Lesson #160 -Busy Busy Busy

Last night for the Children's Phrase we did "Je suis très occupé"

occupé(e) (ahk koo pay) -busy 
note: when writing it's 2 "ee"s for a female or female group.

Je suis occupé (zhuh sweez ahk koo pay) -I am busy
Je suis très occupé (zhuh swee trehz ahk koo pay) -I am very busy
Je ne suis pas occupé (zhuh neh sweez pah ahk koo pay) -I am not busy
Je ne suis pas très occupé (zhuh neh swee pah treh ahk koo pay) -I am not very busy

Êtes-vous occupé? (eht vooz ahk koo pay) -Are you busy?
Êtes-vous très occupé? (eht voo trehz ahk koo pay) -Are you very busy?

Est-il occupé? (ay-il ahk koo pay) -Is he busy?
Est-elle occupée? (ay-tell ahk koo pay) -Is she busy

Nous sommes occupé (noo sohmz ahk koo pay) -We are not busy

Paul Cézanne -French Artist

Paul Cézanne 19 January 1839 – 22 October

1906) was a French artisite and Post-Impressionist paintre whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a nouveau and radically different monde of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form le pont between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism.

The line attributed to both Matisse and Picasso that Cézanne "is the father of us all" cannot be easily dismissed.

Cézanne's work demonstrates a mastery of design, colour, composition and draftsmanship. His often repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes

are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields, at once both a direct expression of the sensations of the observing eye and an abstraction from observed nature. Les peintures convey Cézanne's intense study of his subjects, a searching gaze and a dogged struggle to deal with the complexity of human visual perception.

artiste (ahr teest) -artist

peintre (pehn truh) -painter

nouveau (noo voh) -new

monde (mahnd) -world

le pont (leh pahn)

les peintures (lay pehn chure) -the paintings

Must See French Film -My Wife Is An Actress

My Wife is an Actress (Orig. Ma Femme est une actrice) is a French Romantic Comedy/Drama film starring real life couple Yvan Attal and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Attal plays a journalist who becomes obsessively jealous when his actress wife gets a part in a movie with an attractive co-star. Attal also wrote and directed the film. The film stars Terence Stamp among others.

Yvan, a young sports writer, is married to one who is very well known - Charlotte. They try to live a normal life, but her fame makes it difficult - autograph hunters interrupt their dinners, cops about to serve traffic summonses let them off with a warning and a smile when they recognize her, and impossible-to-get restaurant reservations magically appear when Charlotte makes the calls instead of Yvan. All this threatens and challenges his male ego, but Yvan is able to take her stardom in stride. Until, that is, a man at a bar asks him if he gets jealous watching his wife make love in the nude to another man on screen. It has never seriously bothered him before, but the stranger sows the first seed of doubt in his head.

Lesson #159 -Thinking, Supposing, Hoping...

Je le crois (zhuh leh kwah) -I think so
Je crois que non (zhuh kwah heh noh) I don't think so

Je suis d'accord (zhuh swee dah kohr) -I agree
Je ne suis pas d'accord (zhuh nehswee pah dah kohr) -I don't agree

Je l’espère (zhuh leh spehr) -I hope so
J'espère que non (jeh spehr keh noh) -I hope not

Je le suppose (zhuh leh sah pohz) -I suppose so
Je suppose que non (zhuh sah pohz kuh noh) -I don't suppose so, I suppose not

Marcel Pagnol - French Novelist

Marcel Pagnol (February 28, 1895 – April 18, 1974) was a French novelist, playwright, et filmmaker. In 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie Française.

He learned how to read at a young age to his father's amazement mais his mère did not allow him to touch un livre until he was six "for fear of cerebral explosion".

At the age of 15, he wrote his first play and, after winning a prestigious scholarship to the Lycee, eventually followed in the footsteps of his père to become an English teacher for secondary schools. However, he stopped teaching when he went to Paris, instead devoting his life to playwriting. His first adult play, Merchants of Glory, was produced in 1924. In 1929 he wrote Marius for the Paris Theatre. Marius would also be later turned into a film in 1931, Pagnol's first film.

Panol adapted his own film "Manon des Sources", which starred his femme, into deux novels collectively titled "L'eau des Collines". Those were in turn adapted back to international acclaim in the 1980's by filmaker Claude Berri as "Jean de Florette" & "Manon des Sources".

My favorite quote of his is:

“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be”

et (ay) -and

mais (may) -but

six (seece) -six

mère (mehr)
-mother

un livre (uhn lee vruh) -a book

père (pehr) -father

femme (fehm) -wife

deux (doo) -two

Zazie -French Singer

Zazie (born Isabelle Marie Anne de Truchis de Varennes on 18 April 1964 in Boulogne-Billancourt) is a French singer and songwriter. She also co-produces her own albums with other producers.
Zazie's father was an architect and her mother, a music teacher.
Her songs range from upbeat rock or pop songs to languid down tempo tunes and are characterised by the wit of their lyrics based on puns, alliterations, homophonies and double entendres.

