Mes amis, mes amours, based by its director Lorraine Levy on a novel by her brother Marc, is a dim ’odd couple’ comedy about two old friends, the prim, compulsively tidy architect Antoine (Pascal Elbé) and the slobbish, disorganised bookseller Mathias (Vincent Lindon), both divorced and living together with Antoine’s cute son and Mathias’s even cuter daughter. What gives the movie a certain originality is that the setting is a touristic London. All the characters, however, are French and the only English we hear is sung on the soundtrack by Bryan Ferry, spoken by a cockney cabdriver (the single sentence: ’This is a taxi, not an ’orse’), and some lines from It’s a Wonderful Life in a cinema.

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I Am Because We Are is the companion volume to the acclaimed forthcoming documentary film directed by Nathan Rissman and written and produced by Madonna. This book of images by award-winning photojournalist Kristen Ashburn—culled from her work in Malawi and Africa over the past seven years as well as from her specially commissioned photographs for the film—provides an intimate look at the lives of eight Malawian children featured in the film and reveals the harsh reality of the AIDS pandemic throughout southern Africa.

The title is derived from the concept of “Ubuntu,” an idea in African spirituality that states that all of humanity is connected, that we cannot be ourselves without community, that an individual’s well-being is dependent upon the well-being of others.

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NEW YORK - Japanese pop star Utada is hoping it’s third time lucky as she tries again to crack the U.S. market with a new album that she is convinced has a stronger voice from her divorce after four years of marriage.

Hikaru Utada, 26, better known overseas by her stage name Utada, is returning to her roots in mainstream pop in a bid to make a name for herself in the lucrative American marketplace where Asian stars have always struggled to succeed.

Utada is one of Japan’s top artists after with her debut album, "First Love," sold 9 million copies in 1999 and became Japan’s biggest selling album ever, earning her superstar status at home. She has now sold over 50 million records in Japan.

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The New York Photo Festival, the first international photo festival dedicated to contemporary photography, is proud to announce its brand-new Review Pavilion at 76 Front Street in DUMBO, Brooklyn. The NYPH’09 Portfolio Review will be the centerpiece of the new Review Pavilion. It is a platform for all levels of aspiring and professional photographers to present their body of work for review and critique by leading experts in the fields of photography, art, media, and advertising and to receive guidance and mentorship for future artistic and commercial career development. The portfolio review will be run by photography book publisher powerHouse Books, which has organized five highly successful and acclaimed portfolio reviews since 2005.

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European independent film channel launches today at the european independent film festival (Écu) 2009 in paris announcement to take place at the Écu press conference tonight.

‘We are really excited to be working in conjunction with The Independent Film Channel to encourage the promotion and screening of independent films,’ says Scott Hillier, President of The European Film Festival and Academy Award Honoured filmmaker. ‘Partnering with The European Independent Film Channel for the launch is an ideal match. It’s all about discovery, screening and promotion of the best cinema in the world.’

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Ape on the Moon is a weblog by illustrator Alex Mathers focusing on the best in contemporary illustration styles, artists and techniques. It is for illustrators, designers, artists and anyone interested in cutting edge illustration.

This brand new blog is updated four to five times per week with the latest in contemporary and modern illustration. The blog is unique as it is concentrates solely on fresh new talent and styles in the illustration world, with a particular focus on artists that are new to the scene.

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Jathia’s Wager is a science fiction film about a young man living in an isolated community of humans who must make a life changing decision about his future species. The film was created by a collaboration of movie enthusiasts and released for free.

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Seattle sci-f pop genii Hotels have been included on the Music That Matters podcast Vol. 137 produced by wonderful Seattle-based radio station KEXP.

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Last week we discussed the scandal sparked by the release of a controversial film in Morocco. Now, another film has been axed in Lebanon. The reason is pretty much the same: sex.

"Help" is the tale of a teenager, Ali, who lives in a van in Lebanon. His life suddenly turns upside down when he meets Thuraya, a prostitute living with a gay man. "Help" is the first feature film by the young Lebanese director Marc Abi Rached. Lebanese authorities initially gave it the green light on two conditions: that it be restricted to viewers 18 years old or older and that an image of female genitals be blurred.

