Category: Culture

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.

Review: ‘Paris Can Wait,’ at Least Until After the Crème Brûlée

“Paris Can Wait,” a smugly affluent Euro trifle and the first narrative feature from Eleanor Coppola (the wife of Francis Ford Coppola), is little more than an indulgent wallow in gustatory privilege. By the time the final meal is devoured, you’ll be wanting nothing so much as an antacid.

Inspired by similar events in Ms. Coppola’s past, the story fusses around Anne (an overqualified Diane Lane) as she trundles from Cannes to Paris in an old Peugeot. Anne’s husband, a frantic Hollywood producer (a barely seen Alec Baldwin), has been urgently summoned to Budapest. So his amiable French business partner, Jacques (Arnaud Viard), has offered to drive Anne to her destination — via seemingly every notable restaurant en route.

What follows is a Michelin-starred commercial for French cuisine gussied up as Anne’s journey of self-discovery. When not inhaling jus d’agneau and crème brûlée — and a cheese basket the size of a small fishing boat — the two visit famous landmarks and exchange flirty glances. But when Anne finally peels off her pantyhose, it isn’t to indulge in a roadside quickie; it’s to repair the Peugeot’s broken fan belt. So practical, these American women!

Between promoting her son-in-law’s band and tediously freeze-framing Anne’s amateur snapshots, Ms. Coppola (best known for her riveting 1991 documentary about the making of “Apocalypse Now”) never realizes Anne as more than a bland accessory who lets men tell her what to eat. Unlike Martine (Élise Tielrooy), a forthright Venusian beauty from Jacques’s past.

“You’ll never forget your travels with Jacques,” Martine promises, flushed with remembered ecstasies. Oh, Martine, I’m pretty sure we will.

‘It’s about the woman’: Meet rising French band, Her

The future stars talk about Her Tape No.1, their influences + being mistaken for an English band

“We are focussing on Her Tape No.1. It begins by talking about the dreaming, the lust for a woman, and that’s our track ‘Quite Like’. Then you have the love encounter with ‘Five Minutes’,” reveals Her’s Victor Solf, as co-founder and fellow band leader Simon Carpentier nods in agreement. “Then you have the experience of missing someone in ‘Her’, and finally you have the wedding in ‘Union’.”

This love story EP has won a lot of hearts in France since the Rennes-based band released it on vinyl through a French indie last month. However, their first ever digital release was ‘Quite Like’ in April. Although the full EP isn’t out digitally yet, Soundcloud streams have hit over a quarter of a million across their two releases, and plays have largely come from the UK and the US. [ . . . ]

Source: ‘It’s about the woman’: Meet rising French band, Her | Gigwise