Lambchop - You're a big girl now

Mais Lambchop e a mestria de Kurt Wagner, para ouvir vezes sem conta...

lambchop - is a woman

Os Lambchop são uma banda que saiu do seu Tennessee natal e da mítica Nashville para nos encantar com as suas canções intensas mas com um jeito de embalar. Transparece das canções uma atmosfera intima que chega a ser desconcertante, para quem os ouve fica claro que é musica que os move e são as canções as verdadeiras protagonistas e o grupo só está ali como veiculo.

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• Lambchop opened for YLT, playing more 2009 shows (dates) (brooklynvegan.com)

Entrevista à Film Weekly de Binoche

Film Weekly meets Juliette Binoche

This
week I meet the French superstar and the footballers behind documentary
In the Hands of the Gods, about keepy-uppy and Maradona.

Comments (20)

Earnest... Juliette Binoche. Photograph: Chitoze Suzuki/AP

Juliette Binoche
is a remarkable actress. From her early career, she's managed to
beguile French audiences and international ones, working with some fine
directors, from Kieslowski and Techine to Michael Haneke and still managing to win Oscars and keep her dignity in fluff such as Chocolat.

Yet
she's not really a star. As I discover in our interview, Binoche is a
real actress, floaty, earnest about her craft and her on-screen image.
Her eyes are coal black, and they can shoot anger or mischief. Her
career, of late, has taken a political turn and she's becoming
emblematic of a troubled world - her very casting seems to suggest
turbulence and mystery. I love her in Hidden, when she isn't required
to do very much - it's her stillness and pain that impresses me
immensely. What's your favourite Binoche film or moment?

Film
Weekly likes to mix it up. From Binoche we go to football and five boys
who travel from London via New York down to Argentina to meet their
hero Diego Maradona. It's a footy doc called In The Hands of the Gods,
and the lads raise their money to get there by putting on street shows
of keepy-uppy, or freestyle, as I should properly call it.

I
liked this original-feeling doc - the boys are a likeable bunch (after
a while) and there's a dreamy quality to it, as one of its directors
Ben Turner tells me. The boys are there too, reliving their premiere in
Leicester Square.

Indeed the whole show comes from the Odeon Leicester Square,
where I'm attending a book launch for photographer Harry Myers' new
collection, Pictures and Premieres, a tome chronicling 40 years of
royal film performances and Bond premieres, and we were surrounded by
images of Peter Sellers, Roger Moore, the Queen Mum and Sophia Loren as
we put the show together.

So in the spirit of old-school glamour, enjoy Film Weekly and let us know your favourite Binoche moment.

Happy viewing Jason

· Listen to this edition of Film Weekly on your computer (MP3)

· Subscribe free to Film Weekly, via iTunes

· The Film Weekly podcast feed URL

Portraits of Binoche

Films, paintings, dance, poetry ... Juliette Binoche looks well on her way to becoming a national treasure in the UK

Comments (2)

Michael Haneke and Juliette Binoche, as painted by Binoche

The British love creating national treasures, like John Betjeman (his NT status existed entirely independently of the laureateship), Alan Bennett, and Stephen Fry. I wonder if we are attempting to expand the role to create a new international treasure: the French star Juliette Binoche.

There is a major retrospective of her work currently at London's BFI Southbank, with the faintly Cliff-Richard-esque title of Jubilations. On Tuesday she did a major onstage interview there with Geoff Andrew and down the road at London's South Bank she is preparing a new dance work at the National Theatre with choreographer Akram Khan entitled in-i, which opens tonight.

She has published a new bilingual volume of poems about the directors she has worked with, and BFI Southbank is also mounting a serious exhibition of Binoche's paintings, entitled Portraits In-Eyes (a title which suggests some kind of "brand-fit" with her dance piece). It's basically a full-on, multimedia Binoche fest, a culture-lovers' Binochapalooza.