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Belle du Berry, better known as the voice and the lyricist of the group Paris Combo, presents a new collection of songs, co-written with trumpeter-pianist David Lewis. They have put aside a hectic schedule of touring and recording for a while in order to create this intimate repetoire, their own secret "garden of delights".

Belle du Berry, plus connue pour être la plume et la voix du groupe Paris Combo, livre une collection de chansons nouvelles, co-écrites avec le trompettiste et pianiste David Lewis.

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Kristine McCarroll opens her latest exhibition at Galerie Marie-Laure de l’Ecotais with the title "No Too P.C!" In so doing, the French Australian artist remains in the line of her preceding two series in terms of political art, based on recuperation and re-interpretation of the image, better described using the famous motto:" le poids des mots, le choc des photos"(the weight of words, the shock of the photo) of the well known French tabloid Paris Match.

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Cette exposition du célébrissime photographe américain est la plus vaste et la plus complète jamais organisée en France. Près de 200 oeuvres y seront exposées.

Cette exposition sera l’occasion pour le public parisien d’admirer en exclusivité la série Déluge, qui dévoile la complexité du travail de David LaChapelle.

Outre les clichés les plus connus de l’auteur, comme les portraits des grandes célébrités ou les images réalisées pour les revues de mode, seront exposés les nouveaux travaux de l’artiste rarement présentés tels que : Museum, Statut, Cathédrale et le cycle de Awakened.

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The point may soon come when there are more people who want to write books than there are people who want to read them.

At least, that is what the evidence suggests. Booksellers, hobbled by the economic crisis, are struggling to lure readers. Almost all of the New York publishing houses are laying off editors and pinching pennies. Small bookstores are closing. Big chains are laying people off or exploring bankruptcy.

A recently released study by the National Endowment for the Arts found that while more people are reading literary fiction, fewer of them are reading books.

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ON the night of Nov. 22, some of the brightest stars in the world of art and architecture converged on the grand opening of the Museum of Islamic Art, a ziggurat-like structure of white stone said to be the last cultural building by I.M. Pei, the 91-year-old architect.

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The presence of Kristin Scott Thomas in this literate French movie by Philippe Claudel is so powerfully distinctive that it’s as if Claudel has not merely written the lead role for her, but extrapolated his film’s entire narrative structure from Scott Thomas’s personality. Her formidable bilingual presence, her beauty - elegant and drawn in early middle age - her air of hypersensitive awareness of all the tiny absurdities and indignities with which she is surrounded, coupled with a drolly lenient reticence: it all creates an intelligent, observant drama about dislocation, fragility and the inner pain of unshakeable memories. Scott Thomas is on screen for almost every minute of the film, often in close-up and her face is at once eloquent and deeply withdrawn.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Art in Iran over the past three decades has mirrored the realities of life; as their country suffered from the international isolation brought on by the country’s Islamic revolution, Iranian artists labored in relative obscurity.

Now, bustling, manic Dubai — a place where a reverence for unbridled commerce coexists with Islam — is providing those artists a bridge to the world. At art auctions here over the past two years, some by Christie’s, Iranian artists have found an eager market for their work.

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Revisiting French Film is the major film program of the Arts Rendezvous 2009 and has an impressive festival line up of over 150 films across Australia through the month of July.

The program includes a retrospective of Louis Feuillade and a selection of the top twenty all time greats of French cinema including: Abel Gance, Francois Truffaut, Jean Renoir and Jean Cocteau.

Also Included will be CineMix, a program of silent films mixed to the latest dance sounds from the Paris Underground.

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PARIS — French television is getting a face-lift as older news anchors and executives get the boot only to be replaced by younger, prettier faces as part of a nationwide, government-initiated makeover of the country’s news industry.

