Film Diary #3

I was having trouble trying to find another French movie I would be interested in watching. While sitting in class one day, Professor Tung recommended I watch Three Colors: Bleu. Tung told me about the movie and it seemed something I would be interested. So, I decided to watch it during class one day.

Three Colors: Bleu is the first movie in the Three Colors trilogy. The other two movies are called White and Red, respectively. The story follows a woman named Julie de Courcy, who is the wife of a famous composer. After a series of tragic events, Julie is trying to cope with her life now. Julie, along with her husband and her daughter, were involved in a fatal car accident, which took the lives of her family. However, Julie survived the crash. With her life in shambles, Julie tries to commit suicide while recovering in the hospital. She has just lost the two most important things in her life, and she feels an empty void that she thinks she can get rid of by ending her life.

After recovering physically, Julie has yet to recover from the accident both mentally and emotionally. Instead of facing her problems, Julie decides to try a different tactic, and she tries to run away from her problems. As soon as she leaves the hospital, she decides to abandon her estate and start a new life in Paris, in an attempt to erase her previous life. One of the ways in which she tries to complete this is to seduce her husband's composer friend and writing partner, Oliver Benoit, on an old mattress in her old estate.

However, as Julie is trying to forget her previous life, her previous life does not want to let Julie go. While she was in the hospital, a reporter came to interview her and to ask her about a rumor concerning her husband. Apparently, the rumor was that he was not the one composing the music that made him famous, but that it was actually Julie writing the material. When she leaves the hospital, Julie takes the notes of her late husband's unfinished work, a piece that was supposed to celebrate the creation of the European Union, and destroyed it.

However, while Julie is trying to continue her life in Paris, France, another copy of her husband's great masterpiece resurfaces, bringing back her past. For some reason, this copy of the music ends up being the catalyst that opens up many doors that were once locked in her past. She is finally forced to confront many issues that she thought she had buried, along with her husband and daughter. Julie discovers that her husband had been unfaithful, and that the other woman is carrying his child. She also falls in love with Oliver, her husband's good friend and the man she unsuccessfully tried to seduce as soon as she left the hospital.

All these new issues and controversies in her life beg the question as the film ends, will Julie finish her husband's work of art, or will she let it die along with him?

At first, I felt that I was not going to like this movie. I felt it started up slow, and I thought that I was going to just tune it out and not like it. As it turns out, I ended up enjoying the movie quite a bit. This first movie of the trilogy (which are named in reference to the three colors on the French flag, something I didn't realize until I saw a picture of the three movie posters next to each other!) is about liberty. I thought it was an excellent movie, and I recommend it to any movie lover.

France Media Research Questions

Describe French Television (standards)
From what I found, France uses a color TV standard called SECAM, which stands for Sequential Color With Memory. Development for this system started in 1957, and it was officially introduced in 1967. There are 625 lines of resolution, and it is broadcast in 25 interlaced frames per second.

Describe the types of programming
There is many different types of programming on French television, from a French music channel to the news. Many shows that are now being broadcast here in the United States got their start in Europe, like many of the current reality shows. Shows like American Idol, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and Deal or No Deal all had their starts in Europe.

Describe the means of programming support
From what I found, French programming gets their money mostly from licenses and advertising.

Regulation
When it comes to French broadcasting regulation, there are three main actors. The government actually designs the broadcasting policy, drafts the laws and issues decrees to implement said laws. Parliament passes broadcasting laws and controls the funding for public broadcasters. The High Council for Broadcasting grants licenses to private broadcasters, appoints the heads of public broadcasters, and oversees the programming activities of all broadcasters.

Compare French News to U.S. News and identify the major international n news agency
French News is structured very similarly to U.S. News. They have the most important things that are going on at that time at the top of the broadcast, and then move on to more local stories, depending on where you are in France. Obviously, the stories are going to be different, unless it is an international story, that involves major countries. They also do sports, but it mostly consists of soccer, something that is pretty much foreign here in the United States. I found that the major international news agency is the AFP, or the Agence France-Presse.