She certainly exerts a powerful pull. A distinguished British film writer told me once that while interviewing Juliette Binoche, he simply fell under her spell, overwhelmed by the heady atmosphere which this beautiful and charismatic woman creates around her. He found himself emoting and empathising with what Binoche was telling him about the tortured character she was playing, nodding urgently, encouragingly, and appearing to Binoche quite as moved by what she was saying as she was herself. My friend began to lean in towards her, intimately, locking eyes - and hers were now actually brimming with delectable tears, as they so often do on screen. For one electrifying moment, he wondered if he might lean a few inches further and kiss her on the lips. At the last micro-second, he lost his nerve, leaned back and the fever abated. From that day on, he has wondered what would have happened if he had carried on and gone for the snog. Would she have slapped his face? Or would there have been a glorious morganatic affair, like Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill? Tellingly, when he tried the same gooey-eyed touchy-feely empathy routine the following week with Kristin Scott Thomas, she responded in a more Anglo-Saxon way and more or less snapped that he should pull himself together.

It was the exhibition of Juliette Binoche paintings that fascinated me, and this week I wandered into the BFI Southbank foyer to have a look - still no easy matter, actually, because despite the building's revamp, this still means finding your way to the old box office entrance past a disconcerting array of Portakabins and bins.

I had wondered if these paintings were going to be absurd: a case of Ingres's violin, a effusion of luvvy-ish silliness.

But no. This exhibition really is a treat. I am not in a position to judge Juliette Binoche's paintings as art - for such a judgment, one would need to consult my colleagues Adrian Searle or Jonathan Jones. But untutored though they might be, to me her paintings looked witty, insightful, smart, emotionally generous - a kind of caricature-impressionism - and thoroughly intriguing and charming.

The show consists of 34 pairs of portraits: each head-and-shoulders study shows a director that Juliette Binoche has worked with, and opposite, a different character self-portrait - that is, an impression of the character that Binoche played in that director's film. The directors include Jean-Luc Godard, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Michael Haneke, Anthony Minghella, John Boorman, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Abbas Kiarostami. And opposite each is Binoche. Some likenesses are better than others, but no one could deny Binoche's talent and the fact that she has reproduced no fewer than 34 different versions of herself, each very different, yet each recognisably her, is really rather brilliant.

The best studies are when she has worked with a director for a second time. For Michael Haneke's Code Unknown (2000) the bearded sage is calm, blank, forbidding: an instantly recognisable sketch. Binoche's character Anne is coolly looking up to the top right of the picture frame. But look at the portrait-pair (shown above) that represents their work on Haneke's great masterpiece, Hidden (2005).

Her self-portrait as "Anne" shows the eyes lowered, perhaps deeply hurt, ashamed by the lies and evasions of her character's husband, famously played in that film by Daniel Auteuil. But Haneke is now bizarre: a cartoon look of gawping dismay, looking over to the right, part Homer Simpson and part Munch's Scream. It really is a great comic and dramatic effect and I laughed out loud when I saw it. Is this the vulnerable, mercurial, goofy side to Haneke that Binoche saw on location - but not shown to critics or journalists? Or has she projected her own feelings onto his face?

I have no idea. There are astringent, shrewd sketches of others. Her Godard - for whom she gave her first film performance in 1985 in Je vous salue Marie - is good. As for Kiarostami, in whose new film Shirin she has just appeared, she has persuaded the great man to remove his trademark dark glasses, which I doubt he would do for many reporters or press photographers. Her André Téchiné, who directed Binoche in Rendez-vous (1985) looks extravagantly woeful, eyes cast down to the bottom right, whereas she looks up pertly to the top right, creating an uptick to the eyeline, and the face looks weirdly like David Walliams.

Her Abel Ferrara has an expression of infinite weariness and bleariness, and for him Binoche has made herself look like nothing so much as a splodgy Mona Lisa. For Anthony Minghella's The English Patient (1997), she sees herself like a little boy. Individually, these studies may look callow, or like street art sketches, but their effect is cumulative; they are an emotional and personal archive. I wonder if any are for sale?

· The exhibition continues at London's BFI Southbank until 5 October. Admission is free. Go and have a look.

Juliette Binoche não para de me surpreender pois para além de ser uma actriz de eleição também tem uma multiplicidade de actividades que vão desde o activismos pelos direitos humanos à pintura passando pela dança. Não será com toda a certeza fácil expor a sua vida desta maneira mantendo uma jovialidade e uma força fora do comum. Assim sempres que possa vou colocando neste blog as causas e as actividades de JB.

Qual é um melhor 007

Certamente já se deparou com esta questão, isto se gosta de cinema...
E qual é o melhor filme? qual o melhor Vilão ou Vilã?

