2012

Présidentielle

I've archived a lot of folders to make the site tidier and easier to navigate. However, if there is anything you'd like reinstated - just drop me a message. 

04 January         Back from the Christmas holidays, and I have a pile of Christmas recordings to work through. The first is a TF1 programme featuring the impersonator Laurent Gerra. Here he is being half of a comedy duo in Laurent Gerra ne s'interdit rien.

06 January         Picking up recordings from just before Christmas. Here was the last programme in the series La grande librairie - their traditional theatre spectacle.  A lovely play on words from JeanTardieu.

10 January         Moving to a new server is like moving house - a very stressful experience. Let's see if all is well by posting Le Parrain - The Godfather Part 1 with Marlon Brando

11 January         Daily updates until listentofrench arrives to join us.  Here is that daring young man Max Boublil who tells a gorup of children some hard truths about Christmas in his song Joyeux Noël.  Do some of the adults in the audience look a little uncomfortable ?

                             I've got such a backlog of stuff from the recordings over the holiday period that I think we'll have a double dose today. Here's Barbapapa.

11 January         I'm going to start working through my favourite clips - starting with comedy - to convert them to Flash video for viewing in the browser. Today Fernand Raynaud and Muriel Robin in 100 Comedy Sketchs. Look for the link Flash.

12 January         Here is a clip from a documentary I liked very much. From Arte Télévision, Françoise Hardy.  And because I had not known this lovely song, here is Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux.  I've used the format I adopted for Songs with Subtitles, but converted to Flash

                            All the sketches on the first page of 100 Comedy Sketches now in Flash video.  The Anne Roumanoff sketch comes from the days when Sego was running for President, and her partner François Hollande was a funny little man. He still is, according to me..

13 January         Variety, that is what we strive for here.  So I offer those of you who are not at all faint-hearted, Honoré Fragonard, cousin of the painter and anatomist extraordinaire

14 January         I was gripped from beginning to end by this Humphrey Bogart film In a lonely place - Le violent. What would we do without Arte Télévision ?

                           Page two of 100 Comedy sketches now 'Flashed'

15 January         A lovely documentary on the great transatlantic liner Le France, and plenty of nautical vocabulary. Do you know the French word for cast off ?

                           New sketches now in Flash format as well

16 January         MI5 is a series from the BBC that has won awards. Arte télévision screened it and I include it here

17 January         Now here's a real stinker of a listening exercise. The 1947 film The lady of Shanghai, with a scratchy sound-track lovingly recreated by the French dubbing studio

                           Page three of 125 Comedy sketches  'Flashed'

18 January         I've reworked the orginal Songs page which was about three years old - before the time when I was offering subtitles. But there are some wonderful clips... Starmania, of course, Le soldat rose, Dr Tom, and some nice clips from the Chabada series.  Oh and some really awful musicals like Romeo and Juliet, just to show that the French are capable of descending to the level of Andrew Lloyd-Webber from time to time. Worth a look. I'll be converting to Flash in due course.  The_new Songs page is here.

19 January         Michel Boujenah entertains an audience of medical folk with stories of his Tunisian childhood.

21 January         This Christmas one of the films that cheered the French up was Rowan Atkinson in Johnny English

23 January         If politics leaves you cold, that is to your credit. But this is the year of the Presidential elections in France, an event of the greatest importance, which we are going to track on the Elections 2012 page.  Sunday, the socialist candidate François Hollande gave his first major speech of the campaign. Here he is.

                            If you find politics hard going, then have a look at the first page of 40 Plays, which now offer Flash video. The first, Auguste , is my favourite, with the great comedian Fernand Raynaud

25 January         A gentle piece from the breakfast show Télématin on the French shoemaker Weston

                            And a 'Songs with subtitles' version of the song by Shakira La quiero a morir

26 January         Page 4 of  125 comedy sketches 'flashed'. Some of my favourites on this page

27 January         American High School series make good listening exercises whether we like them or not. So here is the strange and slightly paranoid world of 90210 Beverly Hills

                            I am enjoying converting the comedy sketchs to Flash. Here's Page 5 with Florence Foresti as Madame le ministre,  Chevallier et Laspalès in La Boulangerie, and a wicked sketch from Dany Boon, Tounez Ménages

29 January         Sunday, and something a little more cerebral.  Jean-Pierre Elkabbach interviews his old buddy Alain Duhamel on Bibliothèque Medecis, on the subject of the pronicpal candidates in the election

                             Page 6 of the sketchs. Dany Boon on La Poste, Sylvie Joly with her wonderful Christine, Jean-Marie Bigard with the silly things people say, Gad Elmaleh on the pleasures of learning to smoke, and an extract from a nice documentary on George Brassens

31 January          Here is a superb American private detective film Hammett directed by the German Wim Wenders. It works beautifully in French I think

01 February         From a good American film to a superb comedy from Bernard Blier, Jean Lefebvre and Michel Serrault C'est pas parce qu'on a rien à dire qu'il faut fermer sa gueule:   Very hard, but worth the effort

                              And page 7 of the sketchs, with La drague from Guy Bedos, as well as Franck Dubosc and Anne Roumanoff

03 February         For some reason, neither the original series of Star Trek, nor the early films ever seem to show up on French TV. So my thanks to the person who sent me this clip from Star Trek The Wrath of Kahn

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