dimanche 8 février 2004

Mention honorable Chris Allbritton, the journalist who independently went 'Back to Iraq' (b'rolled), will be flattered to learn that his daily writings on war and its aftermath got a paragraph to itself in the latest issue of Mac and Co, the latest French monthly Mac-rag, which hit the newsstands with such a dismal, boring first issue that I thought it doomed from the start. However, the magazine got a hefty kick up the backside by issue three and is now readable and sometimes original. In writing up the blog phenomenon -- and quite wrongly asserting that all weblogs have become much of a muchness -- it does the service of reminding me that I don't blogroll enough French "jouebs" for those of the Faithful 5 ¾ who do me the honour of reading me in their second language. I shall put this right in coming months. To start with a couple of pioneers this side of the water, David Dufresne manages to be a telly news editor and still keep a "carnet de bord farouchement indépendant d'un mutant perdu dans un monde en ruines". For a "fiercely independent ... stray mutant in a ruined world," David remains remarkably concerned this weekend about plumbing and justice (davduf), though sex and the other arts and skills are far more interesting than French politics. Mac and Co sent me into the hitherto unknown world of 'Le blog du menteur'. It would seem Pierre Lazuly been's busy broadcasting lies since 1998, which does make him an early bird over here. He doesn't bother to blog very often, but he can be very entertaining. 11:56:33 PM  link   your views? [] 'Qui a tué Bambi?': a bleak pleasure The French critics were right. 'Qui a tué Bambi?' (IMDb; 'Who Killed Bambi?') is a clever, dark first film directed by Gilles Marchand -- who co-wrote it and also scripted the fine 'Harry, un ami qui vous veut de bien' (2000) -- but it would be much better for a few judicious cuts. Sophie Quinton (pictured in last entry) plays Isabelle, a trainee nurse who makes some very disquieting finds in what some foreign viewers took for a super-modern hospital, which is really a now routine establishment by France's high standards. Isabelle is both attracted by and scared of Dr Philipp (Laurent Lucas), who seems to spend most of his life on the premises and is professionally attentive when she does her first near fainting fit on running into him in a lift. When she pulls a similar stunt while, again for the first time, doing duty in the operating theatre, Isabelle's life takes a turn for the worse. Sooner or later, she's going to be on the surgeon's slab herself. And by then, we know that Dr Philipp is a killer. That's not the spoiler it might seem, because the drama of this movie lies in Isabelle's discoveries and the young trainee's rapport with the doctor who haunts the hospital at night as well as what we might take for her dreams. Her boyfriend, competently played by Yasmine Belmadi, is your average kind, nice young man who offers little reassurance, while the splendid Catherine Jacob, as Isabelle's cheerily competent cousin, is also an experienced nurse who becomes understandably peeved at the girl's sinister notions. Until it's too late. 'Bambi' is showing at L'Entrepôt (Fr., the revived cultural centre round the corner whose bright rebirth I wrote up on May 24), which at this stage five months into the film's big-screen career might trick people who know Paris into thinking it's another French art movie. Marchand does play at that game with his finely shot mixture of reality and fancy and a soundtrack which is minimalist enough to be effective, but without being a great film, it deserves a broad public. So does Sophie Quinton. She's indeed the pretty head-turner people have been writing about but also a most gifted actress cast in a difficult role, which she plays with a rare and convincing understatement. The only problem is that she's asked to do so for rather too long. In being over-ambitious with his first feature, Marchand serves up a film that loses its tension and sags for a spell in its second half as he labours his points and his cast. I give this a 6/10 and recommend it when you're in a mood to be slightly disturbed, not for a fun evening in or out, nor to anybody with a phobia about syringes or injections. 'Bambi' also reminded me of a particularly good variant on that game of those question and answer sessions where the only responses allowed are oui or non. But to say any more of that would be a spoiler, since it forms one of the cleverer psychological twists. As for the film's title, the only answer to that one is "Go and see it". At L'Entrepôt, they need to do something about one of the toilets! Trying to find the handbasin and the towel-roll in the dark afterwards, the man I almost collided with said, "The film was sombre enough! Now the damned toilet as well..." 10:49:57 PM  link   your views? [] Frightful taste for a sex Sunday If 'Qui a Tué Bambi?' is as good as the critics almost unanimously say it is, then I might review it myself later. Apart from some mostly excellent write-ups, the psycho-thriller that came out last year seems to have stirred a sizeable part of France's male population all because of a hitherto unnoticed young actress called Sophie Quinton. Among countless things I've now read of her qualities, for those who read French one of the saddest was where a fellow called Antonin went online in an Allociné forum. When it comes to the "brush-off" in the punchline, I've hardly savoured better myself! Ah, such gallantry! Talk about downright lust hidden in a bouquet of praise... All to no avail! Am I cruel, of a sudden? It's all Natalie's fault. I don't know that it will boost her sales, but a certain book of hers is now, I find, part of the talk of the quartier. Where Sam spoiled me rotten, yet again, with a splendid Sunday lunch at the Canteen, accompanied by far too much talk of sex. During a dull moment in the Factory yesterday, I was catching up on my