Por hora não emitirei a minha opinião isto porque me falta ver o Quantum of Solace... não não deixares de postar o que outros pensam sobre estas questões

A pointless diversion: The Best of James Bond

March 21, 2009

As
I pointed out before, there’s a long way to go before opening
day, so I find myself with little to write about the Yankees.
Let’s face it: This team is pretty much set, unless Mike Cameron
shows up. I’ll get into more specifics with the Bombers once
there’s a week to go.

That's a great movie poster.

But I’ve had James Bond on the brain of late. “Quantum
of Solace” will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on Tuesday, and
the Encore/Showtime/Starz family of channels has been showing almost
the entire collection for the past month to my great delight.

I’ve always kicked around the idea of my favorite 007 movies
in my head, but never made a firm list, so I figured, “Why
not?” In the end, I decided to do a top-10 list of Bond films
rather than a top-to-bottom ranking to save time. A couple of rules
about my findings:

• “Quantum of Solace” gets an incomplete until I’ve
  seen it at least one more time. I won’t make a judgment on just
  one viewing, but I suspect it could make its way into the 8-10 area.
• The actor who plays Bond is important, but only to a certain degree. George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton do not disqualify a film.
• “Never Say Never Again” doesn’t count. It was better as “Thunderball” anyway.

10. “Tomorrow Never Dies.” Jonathan
Pryce was a little too campy as media villain Elliot Carver, but a
terrific opening sequence at a terrorists’ yard sale gets it off
to a great start. Pierce Brosnan started hitting his stride as Bond
after a lackluster debut two years earlier.

9. “Live And Let Die.” Roger Moore’s debut gets bonus points for excessive use of the word honkey.
The biggest factors drawing this film down this low are the awful
disguise Yaphet Kotto wore as Mr. Big and his character’s need to
kill 007 in some exotic fashion rather than just putting a bullet
through his head. We’ll call this “madman’s
folly” and refer to it when necessary.

8. “Dr. No.” The first. But not the
best. Sean Connery hadn’t figured out the role yet, the effects
and fight sequences were unspectacular, and Dr. No himself blazed a
trail for madman’s folly by inviting Bond to dinner and basically
telling him about the secret terrorist organization he was a part of
that no one had ever heard of before. As Lenny on “The
Simpsons” would say, “Well, it was a real nice secret
organization we had once.” But it was new, it had intrigue and it
got the ball rolling.

7. “Licence to Kill.” Yes, I spelled licence
properly. The producers spelled it wrong, which is to say they spelled
it in the British fashion. Dalton’s films were not bad at all,
but his casting was not great. He couldn’t pull off suave Bond.
He basically looked silly trying to do it. But he had hard-edged Bond
down to a tee, and we see plenty of it in this film.

6. “For Your Eyes Only.” Roger
Moore’s fifth turn as Bond gets a big boost because it was the
first film after the disastrous “Moonraker.” Someone woke
up and said, “Hold on here! We had James Bond shooting lasers
at genetic supremacists in space? Just have him kill communists on
the ground, OK?” They got back to basics and did it well.

(A big plus due to a hilarious scene early in the film.
It’s what Bill Simmons would call unintentional comedy. Bond is
sent to find a guy who killed two secret agents searching for a secret
naval tracking device that was lost at sea. When Bond finds the
assassin, he sees someone hand the assassin a large briefcase full of
money. The assassin is killed before Bond can get to him. When Bond
gets back to England, the Minister of Defense, played by Geoffrey
Keen, regrets the case has gone cold since the assassin’s dead.
When Bond points out he saw a man pay the assassin, the minister
doesn’t get what it has to do with the case. Huh? Who put this
guy in charge? No wonder Great Britain never became a true superpower.
Bond withholds the urge to literally draw a picture for the minister,
but is still able to make his case that he should chase down the guy
who had the briefcase full of money. When someone else suggests he use
a new computer to identify this guy, the minister gives his consent by
saying, “Urrrrrrrgh.” It’s like having George W. Bush
in charge of your military. Who would let that … oh.)

5. “Goldfinger.” This movie kind of
suffers from Alex Rodriguez syndrome for me. A-Rod will probably never
be loved by the majority of Yankees fans unless he wins the World
Series MVP four years in a row while pumping out 55 dingers a season
because of his reputation of being the best in the game. Same thing
with “Goldfinger.” It gets a ton of credit as the film that
truly cemented the Bond series in place, a blockbuster so big it
ensured the producers of a cash cow for years to come.

