zefrenchpeople

For the past few years, Halloween or “la fête des bien morts” has grown and flourished in France.  Although we already have a dressing-up-day, Mardi Gras in February, Halloween is a fun way to play trick on friends and eat a bunch of candies.

So close to the American Presidential Elections, a lot of masks and such are campaign-related as for example this mask of the candidate McCain (picture from  the nouvelobs.com) .

For the most talented of us -not me- it is a most good reason to carve the faces of Obama & McCain (picture from Lepoint.fr) :

A couple of decades back, we didn’t have Halloween in France.  Maybe Paris, but not France.  I know, this doesn’t make sense, Paris is in France.  But as a centralized state, not-from-Paris-people often make a point in telling you that Paris is not the center of France… it’s complicated.  I will come back to this later.

Anyway, although France’s state has been separated from the Church since 1905 , the Catholic’s influence on the country stayed omnipresent.  Halloween is the day before All Saint Day, la Toussaint , during which usually people go to cemeteries to “visit” their loved ones and put mums on their graves.  It is a holiday so all shops are closed.

Holidays in France are celebrated on the date on which the event you have a holiday for happened and we usually use it as much as we can… how so? Well, if for example November 1st or La Toussaint was on  Wednesday this year (it’s on a Saturday), administrations, schools and most workplaces would “do a bridge”, or, Faire le pont.  It means that, Wednesday would be off for the Holiday and then Thursday and Friday would be off to have an extended weekend.  But we never push it to the next Monday like for example here for Columbus Day - which would be celebrated on October 12 if we did anything that day.

Enough digressions for now!

Happy Halloween and Go trick or treating already!

Recently, Sarkozy (The French President) tried to pass a law to remove commercials on public channels. 

French TV has barely any commercials in comparison to here, in the States, but what bugs people is that public channels advertise even though most French people pay a tax on them.  How?  Well, every time a TV is bought, they have to declare it to the State and at the end of the year you pay a tax called “La Redevance “.  It’s 116 euros. It is mainly to pay the budget of the “France Télévision” Group: France 2 , France 3 , France 5, Arte and other public networks.

So the logic is that if people pay why do France Télévision need to keep advertising?  Now, you have to know that most programs are not interrupted by commercials.  For example: Films have no commercials on those channels - and only one on other channels like TF1 and M6 - neither have the news or sports apart from half-time and such.  

This proposal needs to be passed by the “Conseil d’Etat ” and then by the “Conseil de l’audiovisuel ” for it to be read in front of the “Assemblée Nationale ” on November 18th-ish.

The other two channels mentioned above, TF1 and M6 are rolling on commercials but not as much as you would think.  These channels are overloaded by reality TV and shows, US TV shows, game shows, music shows and recent movies… TF1 is kind of like Fox and M6 is a little bit like Vh1 mixed with HBO.    Not bad for TV! 

When I say TV, I mean, TV without a cable box.  You just have to plug your TV into the antenna outlet and you get Tf1, France2, France 3 (Regional news and such), Canal + (which is encrypted half of the day and for which you need a special cable box and pay for it - more Showtime and some HBO), France 5 (which becomes Arte after 7pm) and M6.  

You can then add on and get TNT and W9 nowadays if you want to pay for more shows and movies.  

 Now imagine a world with no commercials in the US, wouldn’t that be weird?  Not having a commercial after the theme song of your favorite show, is that something you might be interested in?

Weirdly enough, movies come out on Wednesdays in France.  I think it’s because most kids/teenagers have their afternoons off on Wednesdays.  A school week is usually Monday through Friday 9am to 4:30pm, except on Wednesday afternoons.  It actually depends on the school.  Some schools have classes on Saturday mornings till noon but none on Wednesdays and others have class on Wednesday mornings till noon and none on Saturdays.   High school is different tough since you start class at 8:00 and usually are out at 4:00pm-ish but sometimes 6pm: a school week is between 26 to 32 hours… it’s kinda of complicated, I’ll come back to it later on.

Like I was saying, today is movie day.   Here is the list of the movies coming out:

• La cliente : story of a very successful divorced woman whose only secret is to hire male escorts through internet.  She ends up finding a very nice guy who happens to be cheating on his wife-who he is madly in love with-telling her he works in constructions.(trailer)

• Go Fast: Police officer who lost his partner chasing after drug dealers.  He trains to go undercover to stop them from dealing massive amount of cannabis from Spain to France. (trailer)

• Appaloosa (US: Trailer)

• Une Histoire de famille (US: Then she found me : Trailer)

• Vinyan: After the loss of their child in the 2004 tsunami,  a couple stays in Thailand, sure that their son is still alive since they never found his body.  The mother thinks he has been kidnapped.  Even though her husband doesn’t think their son is still alive, he follows his wife into the jungle where lies all sorts of surnatural creatures. (Trailer)

• De la guerre: all I can say is “pleasure is a war”.  Story of a man in quest for pleasure in life and ends up fighting for it, litterally. 

• Harcelés (US: Lakeview Terrace Trailer)

• Séraphine (French-Belgium): Story about Wilhelm Uhde, the famous avant-garde connoisseur who hires a very special maid. (Trailer)
  

• Afterschool (US)

• Killer of sheep (US Trailer)

• Une histoire de Tango (Argentina - Si sos brujo: une historia de Tango - a Tango Story)

• Trois faces (three faces): story of three major Mediteranean cities and their populations.

And in honor of Paul Newman, there is two movies now in Theaters: Les Enchaînés and Luke la main froide (Cold Hand Luke) (Notorious)