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...Even if it doesn't go that far, the small budget ($16.5 million) les Ch'tis has already produced the mini-miracle of enticing French moviegoers into laugh away some of their own enduring regional prejudices. The movie tells the tale of Philippe Abrams, a manager in France's postal system whose efforts to finagle a transfer to the sunny Riviera go wildly wrong. His bosses punish him by sending him instead to the Nord Pas de Calais, warning him of its reputed cold, gloom, incessant rain, and expanses of flat, barren land pocked by slag heaps, abandoned mines...
...rough French equivalent is the Nord Pas de Calais department, a swath of hardscrabble land that makes up about a third of France's northern border. While the neighboring Belgians remain the favorite butt of French jokes about simpletons, France has traditionally considered its indigenous northerners, known as Ch'ti, too miserable to even joke about. Instead, the Ch'ti were the folks filmmakers habitually went to for dismal, Zola-esque images of France's post-industrial decline and squalor. But that glum picture has suddenly changed thanks to a new Ch'ti comedy that is setting box office records...
...film Bienvenu chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Ch'tis) has sold more than 5 million tickets during its first week in the cinemas, shattering the previous roll-out box-office record of 3.9 million set in 2006 by Les Bronzés 3 - a comedy that similarly pokes fun at notorious French stereotypes. But whereas the Bronzés film was just the latest in a hugely popular series spanning back to the original 1978 film, Bienvenu chez les Ch'tis has been a bolt-from-the-blue phenomenon. Its simple, sex- and violence-free tale about normal...
...Looks as if you went minimalist: it wouldn't have hurt to put Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the cover too so that the unholy trinity would have been complete. But that would have been shallow because the one who keeps those men afloat is the great American motorist. Felix Dynin, Mountain View, Calif...
...France-based children's aid group, guilty of attempted kidnapping. All six were sentenced to eight years of hard labor. The verdict came two months after Chadian police arrested a total of 17 people working with Zoé's Ark in the eastern town of Abéché as they prepared an unauthorized airlift of 103 children to France, where they were to receive medical care and be placed in foster homes. Zoé's Ark officials contended that their furtive methods were necessary to get urgent aid to the children, who they claimed were orphans from nearby Darfur...