Things have been shaken up at TF1, where veteran primetime anchor Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, widely known as "PPDA" in Gaul, recently was unceremoniously fired after two decades in the high-profile hot seat. He was immediately replaced by a glamorous blond bombshell named Laurence Ferrari.

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East-west fusions have been going on since at least the early 1960s when Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar sat down with musicians like jazz saxophonist Bud Shank and classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin. That cross-legged crossover hasn’t stopped and one of the latest iterations comes from the Bombay Dub Orchestra.

Bombay Dub Orchestra put out their first album in 2006, and it redefined the east west landscape. It was created by two veteran English musicians. Garry Hughes and Andrew T. Mackay. Hughes had put out a pair of solo electronic CDs in the 1980s and went on to work with Björk and helped launch the band, Euphoria. Mackay was a journeyman musician playing keyboards and doing orchestral scoring. They got together on a session that took them to Mumbai, India and the idea of Bombay Dub Orchestra, to combine Bollywood string orchestras, Indian solists and electronics, was born.

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Following his two awe-inspiring solo shows in NYC earlier this year, Supertouch buddy & perhaps today’s most visionary artist TOM SACHS brought his troupe of crying HELLO KITTY sculptures first exhibited at Lever House in Manhattan last month to the Paris to be displayed at the base of the fashion capital’s most iconic sight, the Eiffel Tower. Exhibited in conjunction with his show of new works at GALERIE THADDAEUS ROPAC that debuted in the City of Lights on October 23rd—the centerpiece of which was an epic half pipe sculpture composed of two fully-skateable life-sized bronze quarter pipes alongside other bronze castings and wood burned plywood pieces—Sach’s menagerie of Sanrio sculptures appear to be constructed of the artist’s favorite material, foamcore, but are actually giant bronzes cast and painted to resemble the cheap material that is the hallmark of the New Yorker’s oeuvre. On display through November 2nd, the three pieces representing the iconic characters of “Hello Kitty,” “Miffy,” and “My Melody,” are viewable 24-7 on the Trocadero and have somehow managed to do the impossible and evade tagging, obviously a testament to Sach’s enduring street cred. HAVE A LOOK:

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A photograph is a physical record of a fleeting moment, of light bounced off an object, of motion rendered static, of temporality captured and held. In photography, the ephemeral is transformed through a kind of alchemy into the tangible, a slice of time becomes something you can hold in your hand. It’s a kind of magic that somehow, paradoxically, became inextricably tied to reality.

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Why is it that experiences are etched in memory only through partial traces? The tune of a song, touch of a hand, the warmth of the sun or blueness of the sky - such are the residues that mark significant events. The mind cooperates with the sensate body to filter and store only the strongest impressions, registering sensations such as beauty or surprise.

This phenomenon has never been lost on artists, particularly painters of the landscape. Early depictions of newly colonised lands envisioned frontier territories as untouched and verdant, sublime nature awaiting inhabitation and cultivation. Paintings contributing to the forging of a national and cultural identity in the nineteenth century relied on a pictorial language that survives to the present day. The turbulence of Turneresque storms invoked by Thomas Cole or Albert Bierstadt to inform the ’Awful Grandeur’ of America, project the establishment and values of Empire as clearly as the sweeping terra nullius of Eugene von Gerard or heavenly light aglow in the skies of the ’father of Australian landscape painting’, Louis Buvelot. ii

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Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to see; not the object isolated as in a test tube, but the object enveloped in sunlight and atmosphere, with the blue dome of Heaven reflected in the shadows - Claude Monet

One of the finest exhibitions of Impressionist art ever held in Australia will open at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in October until January 2009. Sydney will be the only venue in Australia.

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Dany Boon’s hilarious comedy WELCOME TO THE STICKS (Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis) was released in France in February to become the biggest opener in French history. With over 17.4 million admissions and over $US200million at the box office to date, the film continues its triumphant run and has outgrossed Titanic.