blogroll. When it comes to talking about sex, this activity led me to another chat which is one of the reasons I could get into trouble at work. You are warned, forthwith, that this allegedly true "transcript of a private America Online chat session" is definitely open-minded adult reading: the strangest tastes came up at 'Purple Prank'. Before you click on that link, take note that even Venomous Kate hesitated about posting it last week and said "I know I'm Going To Regret This" (Electric Venom). But it is quite revoltingly funny. (Photo credit: Haut et Court films) 6:06:38 PM  link   your views? [] 'Decipher': far out, too much! (and grippingly good) (Also posted to Blogcritics, belatedly. But I don't blame Stel Pavlou for the cold, etc. that stopped me writing for a while.) If you want a novel of near-future politico-scientific speculation, ablaze with mind-stretching ideas and taut with the tension of total disaster in the making, then Stel Pavlou's 'Decipher' (2001, Simon & Schuster; Pocket Books, 2002) is it. The action begins in appalling weather aboard the 'Red Osprey', an energy giant's exploration vessel in the Ross Sea off Antarctica, where a tough team from Rola Corp. and some queasier scientists are after oil reserves. Yes, this kind of research is illegal and wicked. We know all about the last great wilderness, the provisions and bans of the Antarctic Treaty. The earth's vast southern icecap is a place where you can't shit without tanking the stuff up and taking it home for disposal. And nobody owns it. But as Pavlou points out in a brief preface starting in 1960, the Treaty "guaranteed that even if mankind had any desire to rid itself of the Seven Deadly Sins, Greed had been assured of a place in our hearts by virtue of time. By writing it down on a piece of paper and parading it as law and belief, Greed could be resurrected at a moment's notice. That was the beauty of the written word." However, it's not oil they strike with Rola Corp.'s depth node sunk from 'Red Osprey'. It's some weird rock, Carbon 60, and it's got incomprehensible writing on it. Roll on Dr Richard Scott, linguist extraordinaire, expert in the origins of language, bane of the Bible Belt because he explodes the very foundations of the Christian faith with his knowledge of comparative religion and mythologies. Scott is a kind of Joseph Campbell ('Thou Art That') and Mircea Eliade ('The Sacred and the Profane', 1968) rolled into one and doing his thing in 2012. With the United States on the verge of an energy resources war with China, the reliable old sun suddenly behaving so dangerously strangely that humanity's own recent and considerable contribution to global warming is among the least of our worries, and more bizarre discoveries being made in places as distant as the Amazon and Egypt, Scott's needed to take on something new. Along with Jon Hackett, nuclear physicist, Sarah Kelsey, leading geologist, engineer Ralph Matheson and a few others who who have to join an uneasy alliance of scientists, the military and Rola Corp. to find that they have about a week to save the world. Pavlou is good. His first novel rivets the attention for nearly 800 pages, draws richly on two of the oldest and most widespread myths known to humanity -- the Flood and notions of Atlantis -- and abounds with wit and ideas. But even when I finished it, I still wasn't sure whether my imagination had just absorbed a large chunk of encyclopaedia or a blockbuster film script to which the likes of James Cameron, Ridley Scott or even the grown-up Steven Spielberg might do justice, given a lot of money and some staggering but discreet special effects. The man does write movies. The year 'Decipher' came out, so did 'The 51st State', which the Liverpool University graduate both wrote and co-produced, to mixed crits. And it shows in the book, where the visual imagery is big-screen stuff, right up to its climax beneath the ice, but the characters are mostly not filled out: brilliant, funny, and sometimes devious and dangerous, but stereotypes nevertheless. This didn't bother me, since I was hooked. What did, however, was the number of times Pavlou puts his people in the most appalling situations and they respond in the most unlikely of ways. By chattering, relentlessly. Experience has taught me that when you're being shot at, for example, you don't chunter on as if you're in some cosy scientific conference. I don't know how I'd react if I encountered something as monstrous as a Golem, but I doubt that I'd resort to verbal pyrotechnics. Stel does seem vaguely aware of this flaw! At one point, a character does a nice parody of Scott, who is by far the worst offender. The trouble is that while this Britannica meets Hollywood approach pads the book out and can beggar belief while interfering with the action, what the characters have to say is often interesting. John Howard takes Pavlou to task for this in a nice exercise in comparative review: 'On Writing and Decipher' (Walden East). I agree with Howard that he sometimes crams too much in "as if Pavlou wasn’t sure that he’d ever be able to write another novel", but John misses the point in calling the four-page bibliography at the end a "tad pretentious". Had he looked more closely, he would have noticed that the works listed include: Matheson, Ralph K., Ecological Controls in Oil Production, USC Press, San Francisco, 2009 and Scott, Richard, Tales of the Deluge: A Global Report on Cultural Self-Replicating Genesis Myths, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2008. Stel's sense of humour invariably steps in each time he goes right over the top. This redeems the dull bits. And I'll read his next book. ________ Note to self: the "sense of humour ... redeems the dull bits". Might they say as much of me... Note to others: the man has a small Stel Pavlou website. Where I wish he'd included an e-mail contact address. 1:04:06 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.