Word: french
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...time when playwrights like Stoppard, Hare and Michael Frayn are wrestling with weighty topical issues, Ayckbourn admits to having little interest in politics: "I've lived through enough times to know, as the French say, plus ça change - nothing changes, give or take the odd Iraqi war." One thing that musters his outrage, though, is the dwindling government funding for the arts, which has endangered local theaters like his Scarborough company - where, in all his years as artistic director, he has never taken a salary. "My salary is in the accounts," he says, "but it usually goes flying...
...lack the strategic vision of Bismarck or the tactical genius of Talleyrand, but French President Nicolas Sarkozy is clearly drawn to the endless challenges of foreign policy. His rising popularity in France suggests that a majority of French citizens are pleased with their President's diplomatic record. They enjoy his charismatic presence on the world scene, reinforced by the beauty and distinction of his wife, Carla Bruni. Sarkozy's audacious Union for the Mediterranean summit in July 2008 in Paris, and his high visibility in his current six-month stint as President of the European Council, stand in striking contrast...
Mixing pragmatism with relentless energy, Nicolas Sarkozy has brought his undeniable lawyerly talents for persuasion and negotiation to French diplomacy. His personal, even solitary, approach means both his successes and his failures are accountable only to him. Yet if France is undeniably "on the move" again, the question remains: Is she always moving in the right direction...
...Richet, who did the 2005 remake of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, is one of those French directors - Luc Besson (The Professional) and Pierre Morel (District B13) are others - who have renounced the glacial minimalism of their national film style for the wild vigor of American B movies. As briskly as the Mesrine story hurtles through its heists, holdups and hair-breadth escapes, the camera moves faster, but always purposefully. Richet brings all the characters to plausible, entertaining life, but Cassel easily dominates the action. Often, as in Eastern Promises, he plays the strutting punk with more bravado...
...sense a rebellion in the reader: a suspicion that fanciers of Summer Hours are too eager to surrender an upmarket French domestic version of Disneyland, where the fantasy-memory of one's own youth is spiked by admiration or envy for this privileged clan. But Assayas, best known for the films (Irma Vep and Clean) he made with his once-wife Maggie Cheung, has more on his mind than duplicating House & Garden spread on screen. For at the center of the movie's first act he place the imposing Hélene...