to follow
From imaginary crime to a very real crime - Jack the Ripper, in 1888. So much has been written about this, so many theories put forward that when France 2 put on a programme called l'Eventreur démasqué, I settled down to watch with a sigh of resignation. But it was very well done. The suspect 'démasqué' turns out to be Melville Macnaghten, Commissionaire of Police of Scotland Yard. What is at the least surprising is that he doesn't seem to have been suspected before now. Everybody else was in London, after all. On the linguistic level, one notes that the speech of the lady who has uncovered all of this is quite hard to follow - a good level-2. Please note that some of the pictures are fairly gory.
M6's weeken popular science programme E=M6 did a piece on compulsive behaviour. French is more logical than English and we learn that when a pulsion(= urge) is unhealthy, it becomes a compulsion. Naturally I hoped we were going to hear all about Dominique Strauss-Kahn as a text book example.. but they weren't that brave
The affair of the Mediator unites two subjects which are dear to the French - health and the villainy of large companies. This is the story of the pharmaceutical company Servier which sold this product, first as a medicine for the treatment of diabetes, then to help with weight loss. We are told that as a side effect it tended to harden the valves of the heart, and patients died. Servier is accused of knowing that, and suppressing the information. So here's a clip from an excellent documentary about some people who led the combat against this pernicious substance.
France 5 screened a programme about eating insects. Because this is, in our societies, still an odd thing to do, the first few minutes showed English people doing it. But that's normal on French TV. The programme then went on to show a French entrepreneur making an insect dinner for a couple of his friends who do their best to show their appreciation.
Friday evenings, France 3 screens Thalassa, le magazine de la mer. It was from the Brittany port of Saint-Brieuc, where lives a French friend of mine with whom I speak regularly on Skype - so I was particularly interested. They did a little piece on a girl pop singer from the region whose name is Julie Budet, and whose father, François Budet is the composer of the song Loguivy de la mer. The song absolutely blew me away. It speaks to those of us who were born near the North sea and know the little coast towns where all that is left of the fishing trade is the cobles turned upside down on the jetties to make cabins for the local fishermen. Here you have the song off Youtube and a bit of the interview with Julie Budet. Not an easy voice to follow, but you will like the song
Echappées belles is a nice little series from France 5 where broadcasters visit regions of France and other countries to discover 'the local colour'. This one was on the region of Bourgogne, where we meet a group of feminist winegrowers. A bit odd, but good fun
I always enjoy receiving videos from users of this site - it gets me out of the rut of ordinary television. So I am very grateful for Paris 1900, a black and white documentary which was shot in 1946. The voice-over is fascinating. It's of it's period, similar to the way movie announcers spoke in Britain and in America in the '30s and '40s. However, the sound quality makes this a fairly difficult listening exercise. A lot of the time it is clear, then there a re a few words which one just has to guess. Good fun though.
Yesterday evening was the Miss France competition on TF1. No point in being snobbish about this sort of event, which in France is done with a certain elegance. The girls are students, pretty, more intelligent and considerably taller than the presenter, Jean-Pierre Foucault, who next to them looked strangely furtive. One of these seven won the competition. I'll give you a clue, it wasn't the first, Miss Languedoc - but it should have been !
Nothing could be further from the world of Miss France than the KTO, short for Catho, or Catholique, the channel for those who profess that faith. I flick through it from time to time, and chanced across a documentary called La Tenture de l'Apocalypse, which you can see in the museum next time you pass through Angers. The interest is evident : the thing is enormous, and of great historical interest. Linguistically interesting also, this clip finishes with a flurry of vocabulary relating to weaving : did you know that métier, which we use every day in its sense of 'job' .. is also the word for 'loom' ?
I very much like the series of Doc Martin on TF1, which is that rare bird, a successful French situation comedy. It stars Thierry Lhermitte who is just right for the role. And the dialogue is delivered clearly
Here's the other presenter who makes it possible for me to watch LCP's evening round-up of French political news. Sonia Mabrouk is her name and she appears along with her faithful dwarf, Jean-Louis Gombeaud. M. Gombeaud is an economist, which must be one of the most uncomfortable professions possible in a country which has a traditional distrust of money and financial precision. Here he attempts to explain the Socialist Party's position on the age of retirement, and he quotes Cardinal Retz "On ne sort de l'ambiguïté qu'à son détriment". It does rather sum up French politics...
