Category: Culture

Paris climate deal is in effect. Now comes the other hard part

Emission cuts that countries have pledged so far aren’t expected to hit the goal of holding Earth’s temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. This leaves a lot of work for a Morocco conference this week.

The United Nations climate conference that opens here this week is all about finding the right balance between slow and fast.

At least that’s how many climate experts see it. They anticipate the conference will feature both a push for faster global action on emissions and an underlying practical reality: On some fronts, patience will be vital asset in building needed consensus.

READ FULL STORY AT the Source: Paris climate deal is in effect. Now comes the other hard part. – CSMonitor.com

Jean-Jacques Perrey, 1929–2016

Jean-Jacques Perrey, French composer and electronic music pioneer, died Friday at his home in Switzerland. He had been ill with lung cancer.

Perrey first started recording electronic music in 1952, long before the Moog synthesizer was first made for sale in 1967. His synthesizer music was featured on The Simpsons, and South Park. Perrey was also featured prominently at Disneyland and Disney World, where his “Baroque Hoedown” played over the Main Street Electrical Parade.

I have never been to either Disneyland or Disney World, but I have been to Paris, where Perrey was born, and to New York, where he lived during the 1960s, and produced 1966’s The In Sound From the Way Out. 

Below is a clip from the American TV show I’ve Got a Secret, with the great Steve Allen hosting. You may also recognize panelists Betsy Palmer, Bill Cullen, Bess Myerson, and of course, Henry Morgan. Check out the incredible song at 07:40. If they would play this song at Mass, I would have never stopped going to church.

Rest in Peace, Jean-Jacques.

Jean-Jacques Perrey featured on  I’ve Got A Secret TV Show

My favourite film: In Bruges

I rewatched Martin McDonagh’s brilliant In Bruges last night, this time anticipating my upcoming July vacation in Belgium, Paris and Provence. This morning, found this piece from The Guardian’s series on “My Favourite Film.” For me – it nearly is!  [ Pas De Merde ]

The best films waste no time, and In Bruges hits the ground sprinting with this pin-sharp voiceover: “After I’d killed him, I dropped the gun in the Thames, washed the residue off my hands in the bathroom of a Burger King, and walked home to await instructions.”

Bam. Within 10 seconds, the story has begun. A young hitman, Ray (Colin Farrell), has botched his first job for East End crime boss Harry Waters (Ralph Fiennes) and needs to go away for a while – to Bruges. He is incandescently stroppy about this. Accompanying him is Ken (Brendan Gleeson), an older gangster who, guidebook in hand, greets the Belgian town and its misty pre-Christmas streets with the determined gusto of your dad on a camping trip, all deep nose-breathing and itineraries.

Bruges is really the fourth name on the cast list here: its 12th-century canals and lamplit cobbles form the perfect backdrop to the script’s crepuscular tone, as well as its somewhat medieval probing of morality and blame and redemption. Because (spoilers ahead!) Ray, in the course of performing a hit on a priest, has also inadvertently shot dead a choirboy. His rage at being stuck in this purgatorial “shithole” hides an anguish over what, if there is an afterlife, must surely be an unpardonable sin.

READ THE FULL STORY: My favourite film: In Bruges | Film | The Guardian

French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani wins Goncourt, France’s top literary prize – France 24

 

Moroccan-born Leila Slimani won France’s top literary prize, the Goncourt, on Thursday with a novel guaranteed to “scare the wits out of parents”. The chilling tale of a “perfect” nanny who murders the two children she is looking after, “Chanson douce” (roughly translated as “Sweet Song”) is based on the real-life story of a Dominican child-minder shortly to stand trial for the double murder of her charges in New York in 2012.The book – which begins with the words “the baby is dead” – is already a bestseller in France.

READ FULL STORY at Source: French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani wins Goncourt, France’s top literary prize – France 24

French women to walk out of work in protest against gender pay gap 

Women in France earn around 15.1 percent less than men, according to the latest data from the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat, which Les Glorieuses has calculated to mean women will be essentially working for free for the rest of the year after 4:34pm on November 7.“As of 4:34pm [and 7 seconds] on November 7, women will be working ‘voluntarily’,” the organisation said in a statement on its website.

“We call on women, men, unions and feminist organisations to join the movement… and to hold events and protests in order to make income inequality a central political problem. By tackling this subject, we’re showing that the gender pay gap is not just a ‘woman’s issue’.”

Source: French women to walk out of work in protest against gender pay gap – France 24