Category: Culture

Touching Base With France’s Former First Lady Carla Bruni

Carla Bruni
Carla Bruni “I don’t care – do you understand?”

Jeremy Allen interviews Carla Bruni in Paris about her new album French Touch, but politics is strictly interdict. “I wish good luck to Mr and Mrs Trump, I wish good luck to Mr and Mrs Macron, and I don’t care, do you understand?”

Listen: The Quietus | Features | A Quietus Interview | Touching Base With France’s Former First Lady: Carla Bruni Interviewed

Legendary Bordeaux Chateaux Are Now Open for Meals and Sleepovers

These days it’s the insider’s way to best understand the region’s famous wines.

The wine region of Bordeaux, long willfully fusty, is in the midst of a modern tourist boom. Last year saw the opening of the swirling aluminum-and-glass La Cité du Vin, a spectacular high-tech museum devoted to wine and culture. And this July brought a two-hour high-speed train link from Paris.

Now you’ll want to venture beyond town for the real fun: The appellation’s celebrated wine châteaux, whose doors were long shut to tourists, have unveiled dazzling wineries designed by big-name architects. And more than a dozen of them, including billionaire-owned Château Cos d’Estournel, have begun welcoming wine lovers for lunch, dinner, and even overnight stays in opulent rooms overlooking the vines.

In the city of Bordeaux proper, beautiful 18th century buildings have shed their soot to stand gleaming once again as part of a renewal project that helped the municipality gain Unesco World Heritage status in 2007. Jazzy wine bars and inventive chefs have swept in since, upending decades of heavy cuisine doused in buttery sauces. [ . . . ]

More: Legendary Bordeaux Chateaux Are Now Open for Meals and Sleepovers – Bloomberg

Kiri Te Kanawa retires

By Michael Stevenson

Bonjour mes amis!

I read this morning on the BBC that opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa says she will never sing in public again.  “I don’t want to hear my voice,” said the soprano, 71, whose career has spanned more than half a century.

“It is in the past. When I’m teaching young singers and hearing beautiful young fresh voices, I don’t want to put my voice next to theirs.”

I don’t listen to much opera, but I do love Kiri Te Kanawa, whom I became a fan of after being introduced to her voice in Merchant-Ivory’s brilliant A Room With A View.  Listen here to Dame Kiri singinging Puccini’s O Mio Babbino Caro” (“Oh My Beloved Father”), and Chi il Bel Sogno di Doretta.

Could anything be more beautiful? Thank you, Kiri Te Kanawa.

Paris Can Wait, Macron’s Slackers, Office Space

By Michael Stevenson

PARIS CAN WAIT
Bonjour my friends!
Last night I watched the movie Paris Can Wait as a mindless diversion from Rachel Maddow’s frustratingly futile plans for a Trump impeachment and the continuous Harvey-Irma hurricane disaster reports. This cable news diversion was a bit more mindless than I could tolerate, however. Although I loved the many French restaurant dining scenes (particularly the Châteauneuf-du-Pape pouring into oversized wine glasses) and the footage of a curiously unoccupied Pont du Gard, I’ve seen better stories on The Hallmark Channel, watching with my 87 year old mother, while both of us drown-out the romcom dialogue with talk about our Red Sox. Mom loves Mookie.
This is the first feature film from Eleanor Coppola (the wife of Francis Ford Coppola) and the story is somewhat autobiographical, with lovely Diane Lane playing a recently empty-nested “Anne” (Coppola) who undertakes a surprise road trip from Cannes to Paris, alongside the flirtatious Frenchman Jacques (Arnaud Viard), who is a business associate of her husband (Alec Baldwin as the Francis Ford You-Know-Who character).
Will Jacques be nimble and quick enough to grab some nookie with Anne? After about 30 minutes you’ll stop caring about either of these graying cuties, and your only concern will be if the local wine shop is still open.

MACRON, LUMBERGH AND THE SLACKERS
Reuters News reports President Emmanuel Macron faces the first challenge on the streets to his business-friendly reform agenda today, when workers from the hard-left CGT union will march through French cities to protest against a loosening of labor regulations.  Macron told French business leaders: “I am fully determined and I won’t cede any ground, not to slackers, nor cynics, nor hardliners.”

Slackers? Mon Dieu!

My French friends – don’t fall for this shit! Ask any American worker if they would prefer your 35 hour work week and many holidays  to our 24/7/365 days-a-year model. Only the most jealous and/or deluded will claim ours is superior to yours in terms of overall health and happiness. Don’t allow Macron to become President Bill Lumbergh. You’ll be working Saturdays, mes amis.

BILL LUMBERGH, OFFICE SPACE
Speaking of Office Space, here’s some great clips from YouTube.