In conversation: A French and American take on Emily in Paris

Emily in Paris is everywhere: causing people to rage on social media, making us dream of booking tix to Paris again (someday!) and paused on TV screens, as people WhatsApp their friends to moan about how unrealistic Emily’s (Lily Collins’) stratospheric social media success is – who gets 200 new followers after posting a photo of baked goods? – and then swooning over how gorgeous Frenchie Lucas Bravo (Emily’s neighbour, Gabriel), is.

Critics – in the US, UK and France – have complained that it’s clichéd, ridiculous, lacks diversity and is deeply culturally offensive. However, it’s also totally addictive, even if people are hate-watching it, with a viewership that includes teens, their parents, and every Sex and the City fan who was excited about the premise of sex – and Pat Field styling – in another city.

For those who haven’t seen it, Emily in Paris centres around Chicagoan Emily, who gets sent to Paris to work for a top French marketing agency when her boss falls pregnant. Clueless about the language and culture, she makes a series of faux pas that sees her branded a plouc (a hick) and ringarde (basic). But Paris is soooo beautiful and Emily’s boss, Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) and friend, Camille (Camille Razat), are soooo stylish, and the men are soooo dreamy…

One reason that Emily’s got everyone talking is that it touches on the big cultural divide between France and America. Who better to discuss the show then a Frenchwoman (CW founder Eleonore Dresch) and an American, kids’ editor, Jennifer Barton.
Continue reading “In conversation: A French and American take on Emily in Paris” →

Les confidences de Francis Cabrel : “Appartenir aux autres m’embarrasse toujours”

 

By Yannick Delneste | Google translation

Four years after “In extremis”, the artist released a new album “At the coming dawn”. 13 new songs combining gravity and irony, impeccable ballads and blues-folk. Meeting in Astaffort, on its Lot-et-Garonnaises lands.

The rooms and the courtyard of the former Astaffort school, today the stronghold of the Voix du Sud association that it created, are deserted on October 5. Francis Cabrel came down from his house not far from the village of Lot-et-Garonnais. Before the Parisian promo, first confidences from his biotope on his last baby, “At the coming dawn” which will be released on Friday, October 16.

Francis Cabrel. My meeting with Claude Sicre . He gave me several books on troubadours, “medieval rockstars”. I first said thank you for the nice phrase and read, started working on an entire album on the theme. After five songs, I was no longer moving forward so I gave up the idea of ​​a “Troubadours Project”. There are four left on the disc.

Continue atSource: Les confidences de Francis Cabrel : “Appartenir aux autres m’embarrasse toujours” – Sud Ouest.fr

Thomas Chaline’s “Cabrel: Une Vie En Chansons”

Cabrel book

Thomas Chaline has just published a unique book on Francis Cabrel. His bet? Tell the man through his songs. He tells us about his admiration for the Astaffort artist.

“Me, I feel like I told everything inside my songs. They just had to listen!” A phrase launched by Francis Cabrel to Michel Drucker in 1983 which marked Thomas Chaline, guitarist, music fan and author of several books on French singers. In “Cabrel, a life in songs”, it is the texts of the author from Lot-et-Garonnais that he goes through with a fine comb, to better pierce … the man.

Why write about Francis Cabrel? 

Thomas Chaline: 

“It’s simple, he’s been my idol since adolescence. When I had all the problems in the world like any self-respecting teenager, his reassuring face soothed me. The first time I heard one of his songs, it blew me away. I knew I would write about him one day or another, as a personal tribute. ”

You mention in the foreword of the book the work of investigating song by song: is it more complicated with a personality like Cabrel?

“It’s the same approach in all my books, but this time I knew the artist’s work very well, I only had the pieces of the puzzle to put together, by interviewing his relatives, like Philippe Sella and others. But it is true that he is a mysterious personality. ”

How did Francis Cabrel react?

“He didn’t want to get involved but was curious to see how I was going to get out of it. He even confided to relatives that he had forgotten some stories!”

You have, it seems to me, met, can you tell us about this episode?

“It was completely by chance, one summer in Hossegor in 1998. We talked about music, he’s really a guitar lover. He was everything I imagined about him. He was on vacation, he would have completely could tell me to go and show myself, but he didn’t… ”

Have you come here, to its Astaffort lands?

“I’ve been to his village before, yes, and when you see him, you understand everything. You understand how he lives, and why he releases an album every five years.”

You talk about his attachment to his roots …

“Yes, it’s something very important to him, he always assumed that” redneck “side, portrayed in some shows like” Guignols de l’Info “. In fact, he doesn’t care. J he likes that he is not in the seraglio, in show business and that he has always kept his values. He has never had to fit into the mold, to be round back. ”

The man does not confide much in the media but says everything in his songs?

“He brings up many personal themes, and often takes a stand, you really have to take the time to pay attention to his words. As a guitarist, that’s what interested me, to see what triggers the desire to to write.”

You also talk about the influences of Francis Cabrel, especially blues and American folk.

“Yes, that’s a point in common that we have, he admires artists like Jackson Browne or Bob Dylan. We also have other points in common, we were both born at the end of November and we have a strong link with Vietnam , country of her adopted daughter and one of my grandmothers. ”

Will you come to Agen or Astaffort to present your work “Cabrel, a life in songs”?

“I would have liked a lot, but the Covid-19 crisis is depriving me of it, it’s very annoying!”

“Cabrel, a life in songs”, by Thomas Chaline published by Hugo Publishing. Released September 24

Source: Small survey on the songs of Francis Cabrel – petitbleu.fr

Birds on a Wire in Flying Concerts – Watch the full program | ARTE Concert

Birds on a Wire is the project of singer Rosemary Standley (voice of Moriarty) and cellist Dom La Nena. The two artists weave an entire universe built around song and emotion. A symbiosis that allows them to take back, in their own way, musical monuments ranging from Fairouz to Bob Dylan.Two voices and a cello, that’s all it takes for Birds on a Wire to immerse us in a universe as refined as it is moving.

The words that escape the duo – in French, English, Italian or even Arabic depending on the song – seem to be sung for us, in the hollow of our ears. We find this feeling of intimacy in Birds on a Wire , a first album published in 2014.On the stage of the Concerts Volants ,Rosemary Standley and Dom La Nena come to defend a new album called Ramages .

In this opus published at the beginning of the year by [PIAS], the duo once again have fun hijacking songs from all over the world: “Wish you were here” by Pink Floyd, a traditional Breton song, “Les berceaux “by Gabriel Fauré, a Russian folk song… Nothing can resist Birds on a Wire.

Concert captured on September 21, 2021 at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris.

 

Source: Birds on a Wire in Flying Concerts – Watch the full program | ARTE Concert