Crazed Teacups

Best News I've Heard in Weeks

Forwarded by my friend, Matt:

"On the docket from Criterion is one of the collection's long-awaited titles, Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 Le Samouraï starring Alain Delon, which will include a new, restored transfer, interviews with film historians Rui Nogueira and Ginette Vincendeau, archival interviews featuring Melville, Delon, and others, and a theatrical trailer (Oct. 18)."

"It is bad like a pig!"

When we were in Paris last month, I found out that Alain Delon was going to be in a play called Russian Mountains shortly after our departure. (I'm hoping the 2 incidents are unrelated.) Curious to see how the play was received, I looked it up in the news section of google.fr and pulled up a Le Figaro article that was, of course, in French. I copied and pasted the article through the altavista.com translator (always good for a laugh). I think the reviewer really, really hated it, Delon specifically, but clearly something's gotten lost in translation. Here are the highlights:

...The spectators rise, shout cheer.... On the plate, intertwined, Alain Delon and Astrid Veillon let themselves wrap by the waves of cordial l adoration. The public believed qu'un husband had misled his wife or qu'une wife had put at l'épreuve her spouse. He had any forgery! And the sobs of the two interpreters, at the end, hoist them on l'Olympe play. When one cries, one is tall. Especially if one is a man. And even more if one is Alain Delon. Which arrogance could authorize us with saying that l'on does not share such enthusiasm inevitably? Since which view-point could we contemplate this astonishing phenomenon which points out the meetings disguised in plays in which Bernard Tapie became a malignant specialist? Except that, here, on the large scene of Marigny, there is indeed quelqu'un which remains forever, thanks to its films, of Rocco and His/Her Brothers with Mr Klein, for n'en to quote that two in an often risky course, l'un of the largest actors of his generation.... A badly rotten part, poor if not sometimes vulgar dialogues, with an action which pains to take shape and a outcome style "the cross of my mother", well-known subterfuge of the playwrights.... As regards the play, it is bad like a pig, this Bénichou....But if one tests the need to take a shower while leaving, this n'est not because of the title. There is evil to include/understand how a journalist who posts convictions can s'égarer thus.

When one cries, one is tall - maybe that could be my Indian name some day.