What are the major newspapers?
The major newspapers in France are: Le Canard enchaîné, Courrier International, Les Échos (deals in economics), L'Équipe (deals in sports), Le Parisien, and La Tribune. The two free newspapers are the Metro and 20 Minutes.

What are the most popular magazines?
Some of the popular magazines that I found are: L'Express, Le Monde Diplomatique, Le Temps, and VSD.

Watch a sample of French Television and make an observation about the programming/advertising, etc. In what way is it similar/different than U.S.?
One of the shows I watched on French Television was the German version of Deal or No Deal. It was funny because I didn’t understand anything they were saying, but I was still able to follow the program because I am familiar with the American version. They took just as many commercial breaks as they do here as well. I noticed that there are far fewer channels in France than there are here, probably because of licensing issues and so on.

Watch a sample of an international service such as CNN and comment on the coverage.
I watched one news program on France5 (I believe) that was similar to MSNBC. It had the scrolling bars at the bottom with stock information, and it was all about stocks and major news events.

Obtain a copy of one of the major newspapers and compare it to the Star-Ledger or NY Times.
I picked up a copy of La Tribune, and it is structured like a magazine. You know how the Star Ledger is broken off into separate sections? Well, La Tribune is not like that. Every section is separated, but not in the way that the Star Ledger or the NY Times is. Also, La Tribune has color on almost every page, whereas the Star Ledger does not.

Film Diary #2

A week before the Media and Film group ventured off to Paris, Professor Tung invited me to a French Film Festival at the Lincoln Center Theatre in New York City. We were going to see a film called No Le Dis A Personne, or Tell No One. Naturally, it was a French movie produced in 2006 that won many Cesar's, which are France's equivalent of the Oscars, including Best Film. As we sat down ready to watch this movie, I had forgotten the name of the movie. So, I asked a nice gentleman sitting in front of me what the name of the movie was. He told me that it was called Tell No One. After a brief introduction by the oranizer of the French Film Festival, she brought up Harlan Coben, the author of the book that the movie is based on. Ironically enough, it turned out that the man I asked the name of the movie was Harlan Coben, the author himself!! After I laughed to myself, we all got ready to watch the movie.

The movies revolves around the weird and strange situations that have been thrown at Alexander Beck, a pediatrician (who is played by François Cluzet, who bears a striking resemblance to Dustin Hoffman). One day, Beck takes his long time love and wife, Margot, to Lake Champlane(?), to do some late night swimming. An argument arises between the two while in the middle of the lake, and Margot swims off to the docks. She walks inland some and Alexander hears screams coming from within the docks. Beck gets scared and swims off as fast as he can to see what has happened to his beloved wife. As soon as he gets onto the dock, Beck gets attacked by a mysterious figure, assumed to be the man that did something to his wife. Beck wakes up some time later in a hospital bed. A police officer comes into his room to tell him the bad news, that his wife Margot had been killed. The markings on Margot's disfigured body were evidence to prove that a certain serial killer that the police had been after for a long time was the culprit. The police eventually caught the killer and arrested him.

Fast forward to eight years later, and Dr. Beck is just trying to put the pieces of his life back together. He becomes very focused on his work as a pediatrician. However, on the anniversary of his wife's murder, two bodies mysteriously turn up at the same location of where they found Margot's body. From the looks of the body, they had been dead for many years. This opens up the case of Margot Beck once again. On top of this, the police feel that there is enough evidence to implicate that Alexander is the one who murdered these two men. On the same day, Beck is at his office when he receives an e-mail from an unknown e-mail address that has a phrase in it that only himself and his late wife knew, an inside joke kind of thing. The e-mail also contains a link of recent surveillance camera footage shows Margot, looking alive and well. This is the point where Alexander Beck's life turns completely upside down.

