Monsieur Pas de Merde recommends “Call My Agent!” (aka (“Dix Pour Cent”)
Every day is like walking a tightrope for talent agents Mathias, Gabriel, Andrea and Arlette, striving to get contracts for prestigious clients like Cécile de France and other top actors. This series – directed by none other than the brilliant Cédric Klapisch – is a remarkable immersion into the world and lives of movie-star agents, with an all-star cast from Julie Gayet to Joey Starr.
*** The correct translation of Dix Pour Cent is “Ten Percent” not “Call My Agent”.
“The Incredible History of Sex”: a world tour of eroticism in comics
After “Sex Story” published in 2016, the psychiatrist Philippe Brenot and the designer Laetitia Coryn deliver “The Incredible history of sex”.
They put the cover back. With “Sex Story”, in 2016 , Philippe Brenot – psychiatrist, anthropologist, couple therapist – and cartoonist Laetitia Corbyn signed the first history of sexuality in comics, from prehistory to the present day. A real success: the book has sold 80,000 copies and is the subject of 14 foreign translations, even entitled to the honors of the Wall Street Journal. They are back today with Volume II, “The Incredible History of Sex, from Africa to Asia”. A work that completes the previous one, devoted solely to the Western world.
“For me, it’s the same book actually. Initially, we wanted to do just one. But a 500-page comic, that’s a lot… The subject is so vast. What is certain is that the form of the graphic novel is perfect: an essay on the history of sexuality, that would be a bit annoying to read, ”said the sexologist. But make no mistake about it. If the images are explicit, although often enhanced with a touch of humor, the background is very serious, based on months and months of research and a dense bibliography.
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Trump will regret the call to Georgia
“I wonder if Trump knows you can commit a state crime in Georgia by telephone from DC, and you can’t pardon yourself or your henchmen on state charges.” – Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
“In any other conceivable moment in US history, this tape would result in the leadership of both parties demanding the immediate resignation of the President of the United States.” – Carl Bernstein
“The evidence is on tape. The next attorney general should move forward, if for no other reason, to deter further attempts at such reprehensible conduct. I would suggest impeachment as well, which could include a ban on holding office in the future” – Jennifer Rubin / Washington Post
“University of Georgia Law Professor Anthony Michael Kreis told Politico reporters Allie Bice, Kyle Cheney, Anita Kumar, and Zach Montellaro that it is against the law in Georgia for anyone to “solicit” or “request” election fraud. “There’s just no way that… he has not violated this law,” Kreis said. Michael R. Bromwich, former inspector general of the Department of Justice, tweeted that “unless there are portions of the tape that somehow negate criminal intent,” Trump’s “best defense would be insanity.”
Call My Agent: the French comedy gem A-listers are desperate to star in
The sharp, hilarious look at the hell of being an agent already features everyone from Juliette Binoche to Isabelle Huppert sending themselves up. Now, Hollywood has come knocking
The pilot opens with an unannounced arrival (of ingénue Camille, aggro agent Mathias’s hidden daughter) and an untimely death (of founder Samuel Kerr, who swallows a wasp while on holiday in Brazil). Mathias and his colleagues, Andréa, Gabriel and Arlette, are thrown into a frenetic power struggle both among themselves and in the wider film industry. Stars threaten to leave ASK, Kerr’s widow and heir threatens to shut up shop, and private passions, usually held at bay, threaten to derail everything.
If the show’s premise is somewhat predictable, its handling of fame is altogether less so. Each episode features a titular guest star – BéatriceDalle, Cécile de France, Guy Marchand – but rather than being written as the focal point, the big name is instead that day’s worry to assuage, the problem to be fixed. Call My Agent does that rare thing that interviews often fail to achieve, and makes these people, who live decidedly abnormal lives, very normal.
There are administratively challenged actors who need help answering emails and vetting nannies, and matrimonially challenged stars who want help finding a date. There’s the actor who can’t drive, the actor who can’t swim and the actor who suddenly can’t act. There’s one who, as Andrea puts it, is “doing a Day Lewis”, and can’t stop acting, unable to come out of a very intense Revenant-style survival role. He ends up being dropped from his subsequent gig as a clean-shaven banker when he literally attacks the producer’s dog, with his teeth.
However, instead of ramping up the self-deprecation implicit in these big-screen stereotypes as Extras did, or as you can imagine a W1A-style British remake might, the talent here is treated with tenderness, and not a small amount of poetry. And by ‘talent’ I mean not just the people (actors and directors) but the artform itself: the show is an ode to cinema. It is French, after all.
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Chilly Gonzales live performance FM4
A favovite of Monsieur Pas de Merde, here is the wonderful Chilly Gonzales performing a session from 2018
Tracklist:
0:00:42 Pretenderness 0:05:00 Famous Hungarians 0:08:27 Chico 0:10:37 Nimbus 0:13:44 Prelude in C Sharp Major 0:16:30 Present Tense 0:19:51 Kenaston 0:22:44 Rideaux Lunaires 0:32:56 Be Natural 0:36:44 Oregano 0:43:51 Cello Gonzales 0:48:16 Dot 0:52:57 October 3rd 0:56:43 Kopfkino 1:04:30 Why don’t we disappear 1:11:30 Smells like Teen spirit / Hit me baby one more time 1:12:03 White Keys 1:14:59 Advantage Points 1:20:07 Knight Moves 1:30:42 Thriller Impromtu 1:34:29 So-Called Party Over There
Pas De Merde 