May 2011

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Let's start May with a Comment c'est fait.  Here's how they make a couteau de poche - what we call a Swiss Army Knife.  I was a bit disappointed - the model shown doesn't include the thingummy for getting Boy Scouts out of horses hooves.

It's rare to find a French film with dialogue as (relatively) easy to follow as this, a bit of Depardieu froth about a pretty anthropologist who discovers a tribe of primitive Indians, who take gaily to modern life

There seem to be a spate of American series at the moment which are quite gory - not like horror films, just forensic. So here is Eleventh Hour which features a man who has developed two hearts and dies of over-oxygenation. All good clean fun.

Much more traditional than Eleventh Hour is Parents à tout prix which Wiki tells us is an American series called Grounded for life.  A little different from the ordinary run of sitcoms - it's about a family of Irish origin.  Apart from that, well, it's an American sitcom.  Well made, quite funny - what more do we want ?

It's American, it's Las Vegas and it's the world of gambling. Actually, this episode of Las Vegas Hotel  was quite funny, well-written, fast-paced, and therefore rather challenging linguistically.

Y que la vérité qui compte is a fairly frightful piece of work. It is a French programme on AB1 where ordinary people who have relationship problems come into the studio to tell us all about and make a tearful appeal to their loved one. It may not be high culture, but linguistically it is interesting and worth while

Arte television gave us a nice little film on George Brassens, with historic footage and commentary from those who knew him.

The scandal of Dominque Strauss-Kahn, Director of the IMF, favourite to be elected President of France in 2012, has rocked France to its roots. DSK is accused of attempted rape on a 32 year old chamber maid in a New York Hotel. I post this 17th May, the day after DSK has been refused bail.  He is to appear again on Friday in court. Another thing - I have always watched either TF1 or France 2 evening news, but here I found myself watching BFM TV, a 24 hour news channel. Good TV.

Operation Shakespeare is exactly the sort of unassuming American comedy that is so useful for us when dubbed into French.

Here's a Comment c'est fait that I found rather odd - on the manufacture of marbles. After showing us the mass production of these objects, we are shown how marbles are also made by hand. Very impressive - and surely the product is not intended to be flicked around in the school playground, but as an ornament. I could have done with some explanation.

Here's a rather good post-apocalyptic film from Britain. It's got dragons in it and people trying to survive by digging holes in the ground. That's all you need to know really...

The years of the Occupation continue to fascinate the French, and us as well. Pétain, far from being a harmless old dodderer was a fascist with a project. Those who worked under him, Laval, and this man, Papon, were if anything worse. Here is Maurice Papon, a dedicated and tireless bureaucrat with a flair for organisation. And if he was told to round up Jews and deport to German concentration camps, he did that with the same efficiency. The horrifying thing is how ordinary the man is.

Des racines et des ailes could have been conceived with the student of French in mind. The voice-over is clear as crystal, and the subject matter very often the cultural history of France. Hes is le Palais des Rois

Here's E=M6 explaining the therapeutic effect animals can have on us - especially the basso profundo  of Balthazar, the Siamese cat.

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