The movie is good. And for the first time we actually have a villain
with a valid reason to keep Bond alive rather than kill him. But it
doesn’t blow me away. A hat that kills people? That’s
really the best they could come up with? But it is full of action and
spy games that are at the heart of the series.

4. “The World Is Not Enough.” Easily
Brosnan’s best Bond film. It has just enough plot twists to keep
you intrigued, but not so many you can’t follow what’s
happening. A pre-Charlie Sheen Denise Richards plays a nuclear weapons
physicist, which is always welcome. A plausible evil plot is always
welcome, too, and we have that here. We don’t have a mad man who
wants to create an underwater civilization or the son of a North Korean
general who gets plastic surgery in an attempt to destroy South Korea
with some virtual-reality glove. “The World Is Not
Enough” has a rich oil heiress who wants to damage her
competition to become richer.

And Brosnan is flawless. He’s nailed the role by this point.
And the way he ultimately deals with Sophie Marceau’s character
at the end of the film is fantastic.

A major flaw, though, is the way M is portrayed. It wasn’t
Judi Dench’s fault — the story itself made her part look
weak and slightly incompetent. It seems the producers figured it out,
though. Her character has toughened since then.

3. “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”
I told you the actor playing Bond wasn’t a disqualifier. A truly
fabulous film. This is when we see 007 find the woman who becomes Mrs.
James Bond; it’s a doomed marriage that is hinted at a few
times in later films. And Mrs. James Bond is played magnificently by
Diana Rigg. As the cold, emotionally distant woman who isn’t
interested in Bond and as the woman who warms to him and eventually
falls in love, she hits the notes just right each time. On first blush,
Blofeld’s hypnotic scheme is a little out there, but when you
consider the brainwashing the Nazis did in 1930s Germany and the
techniques Middle East terrorists use to convince all types of people
to blow themselves up, it doesn’t stretch the imagination that
far.

The only problem with the film, however, is Lazenby in his lone
turn as Bond. He does an admirable job, but ultimately it’s clear
he wasn’t yet an actor. It may have been different if Lazenby had
played the part a few more times and made himself more a part of the
Bond legacy. He’d be more accepted in the role. But that
didn’t happen. If Connery had made this film or if it was remade
today with Daniel Craig, it could be higher on this list.

And it’s at No. 3 as it is.

2. “Casino Royale.” It’s time to
start splitting some hairs. Top to bottom, left to right, this movie is
great. It’s paced well. It tells a part of Bond’s story
we’ve never seen before. It throws you a gut-wrenching twist you
never see coming. And it explains what made 007 a cold-hearted assassin
who knows he can only trust himself.

It’s also a film that’s grown on me. On my first
viewing, I thought the scenes showing Bond’s recovery from what
can only be described as mind-numbing injuries was too long. After
watching again, however, I realized it was done just right. It’s
also the time when he falls in love with Vesper. If those scenes
aren’t given their proper time and aren’t done right, the
conclusion doesn’t resonate the way it should. Instead,
you’d wind up with Padme Amidala crying over the evil changes in
Anakin Skywalker even though you were never convinced they were in love
in the first place.

Craig is able to do what Dalton couldn’t — merge suave
Bond with hard-edged Bond. The key is in playing suave Bond differently
than Connery or Brosnan did. You don’t play it as the handsome
guy who is fun to be around and can sweep you off your feet. You play
it as the bad guy that women know they shouldn’t love, but do.

The last shot seals the deal for me. Music composer David Arnold
made a subtle nod to the premise of the film: That this story tells how
a man named James Bond became a super spy named James Bond. Hence, you
don’t hear the traditional theme music until the movie cuts to
black after Bond uses his classic introduction for the first
time: ”The name’s Bond. James Bond.” Fantastic.

1. “From Russia With Love.” No less an
authority than John F. Kennedy declared this as his favorite book. As a
movie, no less an authority than I declare this my favorite Bond film.
An inspired evil plot by SPECTRE, the bravado of Bond deciding to
spring the trap he thinks has been set by the Soviets, the twists and
turns the story takes (especially while riding the Orient Express), and
Connery defining the role of 007 all combine to make this the best
of Bond.