Now, the message Beck received, presumably from his wife, says that they are both being watched. Beck is now on the run from police, while there is a group of gangs that are strong-arming his friends into giving up any information that might be useful to finding Beck and killing him. Looking for help, Alexander turns to his sister, Anne. Anne convinces her lesbian lover, Helene, to hire a high profile lawyer named Elisabeth Feldman to help Alexander prove his innocence. While working on the case, Alex seemingly disappears and continues to stay on the run from the police and the group of thugs, while at the same time looking for his long lost wife, who has finally reappeared and has convinced Beck that she is still alive, but why is she still alive? He gets help from a gangster whose child Alex helped get better. The gangster feels as if he owes Beck one, so he goes out of his way to keep Beck safe.

I don't really want to spoil the ending, all I will say is go see this movies. There are many twists and turns, it is absolutely spectacular. I felt that the actors did a fine job in portraying the characters from Coben's book. Seeing as how Coben's book is based in New York, the writers must have had a hard time trying to convert the settings and everything to Paris, but I feel that it was an excellent movie. Another movie with subtitles, but you get past that very quickly. It got to the point to where I felt like I was listening to the characters say what they were saying, when in reality I was reading on the screen while watching the movie. THe twist at the end is superb, and I really enjoyed this foreign movie.

Film Diary #1

The first film I decided to watch was La Femme Nikita. It was made in 1990 and was written and directed by Luc Besson. The film tells the tale of a female teenager named Nikita. She is a troubled teen who is a heroin addict. One day her and her gang of friends try to rob a pharmacy (which, coincidentally, is owned by the parents of one of her junkie friends). Needless to say, the heist goes completely bad. The cops get wind of a bunch of teenagers robbing a pharmacy and head over to bust them. When the cops arrive, a shootout breaks out between the two groups on opposite sides of the law. Everyone in Nikita's gang ends up dying, while Nikita herself is hiding underneath a desk. When the cops find Nikita, to ask if she is OK, she goes crazy and shoots as many police officers as she can before she is taken down, which is one. Nikita is then taken to jail and her trial takes place. She is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. While in prison, Nikita is injected with many drugs, and it is assumed that she has died in prison.

All of a sudden, Nikita wakes up and finds herself in a strange room. A man walks into the room, and informs Nikita that she is officially listed as dead. Her previous life is seemingly over, and she is now in the hands of the DGSE, which is the French intelligence agency. A choice is given to her. Nikita can either be killed for real, or she can start a new life as an agent of the DGSE. The obvious choice for her is to become an agent for the French intelligence agency. So, Nikita is put through a series of training courses. She learns to combat, how to use a computer, and other such things that would be necessary for one to know as a tool of the government. Nikita eventually proves to be quite the talented agent.

Nikita's first mission is to eliminate a bunch of foreign dignitaries in a very high class restaurant that she is taken to. This was probably one of my favorites parts of the movie. There was so much action and suspense in this one part. Nikita kills off her targets and then has to escape. Her "boss" instructs her to jump out of a small window in one of the restaurant's bathrooms. However, when she arrives to the window, she finds that it is boarded up by bricks. There is nowhere to escape. She realizes that she must improvise her way out of the restaurant as people are trying to kill her. Nikita resorts to her old ways and decides to go out guns blazing. She kills many people and manages to escape out of a laundry chute as a big explosion follows her. This mission was about more than just killing. The agency wanted to see how Nikita would handle herself in an unforeseen situation.

After a successful mission, Nikita is able to begin her new life outside of the headquarters of the agency. She ends up dating a man that she meets while shopping for food at a local supermarket. It is a good, normal relationship. However, Nikita kept her secret life from her loved one. She was able to continue her life as a secret agent while at the same time be a loving homebody girlfriend.

