Deux grandes réussites!
Congratulations to the young new team who have restored life to l'Entrepôt, the cultural centre round the corner, at 7-9 rue Francis de Pressencé, 75014 Paris. If they maintain the new qualities, they merit all the success they can get.
The rich programme includes concerts several nights of the week, a lot of jazz and some world music.
The three renovated cinemas offer more than a dozen films from all over the world. No list here; suffice to say that this week Britain, Brazil, Guinea, Iran, Spain and Tadjikistan are among the sources.
The current mini-film festival is devoted to Russian director Alexander Sokurov (his "island" in the Net, English or Russian - Александр Сокуров).
There's literature, the bar, conferences, the garden, movies for children, and the restaurant.
I haven't tested the restaurant ... yet. I'm told it's good at last. There are ciné-resto and ciné-concert formulas (each a very reasonable 20 euros).
The cinema I sat in at the end of the afternoon (salle 3) was very comfortable, new seats, superb new sound. When I came out, a score of people were preparing for the evening or sitting around near the bar, ears open as jazz musicians set up and warmed up.
The pianist broke off for a brief, dazzling but also moving excursion into Chopin ... or Liszt? Chopin. The quartier's resident Django Reinhardt, who now has somewhere to hang out, quietly said: "You don't have to stop."
I briefly introduced l'Entrepôt, its history and the dynamic new team at the end of a May 24 entry. Thanks to Lynda, in particular, for the tip-off. She goes mainly for the music and dance.
They don't do cartes de fidelité" (discount cards for regulars) any more. The chap I asked looked slightly abashed, but needn't have done. At their prices, the selection is already generous. They'll need little help to attract and keep a crowd. Still, the website again: l'Entrepôt.
I wish them "une longue et fructueuse vie" (a long, fruitful life)!
zzz
 The other fine achievement is 'Kaena, la prophétie' (Kaena, the prophecy). A fantasy fable, the first French computer-image movie is billed as a movie for kids. Careful. It's neither for small children nor ones who get scare dreams rather than frissons of fear.
The heroine, even more curvaceous than Lara Croft, is easy to "identify with" but some of the monsters are truly terrifying.
The plot, like some of the 3D animation, does share features with 'Ice Age': a journey from one era to the next; great big eyes for some of the human and alien beings; fun creatures as a foil for high drama; even a kind of "cradle of humanity" parallel -- not too serious.
Attempts at great realism are largely absent from the people, but stunningly effective in the floating forest world inhabited by humans and in sequences such as the extended beginning, where a starship crashes to its doom on the planet Astria.
A touch of 'Final Fantasy' video game comes as no surprise when you read that director Chris Delaporte began that way "in 1995. I was working on the 'Heart of Darkness' video game, which had 35 minutes of pure 3D animation."
Delaporte tells a good tale of how a game idea became a feature film in an interview on 'Kaena', a remarkable bi-lingual website (link recalled below: interview in .rtf format on press page).
Making a movie, he says, was Steven Spielberg's idea, the problem being that S.S. laid down a condition: "that he didn't end up being the fifth wheel".
 A sci-fi fan who wanted to get right into creating a fantasy world, Delaporte rallied co-director Pascal Pinon and a varied team to his dream, brought to the screen this month by Paris-based Xilam Films (the photos here belong to Xilam), with help from Studio Canal in France and Canada's TVA International.
Parts are "played" in French by Cécile de France, Michael Lonsdale and Victoria Abril. In the English version, these roles go to Kirsten Dunst, the late Richard Harris and Anjelica Huston.
The story itself is derivative - and who cares? The constantly roving Kaena has a people to save, a high priest is dangerously unaware of the true nature of those villagers' gods, there's a legend and a mad old man. A wise survivor from the alien starship might help, except that ending a 600-year struggle for survival could also close the book for humanity.
 'Kaena' (the front door again) is breath-takingly gorgeous to watch and the music by Farid Russlan provides a sumptuous counterpoint.
Despite some classic big fights, the absence of any "black and white" good and bad characters is noteworthy: everybody is doing their best to survive and much of the film is in sepia shades or a techno-electric blue. Afterwards, I read that Delaporte didn't want "goodies" and "baddies", while he acknowledges many influences but only one direct "link" to another film.
"I can't believe in villains who are evil without reason, the kind you often meet in movies. I think that is such a caricature! I don't want to say, 'He's good, and he's evil'. I can't do that in life, so there really wasn't a reason for me to do that in the film," he says.
I've joined those at the IMDb, where only two people have said anything so far, with a straight 8/10, a slightly weighted score but well merited by a first movie.
Ah. The 'Axis', tree at the centre of the world. Now there's one of the oldest legends around, in a place where, as the "village madman" warns Kaena, up is down and down is up.
10:22:12 PM link 
|
|
postbox