A French production company is combing the Islands, planning to film stories about people, places and communities to air on French television.
Match Point Production, which works with France's M6 television network, is here for 2 1/4 weeks and has made arrangements to film a Kahalu'u community group fighting drug use; Philippe Mettout, who came from Paris 25 years ago and started a business on the North Shore; and rangers at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park.
Phillipe Mettout:
Mettout arrived in Hawai'i 25 years ago to surf and eventually opened a surf shop on the North Shore. This will be the third time Mettout will be interviewed for a television feature for French television, he said. But this feature also will include interviews with local lifeguards, a surf instructor and surfers young and old, male and female, Mettout said.
On the North Shore, the crew of four will film Mettout, who owns Planet Surf.
The film crew knows little about surfing, and Mettout said he will tell them about Island life, politics and schools.
But the main message he wants to get across is how surfing is engrained in Hawai'i culture, he said.
M6 is the second-largest television network in France, and Mettout said people there are eager to watch programs about the Islands because they love surfing and Hawai'i.
American Bar -- La Closerie des Lilas(171 Boulevard du Montparnasse; tel.01/40- 51-34-50;www.closeriedeslilas.fr; 6th arrondissement, Metro: Montparnasse). In business since 1847, almost every famous 19th-and 20th-century French(and American) artist, poet, and writer has been here, so why not you? Maybe the next Hemingway will sit down next to you at the piano bar.
La Bélière Restaurant-Piano Bar(74 rue Daguerre; tel.01/40-47-52-66;www.myspace.com/labeliere; 14th arrondissement, Metro: Denfert Rochereau) Devotees say that the food here is as good as the music.
Harry's New York Bar(5 rue Daunou; tel.01/42-61-71-14;www.harrys-bar.fr; 2nd arrondissement, Metro: Opera) Legend has it that George Gershwin composed "An American in Paris" downstairs in the piano bar.
Le Sherwood Piano Bar(3 rue Daunou; tel.01/42-61-70-94; 2nd arrondissement, Metro: Opera) A very friendly, laid-back piano lounge right next to Harry's.
Swan Bar(165 Bld du Montparnasse; tel.01/44-27-05-84;www.swanbar.fr; 6th arrondissement, Metro: Raspail or Vavin) They take requests at this fun and informal jazz-and-cocktails piano lounge.
Aux Trois Mailletz(56 rue Galande; tel.01/43-54-00-79;www.lestroismailletz.fr; 5th arrondissement, Metro: Saint-Michel) With a restaurant and piano bar on the main floor and a cabaret club downstairs, it's worth going just to pay homage to all the jazz greats who have played here since it opened in 1948: Sidney Bechet, Bud Powell, Bill Coleman, John Coltran, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong... and in the cabaret, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Rachel McAdams is in negotiations to star opposite Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard in Woody Allen's next movie.
As with most Allen movies, plot details are being kept under wraps, though the setting for the ensemble is France. The untitled project is scheduled to shoot during the summer.
Bob le flambeur ("Bob the Gambler" or "Bob the High Roller") is a 1956 French gangster film directed by style and is considered a precursor to the Jean-Pierre Melville. The film stars Roger Duchesne as Bob. It is filmed in a film noirFrench New Wave movement.
Bob, a middle-aged gambler and thief living in the Montmartre district of Paris, experiences a run of bad luck that leaves him nearly broke. Bob is a gentleman with scruples, well-liked in the demi-monde community. He has unsuccessfully tried to rob a bank in the past, and has spent time in prison.
He hears through a croupier friend that the Deauville Casino holds undreamed-of quantities of cash, vulnerable in the early morning hours. Bob develops a complicated scheme to steal it, bringing in a tough but naive young protege and an ace safecracker into his scheme, along with a few other underworld characters.
Bob also becomes involved with a young woman, Anne, who does not have her own place and stays with any man who can take her off the streets. Later, Anne begins spending time with Bob's friend and partner-in-crime, Paolo.
