Short films in view

A festival of short films opens tomorrow (Wednesday 13th March) in Najac. There are films to suit all ages, including two morning sessions for children. Thursday 14th March includes a session at 20h30 when seven short films on the subject of migration, "Un Monde Sans Frontieres?" will be shown. The films are to be shown at L'Hors Loge in rue de la Loge.

Film about two inventive resistants

"Stan et Ulysse" is a documentary film about two resourceful young men who defied the Nazi invaders in the Belgian/Franco border area. Those interested in this period, as well as those wanting to know more about the exploits and "dirty tricks" the resistants used to counter the German occupiers are invited to a showing of the film in Verfeil sur Seye  on Friday 26th October at 19h.
In the Petit Verfeillais, with drinks and nibbles available and a chance to discuss the show with others in the audience..
enquiries to Muriel Fourcade at  murielfourcade@yahoo.fr

Timbuktu on at the Queryls

Timbuktu was made in 2014 and is a very probable Oscar winner for the best foreign language film. It is on at the Queryls tomorrow at 8.30pm with English subtitles and again on Monday at 5 pm.
Malc and I went tonight with a friend and we watched in stunned silence. It is a beautiful film, beautifully shot and beautifully paced but nothing else about it is beautiful. The ten people tonight in the Queryls who had bothered to go and see it sat in stunned silence at the end. We discussed it on the drive all the way home, the sign of a good film.
It was sad and sadder still to know a lot of these events happened.
We reported it a lot on TAG last year as this French speaking  former colony was invaded in the North of Mali by extreme Islamists, sharia law fighters. Malc and I were interested on two counts. We are very involved with raising money for Malian children and having an interest in books we were concerned for the ancient library at Timbuktu.
Tonight the film showed how these extremists threatened, terrorised and killed the law abiding citizens.After seeing this film I am proud that the French army liberated these people from their terrible would be masters. To my mind the best film seen for a long time dealing with serious issues and my stand up and be counted to stop the rise of extremism seemed even more valid as we drove home.
I am looking forward to having a laugh with Paddington Bear  later this month but this film is one Malc and I were glad we had seen, even though after the recent terrorists attacks it was hard to bear.
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Lucy, the most successful French film, has it been here?

Luc Besson's thriller "Lucy" starring Scarlett Johansson has taken the global market by storm, becoming the most successful French film abroad in 20 years, movie agency UniFrance announced Friday.

The sci-fi film about a woman who becomes superhuman by using 100 percent of her brain has sold 57.3 million tickets throughout the world, and has just come out in China where it drew nearly six million people to movie theatres in just 10 days.  Directed by Besson, it was produced by the French filmmaker's EuropaCorp company.  Val says has this been to the Querlys ?       
A reader say , it has not been here yet.      comments to taglines82@gmail.com

Cheering talk needed

After we were at the cinema watching someone's birthday choice we have been discussing what our choices would be.
Tudor loves Star Wars, which I have never deigned to watch, so he made a second choice which was Toy Story 2. I might watch again with grandchildren but poor Tudor might be on his own with an auditorium full of kids!
Malc would choose  " Some like it Hot" which is always worth watching.
My three recent favourites are " Broke Back Mountain" which Malc thinks is a good film but seeing it once was enough. I also loved the  short story by Annie Proulx, a story of two gay men not able to show their love, so sad and touching.
La Reine Margot which we ladies adore and the men do not like or "Django Unchanged" a Quentin Tarantino film which sees buckets of blood being thrown around but with an amusing bent to all the gore... probably be on my own for that.
What would your choice be and why and do you think your friends would enjoy it?

Talking to a second homer here in the cinema she had been to a same sort of "birthday do" two days before at Crouch End cinema for another friends birthday. It is apparently the " in " thing to do.

We could raise money for charities showing your favourite film on the big screen with surround sound and serving an apero for friends for that special occasion.  You could provide the DVD and we could provide champagne and nibbles, all for a fee of course and proceeds could go to one of your  chosen TAG charities.
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That there film

Recettes du bonheur on at St. Antonin, was it good or what?
Malc is out playing bridge so brother in law Tudor and another friend met up to go and give our critical verdict.
Let us get Tudors review over first " well I would not see it again and at least no one was hurt"

Hmm! Whereas friend Lorraine and I thought it was a pleasant film which we enjoyed with a few smiles, a bit of romance and some wonderful scenery around the place we have grown to love so much.
 I felt pride in the bits we saw of St. Antonin, was not sure about the positioning of the two hotels but you cannot have everything and as another reader said at least St. Antonin was mentioned three times.
Would I go again? Well I have promised to go next week with Malc and although Tudor says he will stay at home, I will go again.
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Helen Mirren on BBC 2

Hi Val,

The UK seems to be excited about the new movie – A Hundred Foot Journey – starting this weekend in the cinemas. Listen to the interview Helen Mirren gave on BBC Radio 2 :http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04fm85f

The interview starts the second hour on 1.05.00.

Even now the first tourists are already arriving in St Antonin from the USA because they have seen the pictures in the movie. How many British will come the next year? I am really excited to see the movie in a short time after 10 September.

Hans

Val says  It is so great for our beautiful region, it should be on the tourist map. Checking the link it is BBC Radio2

Hi Val

She was also on the One Show last night - BBC1 for those that watch that programme

K
Val says
Thanks K
that solves a dilemma, she was on -  but we both slept through it. We spent all night saying" that is strange we thought Helen Mirren was going to be on!" 