Zazie Rue de La Paix

Furniture

Ironman (no not Robert Downey Jr.) France Sells Out

Better be careful...

Ok here's something interesting. I just bought a book in a thrift store today called "Les Cafards" which I think means "The Blues". Cafard can also mean depression or down in the dumps.

Anyway... on the back cover I was reading the description & I got to the line "L'homme est mort dans une chambre de passe à Bangkok". Well l'homme est mort dans une I knew to be "The man died in a". "à Bangkok" is also obviously "in Bangkok"

Now the "une chambre de passe" I couldn't get. I knew "chambre" is "room". But the whole phrase I didn't understand. So I check it with a couple of online translators and it came out as "password room". This didn't make sense, but since this is a mystery novel, I figured that it might mean "a secret room".

But... one of my French friends noooooo. As he delicately put it, it means "a place where harlots live by selling the charms"

So be careful if someone ask you if you want to go to "une chambre de passe". It is not a secret room.

Le Ventre de Paris -French Novel

Le Ventre de Paris (1873) is the third novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. It is set in and around Les Halles, the enormous, busy central marketplace of 19th CenturyParis. Le Ventre de Paris (translated into English under many variant titles, but literally meaning The Belly of Paris) is Zola's first novel centered entirely on the working classes.

The plot is centred around the escaped political prisoner Florent and the effect he has on Lisa Quenu (formerly Macquart) and her family, with whom he finds refuge. Although Zola had yet to hone his sense for working-class speech and idioms displayed to such good effect in L'Assommoir, the novel still conveys a powerful atmosphere both of life in the great market halls and of working class suffering in general. There are several excellent descriptive passages, the most famous of which, his description of the olfactory sensations experienced upon entering a cheese shop, has become known as the "Cheese Symphony" due to its ingenious orchestral metaphors. Throughout the book, the painter Claude Lantier - himself a relative of the Macquarts and later the central character in Zola's novelL'Œuvre (1886) - shows up to provide a semi-authorial commentary, effectively playing the role of chorus. It is an interesting and often powerful work, though not usually considered as being on a par with the novelist's greater achievements later in the Rougon-Macquart cycle.

Colette -Famous French Author

Colette was the pen name of the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (January 28, 1873 –August 3, 1954). She is best known, at least in the English-speaking world, for her novel Gigi, which provided the plot for a Lerner & Loewe musical film and stage musical.

Colette was born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Yonne, in the Burgundy Region of France, the daughter of Jules-Joseph Colette and Adèle Eugénie Sidonie Landoy ("Sido"). In 1893 she marriedHenri Gauthier-Villars, a famous wit known as "Willy", who was 15 years her senior.

Her first books, the Claudine series, were published under the pen name of her husband, "Willy", writer, music critic, "literary charlatan and degenerate",^[1]. Claudine still has the power to charm; in belle epoque France it was downright shocking, much to Willy's satisfaction and profit.

In 1906 she left the unfaithful Gauthier-Villars, living for a time at the home of the American writer and salonist Natalie Barney. The two had a short affair, and remained friends until Colette's death.^[2]

Colette took up work in the music halls of Paris, under the wing of Mathilde de Morny, the Marquise de Belbeuf, known as Missy, with whom she became roman.tically involved. In 1907, the two performed together in a pantomime entitled Rêve d'Égypte at the Moulin Rouge. Their onstage kiss nearly caused a riot, which the police were called in to suppress. As a result of this scandal, further performances of Rêve d'Égypte were banned and Colette and de Morny were no longer able to openly live together, though their relationship continued a total of five years.

She published around 50 novels in total, many with autobiographical elements. Her themes can be roughly divided into idyllic natural tales or dark struggles in relationships and love. All her novels were marked by clever observation and dialogue with an intimate, explicit style. Her most popular novel, Gigi, was made into a Broadway play and a highly successful Hollywood motion picture, Gigi, starring Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan and Leslie Caron.

A controversial figure throughout her life, Colette flaunted her lesbian affairs, and collaborated with the Vichy regime during World War II - while at the same time aiding her Jewish friends, including hiding her husband in her attic all through the war. She was a member of the Belgian Royal Academy (1935), president of the Académie Goncourt (1949) (and the first woman to be admitted into it, in 1945), and a Chevalier (1920) and a Grand Officier (1953) of the Légion d'honneur.

When she died in Paris on August 3, 1954, she was given a state funeral, although she was refused Roman Catholic rites because of her divorce. Colette is interred in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Gigi Trailer

Numbers 21-25

21- vingt et un (vahn tay uhn), 22- vingt deux (vahn doo), 23- vingt trois (vahn twah), 24- vingt quatre (vahn kah truh), 25- vingt cinq (vahn sank)

The Palace of Fontainebleau

The Palace of Fontainebleau, located 34.5 miles from the center of Paris, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. The palace as it is today is the work of many French monarchs. The building is arranged around a series of courtyards. The city of Fontainebleau has grown up around the remainder of the Forest of Fontainebleau, a former royal hunting park.