Meanwhile, Inspector Ledru of the local police, whom Bob once saved from death, gets a hint that Bob is involved in something big - but the snitch is gunned down just as he is about to confirm the specifics. Paolo trusts Anne and tells her the plot in which he is involved with Bob. However, in the evening of the planned heist, Anne betrays the gang to Ledru without realizing that it was supposed to be a secret. Ledru searches Bob's Montmartre haunts to warn him off the plan - in vain. At the casino, Bob gambles while nominally casing the scene. A phenomenal winning streak ensues that lasts all night. This is the dance with Lady Luck he has waited for all his life. While gambling, he forgets all about the plan, rejoicing in his winnings. Suddenly, Bob is startled to realize it is the appointed hour of 5:00 AM, hurriedly cashes in his immense cache of chips, and exits the casino floor. Just as his gang arrives, Ledru and the police descend, and the shooting starts. Bob rushes out of the casino in time to cradle his dying protege, Paolo, for a brief moment, then is handcuffed and arrested as casino employees trundle out his pile of cash winnings. His cash is loaded into the boot of Inspector Ledru's car.
It is strongly implied that his lucky streak will hold, and he will get off with little or no jail time, perhaps even suing the police for damages--while the beautiful Anne, no longer off-limits to Bob because of his friendship with Paolo, waits for him at his apartment.
Some adjectives are spelled and pronounced differently depending on whether the noun it's describing is male or female*.
Adjectives for male words: grand (grahn) -big prochain (proh shayn) -next noir (noh wah) -black petit (peh tee) -little, small heureax (urr roh) -happy
Adjectives for female words: grande (grahnd) -big prochaine (proh shayn) -next noire (noh wahr) -black petite (peh teet) -little, small heureuse (urr rooz) -happy
In French, nouns are considered either male or female and have nothing to do with whether or not the nouns are used by a man or a woman. This will always be one of the tough things about learning French. Don't stress too much on trying to remember if a noun is male or female. This will come with regular practice of them.
As for the adjectives above... Examples: une grande maison (oon grahnd may zohn) -a big house (female) le livre noir (leh lee vruh noh wah) -the black book (male) l'homme heureax (lohm urr roh) -the happy man la femme heureuse (lah fehm urr rooz) -the happy woman
A Moveable Feastis a set of memoirs byAmericanauthorErnest Hemingwayabout his years inParisas part of the American expatriate circle of writers in the 1920s. In addition to painting a picture of Hemingway's time as a struggling young writer, the book also sketches the story of Hemingway and his first wife,Hadley.
A Moveable Feastis considered by many to contain some of his best writing. Some of the prominent people to make an appearance in the book includeAleister Crowley,Ezra Pound,F. Scott Fitzgerald,Ford Madox Ford,Hilaire Belloc,Pascin,John Dos Passos,James JoyceandGertrude Stein. The book was edited by Ernest's fourth wife,Mary Hemingway, and published in 1964, four years after Hemingway's death.
The book contains Hemingway's personal accounts, observations, and stories of his experience in 1920s Paris. He provides the detail of specific addresses of cafes, bars, hotels, and apartments that still can be found in modern day Paris. The title was suggested by Hemingway's friendA.E. Hotchner, author ofPapa Hemingway, and comes from a conversation the two once had about the city during Hotchner's first visits there:
"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."
tout à coup... (toot ah koo) -all of a sudden... petit à petit (peh teet ah peh tee) -little by little par contre... (pahr kohn truh) -on the other hand... assez souvent... (ah say soo vahn) -quite often... Je ferrai mon possible (zhuh feh ray mohn pah see bluh) - I will do my best
London, England (CNN)-- Bindi Dupouy, an Australian living in Paris, and her French husband, just had their first child, a son born in the country.
Dupouy, a 28-year-old lawyer, got almost five months paid maternity leave from her company for the birth. She can take another seven months off beyond that -- a year total -- unpaid, if she wants, with her job guaranteed under French law.
When her son Louis was born, healthy and by way of a normal delivery, she got to stay in her local French hospital, around the corner from where she lives, for five full days, to rest.
Welcome to France, voted the best place in the world to live for the fifth year in a row by International Living magazine, which has been analyzing data and publishing its annual Quality of Life Index for 30 years.
One of the reasons France keeps winning the ranking is its world-class health care system, which Dupouy just experienced first-hand. What expecting mums like treasures here," Dupouy told CNN from her Paris apartment. "They take really good care of you. The health care system is just amazing." She said she wouldn't have gotten the same maternity leave -- or care -- back home in Australia.
At her job, Dupouy also gets seven weeks paid vacation a year, although it's her first job as an attorney since graduating with a law degree in Australia. She doesn't think twice about taking the Metro across town -- for just $1.37 a ride -- to visit a friend. Or she picks up a rental bike at one of the many computerized bike hire racks in town to get around.