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The hundred foot journey

Hi Val
Readers might be interested in this link which shows a trailer for the film,The Hundred-foot Journey that was filmed around here last year:

http://cinemur.fr/actualites/trailer-voyage-cent-pas-charlotte-le-bon-steven-spielberg-11353

Doreen
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DSK to sue the filmmaker

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief who was forced to resign after a New York hotel maid accused him of rape, is suing a US filmmaker whose latest film draws its inspirations from the much-publicized scandal, DSK's lawyers said Monday.

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Brilliant or in bad taste, the DSK scandal in a movie

Far from being shown in one of the big, plush theatres in the festival hall, the film starring Gerard Depardieu as a man with striking similarities to "DSK", whose alleged 2011 sexual assault on a New York hotel maid shook the world, was screened in a small, local cinema. The 500 or so mainly journalists who viewed it all had differing feelings.

Gerard Depardieu although on my dislike list is an exceptional actor.   DSK also on my dislike list has nothing to recommend him. Will I go to see the film, not sure.     Comments to taglines82@gmail.com

Too sad and horrific for me to watch, this new film

In 2006, a 23-year-old Parisian Jew named Ilan Halimi was lured to a late-night rendez-vous by a young woman, then kidnapped, held for ransom, and tortured in a basement for three weeks by a gang known as the “Barbarians”. Finally, when his captors realised no money was coming their way, they doused him in acid and dumped him bound and naked by the side of a highway. Halimi was found alive, but died before reaching the hospital.

The grisly murder shocked France -- which is home to Europe’s largest Jewish population -- and made front-page headlines abroad.

Now, somewhat inevitably, the story is coming to the big screen: Alexandre Arcady’s “24 Jours: La vérité sur l’affaire Ilan Halimi” (which translates as “24 Days: The Truth about the Ilan Halimi Case”) will be released in France on April 30.   Taken from News 24    
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Watch out for the Monuments Men

HOLLYWOOD war movie The Monuments Men, which opens in cinemas today across France, has finally brought recognition to one of the unsung heroes of the Second World War: Rose Valland.

Played in the movie by recent Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, Ms Valland, who died in 1980, was a highly respected Resistance fighter who located thousands of works of art, stolen by the Nazis during the conflict.

The film was loosely based on the biography written by French Senator Corrine Bouchoux, who told France 24: “If someone had told me before that my book could be the inspiration of such a big production, I would never have believed it.”    From the Connexion
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Césars 2014

Val says reading the list the film to look out for is " Les Garçons et Guillaume, a table. Wonder if it has been to the Querlys or is coming?

A coming out comedy called in English, Me, myself and Mum. It won best film, best first film, best 

actor, best adapted screen play, all of which were done by a talented newcomer Guillaume Gallienne.

The list does not mention that best supporting actress was won by Adele Haenel not Julie  Gayet.

Le palmarès

Espoir féminin. Adèle Exarchopoulos dans La vie d’Adèle.

Premier film. Les Garçons et Guillaume, à table ! de Guillaume Gallienne.

Scénario original. Albert Dupontel pour 9 mois ferme.

Acteur dans un second rôle. Niels Arestrup dans Quai d’Orsay

Espoir masculin. Pierre Deladonchamps dans l’Inconnu du Lac.

César d’honneur. Scarlett Johansson.

Documentaire. Sur le chemin de l’école de Pascal Plisson.

Meilleure adaptation. Les Garçons et Guillaume, à table ! de Guillaume Gallienne.

Court et moyen métrages. Mademoiselle Kiki et Les Montparnos et Loulou et l’incroyable secret.

Musique originale. Martin Wheeler pour Michael Kohlhaas.

Meilleur réalisateur. Roman Polanski pour La Vénus à la fourrure.

Meilleur acteur. Guillaume Gallienne pour Les Garçons et Guillaume, à table !

Meilleur actrice. Sandrine Kiberlain pour 9 mois ferme

Meilleur réalisateur. Roman Polanski pour La Vénus à la fourrure

Meilleur film. Les Garçons et Guillaume, à table ! de Guillaume Gallienne.
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Who Killed Jaures?

Every village, town or city has a street, school or car park named after the local civil rights campaigner Jean Jaures. A journalist and MP who organised miners and glass workers in and around Albi to fight for better conditions, Jaures is a figure of veneration among left and liberal supporters especially in the south west.
In July 1914 he was assassinated in Paris by the aptly named Raoul Villain. But on whose orders and why? To mark the centenary of Jaures's death a film in the nature of a "policier" will have its premiere tomorrow, 2nd February, in the Hotel du Region, Toulouse at 15h (3pm). The director Philipe Tourancheau will be present and the film will be preceded by a "conference" with several specialists on hand.
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Another film set in France

The content of new Woody Allen films is one of Hollywood's most closely guarded secrets during their production process, but as release nears for his follow-up to Blue Jasmine, one or two details are beginning to emerge.

It was already known that Magic in the Moonlight, as it is titled, was a romantic comedy set in the south of France in the 1920s and 30s, and that the cast was the usual list of acting luminaries, including Colin Firth,Emma Stone and Jacki Weaver.

However, an announcement by Sony Pictures Classics that it had acquired North American rights to the film fills in a little more backstory. SPC describe Magic as "a romantic comedy about an Englishman brought in to help unmask a possible swindle. Personal and professional complications ensue." Firth, we would presume, will play "the Englishman". The film will be set "against a backdrop of wealthy mansions, the Côte d'Azur, jazz joints and fashionable spots for the wealthy of the jazz age".

No release date for Magic in the Moonlight has yet been announced, but it is likely to be out in summer 2014.

Taken from the Guardian

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