The fight sequences, particularly with Robert Shaw on the train,
were superb, particularly compared with laughable ones in movies like
“You Only Live Twice” or “Thunderball.” The
plot successfully intertwined Ian Fleming’s fictitious SPECTRE
with the all-too-real Cold War between the nuclear superpowers of the
time, giving it a dose of realism. Even an unintentional comedy moment
adds to the charm for me: When Bond calmly walks around his room
checking for bugs and opening his luggage, the main theme music blasts
at full volume in the background.

But the clincher is Daniela Bianchi as Tatiana Romanova, the best Bond girl … ever.

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Mesrine...

France's most wanted

Since his electric breakthrough appearance in La Haine, Vincent Cassel has established a distinct brand of cool - and become half of cinema's most glamorous couple by marrying Monica Bellucci. Now he is set to become a true international star. Interview by Jason Solomons

• 
• • Jason Solomons
  • The Observer, Sunday 22 March 2009
  • Article history

Vincent Cassel: incendiary screen presence. Photograph: Matt Carr/Getty Images

There's a scene in the new French blockbuster Mesrine where an ageing underworld godfather sizes up a lithe new gangster in town. The weary old-timer is played by Gérard Depardieu, for three decades the world's most famous French actor; the newcomer is played by live wire Vincent Cassel, the actor who epitomised snarling Parisian inner-city angst in 1995's La Haine. As these two alpha males bristle at each other, it feels like a hand-over moment, one charged with significance - not just for this film but for the history of French cinema.

With the epic, two-part gangster tale Mesrine, Cassel will take up his long-promised position as France's most famous, most bankable male star. Jacques Mesrine was one of France's best-known criminals, a violent robber, arms dealer and kidnapper who nevertheless achieved folk-hero status for evading police throughout the 1960s and 70s.

It's a gift of a part for an actor, the chance to play a charismatic, unstable, charming psychotic, a philanderer and a family man, whom the police called "The Man with 1,000 Faces" - and Cassel carries it off with aplomb. The film was released in two separate instalments - L'Instinct de mort and L'Ennemi public no 1 - in France last year, becoming a hit at the box office and earning its star his first César for best actor.

Cassel was visibly moved by his win, shedding tears on the podium. "I feel happy, light as air, overjoyed and exhausted," he said.

As significant as the former bad boy's acceptance by the French acting establishment, a win for Mesrine's director Jean-François Richet can also be viewed as era-defining. Richet had previously been seen as a director of flashy, youth-oriented movies. But the two Mesrine films boast a cast of French stars that have become familiar to international audiences. Cassel, whom American critics have called "the French Robert Mitchum", leads a line-up that includes veterans such as Depardieu and Gérard Lanvin, as well as Mathieu Amalric, fresh from his appearance as a Bond villain, Cécile de France and Ludivine Sagnier, both of whom had had Hollywood experience.

"Yes, this is a new generation of French actors and directors but it's harder to group us all together," says Cassel of the cast. "The only thing that typifies us is our diversity. That's what keeps our cinema alive, thank God."

What you get from Cassel, as soon as you meet him, is a sense of restlessness. He is wiry and angular, bristling with a contagious energy, and never really settles in any of the several chairs he takes up during our Saturday afternoon in the louchely cool Cafe Chic, on the Faubourg St Honoré. He devours a cheeseburger and picks up the frites with his fingers. He charms the waitress and poses with some visiting and very attractive Russian blondes who've come up the stairs to our private table and stared at us, giggling, until he has to "do his duty".

Our conversation takes in football, the Oscars, George Clooney and Brad Pitt, British cinema of the early 80s, how to make fresh pasta, Adidas trainers and the fate of hip-hop. He says his wife, Monica Bellucci, dropped him off and would have come in for a glass of wine but has instead gone shopping with their four-year-old daughter, Deva. Shame. He's having a rare few weeks off, at home, with his wife and child. Mesrine took over his life for two years, earning him a record for the number of shooting days for any actor in the history of French film production.

"It was set in the 1970s, so there are a lot of moustaches and wigs and beards," he laughs. Isn't that what acting's all about, in essence, I ask, putting on masks? "I've always loved the idea of changing myself, wearing costumes and disguises. It takes you back to being a kid, to dressing up. This was certainly the hardest performance of my life and the biggest film of my career. You could say that maybe I grew up as we went along."