France scores high marks across the board in the survey, which is done every January, from health care (100 points) to infrastructure (92 points) to safety and risk (100 points).
"No surprise," said the magazine in its report. "Its (France's) tiresome bureaucracy and high taxes are outweighed by an unsurpassable quality of life, including the world's best health care."
"The bread, the cheese, the wine," Dan Prescher, special projects editor at the magazine, told CNN, when asked why France just keeps on winning year after year. "That weighs pretty heavily in quality of life."
J'ai fini (zhay fee nee) I finished tu as fini (too ah fee nee) -you finished (when speaking to a friend or family member) il as fini (eel ah fee nee) -he finished elle as fini (ell ah fee nee) -she finished nous avons fini (nooz ah vohn fee nee) we finished vous avez fini (vooz ah vay fee nee) you finished (when speaking to someone you don't know well) ils ont fini (eel zohn fee nee) -they finished (when speaking of an all male or mixed male & female group) elles ont fini (ell zohn fee nee) -they finished (when speaking of an all female group)
je vais (zhuh vay) -I go, I am going tu vas (too vah) -You go, you are going (when speaking to a friend or family member) il va (eel vah) -He goes, he is going elle va (ell vah) -She goes, she is going nous allons (nooz ah lohn) -we go, we are going vous allez (vooz ah lay) -you go, you are going (when speaking to someone you don't know well) ils vont (eel vohn) -they go, they are going (when speaking of an all male or mixed male & female group) elles vont (ell vohn) -they go, they are going (when speaking of an all female group)
Claude Lorrain, traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French Claude Gellée, dit le Lorrain) (c. 1600 – 21 or 23 November 1682) was an artist of the Baroque era who was active in Italy, and is admired for his achievements in landscape painting. In this matter of the importance of landscape, Claude was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography.
Claude was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death. The painter Joachim von Sandrart is an authority for Claude's life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude's immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professoni del disegno).
John Constable described Claude as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude’s landscape "all is lovely – all amiable – all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart"
Mon Dieu! Even I am upset when I read this & I love Mcdonalds.
CNN) -- Shortly after McDonald's celebrated its 30-year presence in France, the fast-food chain is conquering one of the country's most valued cultural institutions --the Louvre.McDonald's burgers and fries will be available under the glass pyramid of the Louvre.The restaurant will be serving its fast burgers in the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping mall which lies under the main entrance of the museum and which still contains an ancient wall that was discovered during construction works.McDonald's plans seem to have caused more media attention abroad than in France, but for some French outlets, the idea of combining fast food and ancient art is stomach churning. The Parisian Web site "Louvre pour tous" (Louvre for everyone) describes the company's plans to open a restaurant in the prestigious museum as "bad taste" and blamed the Louvre's directors for failing to prevent what could result in "fragrances of fries drifting under Mona Lisa's nose". Marion Benaiteau, spokeswoman for the museum, told CNN it was not their decision and declined to comment further on the issue. The Carrousel du Louvre mall is managed by Unibail-Rodamco, Europe's largest property company, and not the museum itself. The mall, which is situated next to the most visited museum in the world, counts 8.3 million visitors a year and enjoyed a total gross sales of $75 million in 2008.Le Parisien, a daily newspaper described the difference between McDonald's and the Louvre by comparing Ronald McDonald, the restaurant's clown character, to Venus de Milo, the famous ancient Greek statue of Aphrodite, which is on display at the Louvre.McDonald's sees the opening of its new restaurant next to the home of Mona Lisa as nothing out of the ordinary. "There are already many other restaurants in the mall, so we will only be one of the many restaurants that offer visitors their products." said a spokeswoman for McDonald's in France, who declined to be named. "There's even a Starbucks," she added.Museum lovers in France are shocked about the news, but not surprised, one told CNN. "Museums have to offer services like restaurants and boutiques, it's completely normal," Jean-Michel Raingeard, President of the Federation of French Friends of Museums told CNN. What worries him, however, is the choice of shops."Museum directors seem to care more about the number of people they attract rather than the quality of people. Should a museum be a museum or an amusement park?" asks Jean Michel Raingeard, who is also the European Vice President for The World Federation of Friends of Museums.Criticism, though fierce, has not halted the plans: construction work will start soon and the restaurant should be open "by the end of the year," Mcdonald's said.The menu will also very likely stay the same. "McDonald's functions the same way in all of France, so there will probably be no special menus," the spokeswoman said.
