Jean Cocteau

Cocteau

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929), and the films The Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents Terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orpheus (1949).

His circle of associates, friends included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Gertrude Stein, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Yul Brynner, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, Ernst Jünger, Albert Gleizes, Igor Stravinsky, Marie Laurencin, María Félix, Édith Piaf, Panama Al Brown, Colette, Jean Genet, and Raymond Radiguet. (Wikipedia)

Modigliani
Modigliani’s portrait of Cocteau 1916

Hundreds evacuated as flash floods hit southern France 

Rescuers backed by helicopters evacuated about 1,600 people, most of them campers, in southern France on Thursday as heavy rain caused flash flooding and transformed rivers and streams into torrents, the interior minister said.

Hardest hit was the Gard region, where 119 children, many of them from Germany, were evacuated from their campsite at Saint-Julien-de-Peyrolas, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said in a statement.

About 750 people in all were evacuated in Gard, mainly from campsites, a top district official, Thierry Dousset, told France’s BFM-TV news channel [. . . ]

Source: Hundreds evacuated as flash floods hit southern France – France 24

A year in Paris is as bad for your health as smoking 183 cigarettes 

A study by the European Transport & Environment association published on Friday confirmed that spending a few days in various popular European capitals is equivalent to smoking between one and four cigarettes.

Spending a long weekend in Paris could be as bad for your health as smoking two cigarettes. But this is at least a lot less polluted than in Prague, where your mini-break could be the equivalent of smoking four cigarettes, or even worse in Beijing, where it could be same as puffing up to 16 cigarettes.

You no longer need to sit next to a dedicated smoker to be a victim of passive smoking. Air pollution is such that you only have to walk around for a few days to breathe the toxic equivalent of several cigarettes. This study obviously has serious implications for tourists, who typically spend their days wandering the streets visiting sites, but it also will cause concern for native cyclists and joggers striving for a healthier lifestyle but instead exposing themselves to toxins.

The Transport & Environment study compared the contamination from fine particles of the ten largest European tourist cities by converting it into the number of cigarettes smoked. The NGO used a method of calculation created by Berkeley Earth, an international climate association [ . . . ]

Continue reading at FRANCE24: A year in Paris is as bad for your health as smoking 183 cigarettes – France 24

Audrey Tautou’s eight best films 

Pas de Merde loved Amelie of course, but The Da Vinci Code was horrible. What do you think of this list?

Audrey Tautou’s stardom is such that she easily crosses the barrier between the francophone and anglophone worlds. Her English-speaking roles – such as “The Da Vinci Code”, are as impactful an [ . . . ]

See full story at VOGUE: Audrey Tautou’s eight best films | Vogue Paris