Life continued for Nikita as normal (for her, anyway) until one fateful mission. She was instructed to recover important documents from a foreign embassy. A mission that the agency thought would be routine for the very highly trained Nikita, things started to go horribly wrong. Things got so out of hand in this mission that the DGSE was forced to send out a "cleaner" to the site. What a cleaner does is just that, he/she cleans up any mess that is left by an agent. In this case the cleaner, played by Jean Reno (by far my favorite French actor), was instructed to destroy any evidence that would link the DGSE to this mission, which, unfortunately, included Nikita.

I enjoyed this movie tremendously. Once I was able to get past the language barrier of the film, I was completely hooked to the film. I think it also helped that I was a big fan of the Canadian television series that was a spinoff of the movie. That show ran for five seasons on the USA network. I am a big fan of action thrillers and this movie was definitely one of those types of movies. It was very well done, you were able to really connect with all the characters. I highly recommend this movie to everyone.

Anticipating My Trip to Paris...

I actually wrote this before our trip to Paris....but I never posted it on my blog. So here goes...


Before last year, I honestly did not believe that I would ever get to visit Europe. I always felt that I would never have enough money to buy a plane ticket, or to find time in my schedule to actually go. Even when this opportunity arose to go to Paris on a TravelLearn program with Kean University, I didn't think I would be able to participate for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I didn't think my parents would go for it. Secondly I felt that my school schedule would be too demanding to take a week off and go to Paris. However, much to my surprise, my parents were all for me going to Paris. Also, I felt that I would be able to fit it comfortably into my school schedule.

Now that I am going to Paris, I am very excited. I immediately started to look up different activities that I would be interested in while in Paris. The most obvious would have to be to visit the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre museum. Another thing I would like to do is to visit the Stade de France. I am a very big soccer fan, and I would love to visit the very popular stadium where many World Cup games have been played. I would also like to visit Notre Dame (not the University). The kid in me would also like to visit Disneyland; it would be interesting to see the similarities and differences from Disney World in Florida. In an interesting note, I have a friend who goes to school in Philadelphia who will also be in Paris on a school trip around the same time we will be there. It would be exceptional if I could meet up with her and experience all that Paris has to offer with her.

The activities that the Media and Film staff are planning are going to be very exciting as well. I can't wait to go to Paris. And for 6 credits, I would have been crazy not to go!

Almost getting arrested in Paris....

So late one night Ray, Rodney, Greg, Anoop, and I decided to get a bite to eat. We walked out of the hotel and crossed the street. As we were walking down the block, a French policeman walked up to us and started saying something that we did not understand. We continued walking, but it seemed as if the policeman was adamant about getting his point across to us. He took out his nightstick and motioned us up against the wall. We had no idea what was going on. He made us turn around and put our hands up against the wall, like we had done something wrong. The policeman asked us what language we spoke, we told him English. That didn't really help us very much. After about 5 minutes of us up against the wall, two undercover policeman came walking down the street holding a man in custody. After a brief talk with the undercovers, the policeman let us go on our way. At that point, we were all so confused, but still hungry. We don't really know what exactly happened to us, but my guess is that someone reported a robbery and the police were looking for a group of 5 guys. Since they saw us, the most likely assumed that we were the culprits. We were lucky that the undercovers found the actual culprit, or we might still be in Paris to this day!!!!

GeoCaching

So, on one of the last days in Paris, a group of us decided to participate in a GeoCaching expedition that Dr. Searson had set up for us. We all got on the train, and headed to....I dont remember where. Dr. Searson described to us what GeoCaching actually is. A famous Parisian artist put up pixelated "Space Aliens" all over different cities in the world, and with a GPS system, we were on the hunt to find them. As soon as we got into the vicinity of one of the "Space Aliens," we were let loose to find it. A group of us decided to walk down a main road. Peter and I looked up at a wall, and saw something fairly odd. We both had the same idea running through our head, "Hey, that looks like one of the aliens from Space Invaders." At the exact same time, Peter and I spoke up to Dr. Searson and asked if we had found it. Dr. Searson delightfully told us that we had found the Space Alien and won the GeoCaching expedition. Here are some photos of what I'm talking about....