February 2012
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| One of the longest French film titles ever must be C'est pas parce qu'on a rien à dire qu'il faut fermer sa gueule. Here are Bernard Blier, Michel Serrault and Jean Lefebvre as the master criminal brain and the pair of incompetents. An excellent film, but not easy. But why else are we trying to master this trick of listening and understanding ? | I am grateful to the kind person who sent me a clip of Star Trek The wrath of Khan, but my heart sank a bit. The vocabulary of this series was always a bit special, to say the least of it. However, what makes it all worth while is the opening .. L'espace.. la dernière frontière... | |
| Here's the irrepressible Thomas Hervé with his irreverent monthly look at the world of politics. This time it's opinion polls, the very sensible word for which in French is sondages | FranceTélévision launched themselves on a multipart series based around an attack on the life of the President (wishful thinking in an election year?). As always with this type of programme we can expect lots of intimate muttering and background noise. A good series, though | |
| Glades (you can read about it here) makes a very interesting listening exercise. The French translation tries to catch the slang of the original, so we have expressions such as prendre ses cliques et ses claques which I didn't know at all But it's fast paced and quite funny | This is the first time I've tried to transcribe the whole 7 minutes of a Guignols episode. Obviously the voices of the characters - from Patrick Poivre d'Arvor to Barack Obama - vary considerably in difficulty. But the gags are pretty good, although a bit hurtful if you happen to be either American or Spanish. Even as a Britisher the Obama sketch made me raise my eyebrows a bit... | |
| Feb 13 and France 3 screened En attendant Saint Valentin, a two hour nostalgia programme on love songs. I never ever miss these programmes. When we watch our own television, they can irritate - we've seen the clips over and over again. But when you're learning French they are a visual history of French popular culture. But what to choose for an extract? Well here you have the introduction from Karen Cheryl and Henry Jean-Servat. Then a song I didn't know from Joe Dassin, Si tu n'existais pas. Then that amazing black-and-white video of Barbara singing Ma plus belle histoire d'amour, c'est vous. Yes, it's well-known, but it just doesn't get better than this... | Here's an excellent sketch from Pierre Palmade, perhaps the most inventive of all the French comedians. A man who combines a keen critical sense with a remarkable level of naivety goes to a friends house to watch a video. But he's disappointed. It's Un film raté. For the bits that I didn't manage to catch - see how you do, and email me if you can fill in the holes | |
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| The France 5 series Empreintes has a tendency to show famous old French people sitting next to the river musing peacefully on the beauty of existence. So I liked this one on Hubert Reeves, astronomer, who was at Cornell with the men who built the Bomb, and says he would have done the same. His Canadian accent is not always easy to decipher | This week, Laurence Piquet's culturfest on France 5 was Un Soir ... Melodies, a celebration of French musical comedy. We have quite a selection on the New Songs page. In fact, French musicals are pretty much like British or American modern musicals - bad. The exception is, of course, Starmania, and this documentary included clips of the original cast which I had never seen before. The performers were the pop singers of the time - Daniel Balavoine, France Gall.. and Michel Berger's music was frankly beyond them. It is operatic, it needs first-rate singers. Both what a pleasure to see Fabienne Thibeault.. Luc Plamondon, who wrote the words, comments. Another Canadian accent, I'm afraid | |
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| Borgen, is a rather good Danish series, screened by Arte, about a Danish woman politician. I often say that American series dubbed into French are easier to follow, because the rhythm of American speech is a little slower than French. The opposite seems to be true here - they rattle along at a tremendous rate. But it's entertaining stuff. Highly principled lady politician and nasty scheming men.. | One of the very best French documentary makers is Philippe Kohly. He made Un bombardier nommé Liberty Lily, and the voice-over in his documentaries has a wonderfully dark, impressive voice (is it Kohly himself, perhaps ?) This one was La maladie du pouvoir, on the tendency of French Presidents to lie to their people when they are gravely ill. The prime examples are Mitterrand and Pompidou. I should warn you that this is quite a distressing piece: Pompidou in the last two weeks of his life was not a pleasant sight. But the documentary is well made and valuable. And what exactly are the last words spoken by Robert Badinter ? If you can improve on my transcription, do let me know. | |
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Les Stars s'amusent gave us a number from the week of Valentine's Day on love. When I saw that Jean-Marie Bigard was a member of the panel, I knew that we could expect something on the earthier aspect of the subject. So it was with le coït humain. So I append the usual health warning Attention ce sketch peut heurter la sensibilité de certains |
Une vie moins ordinaire is a rather unusual American-British film, very funny, very slick. The dialogue is rapid and colloquial and the dubbing actors do a good job of rendering it into French | |