The Fontainebleau forest outside of the castle is one of the largest French forests with its 25 000 hectares, 50 km (about 35 miles) south of Paris by the A6 freeway, is a favorite of Parisian alpinists, who can train there on weekends. Its rocky hills (above) make it the perfect training ground before going for real to the Alps in the summer. The Fontainebleau forest is as well a favorite destination for everyone wanting to escape the hustle of Paris for a day. The beautiful old oak and pine trees, the Seine river near-by make it one of the most beautiful French forests. The Fontainebleau forest and castle are a very pleasant combination, if you want to take a rest from Paris for a day.

Kyo - French Rock Band

Since attending collège in Yvelines, the two brothers, Fabien and Florian Dubos, and two friends Nicolas Chassagne and Benoît Poher, discovered they had the same passion for bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine and Soundgarden. In 1997, they met their manager, who convinced them of their potential, and obtained a contract with Sony for the group. They have since released three albums and one DVD entitled Kyosphere. After the recent success of their album Le Chemin selling 1.5 million copies, the group went to a house in Brittany, where they worked on their new album 300 Lésions which went Gold in 4 days with sales reaching upwards of 500,000 copies. "Le Chemin" was used as the ending of the second episode of the anime OVA Strait Jacket.

Carmen - French Opera

Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet.

The opera premiered at the Opéra Comique of Paris on March 3, 1875, but the opening run was a failure, the work being denounced by the majority of critics. Shortly after the composer's death only three months later, the production in Vienna (October 1875) began its path to worldwide popularity.

Bizet’s final opera not only transformed the opera-comique genre that had been static for half a century, it virtually killed it. Within a few years, the traditional distinction between opera and opera-comique (light-hearted, bourgeois and conversational with spoken dialogue) disappeared beyond recovery.

Since the 1880s it has been one of the world's most performed operas and a staple of the operatic repertoire. Carmen appears as number four on Opera America's list of the 20 most-performed operas in North America.

The story is set in Seville, Spain, circa 1830, and concerns the eponymous Carmen, a beautiful Gypsy with a fiery temper. Free with her love, she woos the corporal Don José, an inexperienced soldier. Their relationship leads to his rejection of his former love, mutiny against his superior, and joining a gang of smugglers. His jealousy when she turns from him to the bullfighter Escamillo leads him to murder Carmen.

Dans La Cuisine - In The Kitchen

Pierre Bonnard -French Painter

Pierre Bonnard (3 October 1867 – 23 January 1947) was a French painter and printmaker. Bonnard was born in Fontenay-aux-Roses. He led a happy and careless youth as the son of a prominent official of the French Ministry of War. At the insistence of his father, Bonnard studied law, graduating and practising as a barrister briefly. However, he had also attended art classes on the side, and soon decided to become an artist.

In 1891 he met Toulouse-Lautrec and began showing his work at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants.

Bonnard is known for his intense use of color, especially via areas built with small brushmarks and close values. His often complex compositions—typically of sunlit interiors of rooms and gardens

populated with friends and familymembers are both narrative and autobiographical. His wife Marthe was an ever-present subject over the course of several decades. She is seen seated at the kitchen table, with the remnants of a meal; or nude, as in a series of paintings where she reclines in the bathtub. He also painted several self

portraits, landscapes , and many still lifes which usually

depict flowers and fruit.

The Dining Room In The Country (1913)

Children's Word of the Day -House

Kids, every time you see a house, point to it and say "La maison" (lah may zone)

Quick Phrase of the Day- You Buy The Paper Plates

Vous achetez les assiettes en carton (vooz ah shah tay layz ah see eht ahn kahr tohn) -You buy the paper plates.

Repeat this phrase all day long till you know it by heart.

Vocabulary breakdown:
Vous achetez (vooz ah shah tay) -you buy
les assiettes (layz ah see eht) -the plates
assiettes en carton (ah see eht ahn kahr tohn) -paper plates

Prête-moi Ta Main -Must See French Comedy

Prête-moi Ta Main (2006)

English title: "I Do. Or How To Get Married & Stay Single"
Very funny comedy starring Alian Chabrat as a 42 year old single man whose mother & 5 sisters decide he should get married. They set him up with numerous dates. Problem is, he doesn't really want to get married. So to get them off his back he devises a plan to hire a woman to play his girlfriend, plan a wedding then have the girl desert him at the alter, figuring his being depressed will stop the women in his family from trying to fix him up. So he hires his friend's sister (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg) to play his his fiance. Things don't go as he plans when he's spotted kissing another woman, so his family thinks she deserted him because he was cheating on her. They convince him to beg the woman's forgiveness & get her back. Things get more complicated when he starts to have feelings for her.