Agnès Poirier, a French critic based in England, believes the César will propel Cassel to great things. "There is no more glamorous a couple in cinema than Vincent and Monica Bellucci, and he has been a sex symbol for many years, in a scruffy kind of Jean-Paul Belmondo sort of a way," she remarks. "He's now proving a genuine leading man, not a boy any more, and this can now be the springboard to a very successful international career. He has been breaking through for a while now, but I think the César will give him the confidence to become a huge star in his own mind, and that is vital."

Perhaps the hardest aspect of Mesrine is the character himself, an essentially unlikable man, or, as Cassel describes him, "a clown, a very dangerous clown ... He's a man who behaved differently each time a moment came along - be it as a father, or a lover, or a murdering bank robber. So I approached it as a character study - he's likable, touching, scary, crazed, all of those things."

Cassel, born in Montmartre, Paris, 42 years ago, burst onto the film scene as a snarling young boxer in La Haine, in 1995. Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, it was a moody, black and white piece about an inner-city riot, revealing to an international audience the tensions and racial pressures of modern France. It still looks brilliant today and, unfortunately, is still just as relevant, given the 2006 riots in the north of Paris.

"I love that La Haine is still so accurate, but that also horrifies me," says Cassel. "I don't think France is a racist country, I really don't, but we do still have many problems with our immigrant past, and there's a shame that goes with that, that works both ways, in the host and in the post-immigrant generation.

"Whatever the politics, it was a landmark for me - I was actually 28 by then, but it was the start of everything. It seemed a new start for French film, all that energy. We all needed it and it felt like a gust of freedom. I'd never dreamed I could even find a part like that in French film. I was thinking of going to London drama schools or to New York, because France didn't accommodate the things I wanted to do in film. But in La Haine, with Kassovitz, a group of us found that we weren't alone, that there were filmmakers who felt the same way."

La Haine brought Parisian slang, racial insults, police brutality, turntable scratching, drugs and an urban coolness to French cinema that had been lacking since the heyday of the nouvelle vague, when Jean-Paul Belmondo became the poster boy for European insouciance in A Bout de souffle.

"It was so new that we were unsure how to actually speak," recalls Vincent. "Nobody had ever spoken like that on screen, you know, in the language of the streets, or the 'hood, and we were worried we'd have to subtitle it if French audiences were going to understand it."

Cassel has, at times, appeared to be the only French actor resisting middle age. His energies have been expended on cultish works, comic book adaptations such as the cartoonishly violent Dobermann, the frenzied Sheitan or fantasy fight films such as Brotherhood of the Wolf. He has founded his own production company and dedicated himself to discovering new talent on the Paris streets among rappers and skateboarders and short-film-makers.

"I'm trying to keep some of that original ferocity, but I often feel alone in doing it and that I can't do it myself any more, so I need to encourage others to do it," he says. "And now I have a big house, nice clothes and I travel in first class and I love it, so maybe it's time to enjoy being a star."

Cassel has always had an incendiary screen presence, even if he hasn't always made the best use of it. He was superb, for instance, in the brilliant Jacques Audiard thriller Read My Lips and made international inroads before being the voice of Monsieur Hood in the Shrek cartoon and starring opposite Nicole Kidman in the unsuccessful FilmFour British comedy Birthday Girl (2001).

He followed La Haine with another swift hit in the form of L'Appartement, showing a yuppie flip side to the angst of suburban Paris. Gilles Mimouni's slick thriller won the 1998 Bafta for best foreign language film and allowed Cassel to showcase his YSL-suited charm after the tracksuited violence of La Haine. "I loved the transition," he remembers. "I literally had a few weeks to grow my hair back after La Haine and then suddenly I was playing sexy, romantic, almost passive."

L'Appartement is also where he met Monica Bellucci. The Italian actress was making her film debut outside Italy and he fell in love with her almost at once. "I hope it's not too arrogant to say that with Monica, many people do," he says. "Serge Gainsbourg used to say that a cinema set is far too erotic a place to leave one's wife alone, and I know this from having conducted my affair with Monica during filming. It is so strong, so intense, so I know I'll never fall in love with anyone again. It's also why I've now made nine films with her."

Together, Cassel and Bellucci are the golden couple of European cinema. I've seen them bring Cannes to a standstill just by walking from their hotel to a restaurant. The intense scrutiny in France and Italy has not been easy, but they appear happy now. Fame seems to sit easier with them.

The fuss might have something to do with Irréversible, the highly controversial film directed by Gaspar Noé that they made together in 2002, a film told backwards, featuring Bellucci in a vicious 10-minute rape scene, as well as the pair of them cavorting naked in a 15-minute love scene. The film's first screening at Cannes, when two people are said to have fainted, is still a high watermark in the festival's long life of controversial film moments.

"At the end of it all, I think Irréversible will always be seen as the biggest film of my career," says Vincent now. "When directors approach me to work with them, they talk about Irréversible. In trying to do something so different with that film, I almost made it hard for me to do anything normal."

It was Bellucci who convinced him to do the film. "When Gaspar Noé first asked me, at five in the morning in a nightclub, if I'd like to do a real sex scene with my wife, I told him to fuck off. But when I mentioned this creep to Monica, she said, 'Why not? Invite the guy to dinner.'"

Their love scene together, in which they play-fight and wander around their home, is surely one of the most beautiful and sexy love scenes in all cinema, just as the rape scene is one of the hardest I've ever had to watch. "Monica made me leave the set for that scene, so I went on holiday in the south of France. She was worried I might hit the actor who was raping her, that I couldn't watch it. It's obviously not a scene I like to re-watch very often, but Monica, she's very proud of that scene as a piece of film acting, and I think she is amazing."

Cassel has family history in show business. His father, Jean-Pierre, who died in 2007, was a French Fred Astaire, a tap dancer and light comedian who also worked with Claude Chabrol and Luis Buñuel, starring in the latter's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. "I remember being in London throughout 1977, when Dad was playing Zak in the original production of A Chorus Line at the Drury Lane theatre," reveals Vincent. "I must have seen it 50 times - I know the lyrics and the choreography by heart." He laughs at my surprised expression. "Ah, you thought that tough guys don't dance?" he says, clearly pleased with his grasp of English vernacular.

His physical movement and his English have been to his clear advantage, showcasing his capoeira skills in Ocean's Twelve, hanging out on Lake Como with Brad and George and the gang. He has also appeared in Derailed, opposite Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen, as well as the London-set thriller Eastern Promises, with Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts. "I think we're nearly there, where a French actor can make the jump to American films and English films," he says. "Marion Cottillard's Edith Piaf won the Oscar last year and now Slumdog Millionaire wins best film, so the barrier of language is coming down, slowly.

"But my home is Paris and I'm a total parisien, with all the good and bad that entails, so I can't see myself ever fully leaving." He picks up the bottle of a very decent Brouilly left over from our lunch. His ice-blue eyes dance and he shuffles in his seat again, raising the glass with a wicked smile. "And why would I want to?"

• Mesrine is released later in the year

Mesrine - L'instinct de mort - teaser

Mesrine: L'instinct De Mort - BA - HD

The Housemartins - Caravan Of Love (Live)

Nunca pensei que um grupo de a cantar à Capella poderia estar nos meus grupos favoritos, mas os Housemartins estão ai para me desmentir...

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Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (live)

Não posso dizer que sou um incondicional dos Pink Floyd, posso dizer também que sou a favor da sua reunião do fundadores. Dito isto, existem uma mão cheia de grandes canções que são incontornáveis e que estão na minha lista de favoritas diria mesmo que sem elas a minha vida seria diferente. Esta versão sem o Roger Waters é melhor que com ele, perdoem-me a heres

Cover of Pink Floyd

ia...

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

Logo num dos primeiros post declarei que gosto dos sons de uma certa América que tão longe está de um rapaz do mediterrâneo mas mas tão perto está do coração...

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy: Careless Love

A tristeza das palavras em 3 minutos ou menos para transmitir o que vem na alma...

Bonnie Prince Billy - I Gave You video

Canta como ninguém a perda, melhor que ler as palavras é sentir a musica.

Coldplay - Yellow Live in Sydney 2003

Foi por aqui que aventura começou e eles passaram a ser conhecidos, lembro.me que " Parachutes" foi um dos álbuns que voltei a ouvir logo de seguida a ter acabado a 1ª audição e isso raramente costuma acontecer.

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Coldplay - What If

Os Coldplay continuam a ser uma lufada der ar fresco e anti-vedetismo aliado a uma lucidez fora de comum para quem tem milhões de fâs. Quanto à musica que produzem encanta e não vejo que se possa desgastar com o constante êxito que consegue.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Image by Alex Bikfalvi via Flickr

Sigur Rós - Ágætis Byrjun (Live)

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As palavras não necessitam de ser entendidas os sentimentos sim. Perguntam-me porquê 3 posts seguidos dos Sigur Rós, eu respondo por gosto e acredito no projecto, porque poderia parecer dos posts anterior que era só uma coisa de estudio.

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Sigur Rós - Olsen Olsen

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Quem possa não ter tomado atenção ao post anterior aqui vai mais uma achega para se decidir a ouvir este grupo e pensar no grandes espaços que habitam as nossa memórias...

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Sigur Rós - svefn-g-englar

Sigur Rós, nome estranho para um projecto que tem revelado uma consistência incrível. Sempre

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apoiados por vídeo clips poderosos não deixa ninguém indiferente. Para Ouvir e pensar

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Trovante - Fizerem os Dias Assim

Os Trovante contribuíram para que eu ouvisse mais musica portuguesa, sem eles e esta nova trova que com raízes profundas na na musica dita de tradicional mas integrando outras influencias iriam permitir que não deixasse de continuar a ouvir musica portuguesa quando isso não era uma coisa socialmente aceitável para um adolescente que se prezasse...

Jose Afonso - Balada do Outono

"Águas das fontes calai ou ribeira chorai que eu não volto cantar.. " Para mim o maior trovador que Portugal, um humanista e defensor sos direitos humanos...

Elton John - Rocket Man 2007

O Verdadeiro Rocket Man quer se goste ou não o rock deve-lhe muito infelizmente nós também.

O Rocket Man ainda mexe

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William Shatner "Sings" 'Rocket Man' (1978)

Sim é verdade ele melhora coma a idade, mas o original não...

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William Shatner (via last.fm)

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Elegy

Aguardo com uma certa ansiedade a possibilidade de de ver este filme...

Elegy (2008) - Movie ReviewIt's the sex film we've all been waiting for: Penelope Cruz and Sir Ben Kingsley, together at last. Yes, it's steamy. Yes, it's sensual. Yes, it's Elegy. A drama about a much older man who loves one of his former students, Elegy is a well-acted but ultimately forgettable tale of "exploration."

Elegy follows David Kepesh, a respected critic and author who has spent much of his aging life moving from one woman to the next with little thought toward commitment. David, who is also a professor, is immediately attracted to one of his students named Consuela (Cruz) and proceeds to seduce her. However, his seduction soon turns to obsession and even love, though his fear of the future prevents him from giving everything to Consuela.

Kingsley delivers a strong but subdued performance; he stands out in neither a good or bad way. His performance is synonymous with the movie as a whole; Elegy is good, but unremarkable. Kingsley drives the film, and yet seems limited by it; his character's unwillingness to be controlled by his emotions corresponds with the lack of emotional power found in the movie itself.

Directed by Isabel Coixet, Elegy offers an interesting story with engaging, believable characters. Yet, Coixet never latches onto the emotional core of the story and opens it up to the audience. The movie lacks that connection, and thus when all is said and done... what's the point?

Unfortunately, the first half is the better half; once the story opens up, Coixet loses focus and control of the movie. As for Cruz, the recent Oscar winner goes along with this; she's good in the first half and not-so-much in the second, despite her character's emotional developments.

Elegy is a decent movie, but seems like an afterthought to more engaging, emotional fare.

ELEGY Movie Trailer

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Penelope to star in 'Into the World'?

Hollywood actress Penelope Cruz is in talks to star in Italian director Sergio Castellitto’s film ‘Venuto al Mondo’ (Into

Penelope Cruz (Reuters photo) More Pics

the World).

Castellitto’s film Don't Move gave Penelope her first career-making role in 2004. "We're starting to talk but I can't confirm anything concrete as yet," Variety quoted Penelope as saying.

The film about a single mother, to be played by Penelope, is based on the novel written by Castellitto's wife, Margaret Mazzantini.

Castellitto's producers, Roberto Cicutto and Luigi Musini, are currently putting together finance on World.