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21 April, 1808 - 21 April, 2008. 200 years ago Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense de Beauharnais, was born in Paris. The child was fourth in line to the throne, following his uncle Joseph, his father and his brother, Napoleon-Louis. The rest is well known: he was elected ‘député’ (member of the French parliament) then President of the Republic (the first French president to be elected by universal direct suffrage) and finally proclaimed emperor of the French four years later, under the name of Napoleon III. He ruled until 1870. Since Louis XV, no French head of state had been in power for so long.

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Le musée national de la Marine vous invite à une plongée exceptionnelle dans le mythe et l’émotion maritimes à travers l’exposition « Le mystère Lapérouse, enquête dans le Pacifique sud ».

Une incroyable enquête à travers les siècles, qui permet de revivre l’expédition de Lapérouse voulue par Louis XVI, l’incroyable voyage jusqu’à sa disparition tragique restée longtemps restée mystérieuse, au milieu du Pacifique Sud.

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Chanson (French for "song") refers to any song with French words, but more specifically classic, lyric-driven French songs, European songs in the cabaret style, or a diverse range of songs interpreted in this style. A singer specializing in chansons is known as a chansonnier; a collection of chansons, especially from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, is also known as a chansonnier.

The very latest of the internationally successful chanteuses is Carla Bruni.Carla has released two albums and is is also now connected with the new French President, Nicholas Sarkozy.

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Let us be friends until death" - Zurga & Nadir, Act I

Who would have thought that a duet between two men, pledging eternal friendship over the love of a beautiful woman, would have become the one operatic moment thousands of Australians cannot live without? ’In the depths of the temple’, Number one song in the ABC Classic 100 Opera is set to ring out from the inimitable Michael Lewis as Zurga with Henry Choo making his role debut as Nadir.

Zurga is leader of the Pearlfishers and Nadir is his young protégé. One day, as they gaze upon Léïla, the pearlfishers’ virgin talisman, they vow never to let love come in the way of their friendship. But this is opera at its most romantic, so in spite of their vow, Nadir and Léïla fall foolishly, dangerously and inevitably in love.

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"Carmen has an iconic sensuality but, most of all, she is a free spirit." Francesca Zambello

Who is that woman? The way she moves, those eyes, that voice… Is Carmen the ultimate femme fatale?

Opera Australia is thrilled to present a new production of Bizet’s most famous opera, directed by Francesca Zambello, and conducted by Opera Australia’s Music Director Richard Hickox. Zambello’s production, created for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, is gritty and exotic, while Bizet’s seductive score somehow taps straight into the heart of gypsy song.

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Life may not be easy, but it is beautiful in this tale of young love in Paris. Ever since its first performances Puccini’s La bohème has been adored. A chance meeting by moonlight, a street-side café and the artists’ garret – they all come alive through Puccini’s music, which delicately captures love at first sight, youthful exuberance and the sorrow of loss. This really is musical storytelling at its best.

Opera Australia presents a bohème for now – romantic as ever, but with the buzz of a contemporary setting and an outstanding cast. Let yourself be carried away by the soaring voices of some of Australia’s finest artists under the baton of brilliant young Italian Giovanni Reggioli.

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Doing for Paris what Woody Allen did for Manhattan, actress Julie Delpy has created – as writer and director - a zippy, romantic comedy with 2 Days In Paris.

Delpy (Before Sunset, Three Colours White, Killing Zoe) has cast herself as the free-spirited Paris-born photographer Marion, who lives most of the year in New York with boyfriend, Jack (Adam Goldberg), a shaggy, heavily tattooed interior designer.

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The renowned French film director Abel Gance was born outside of wedlock in 1889. His parents encouraged him to begin a career as a lawyer, but from an early age Gance was attracted to the theatre. He made his stage debut as an actor in Brussels at the age of 19, and then took his first film role, in the 1909 film Molière.

He continued acting and script-writing before forming his own production company in 1911. That year, he made his first film, La Digue, which, like many of his early films, was not successful. His five-hour play, Victoire de Samothrace, in which he was to appear with Sarah Bernhardt, was cancelled with the outset of World War I.

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À la source d’une intimité inédite entre l’aquarelle et le trait, l’inspiration de Bénédicte Gerin explore des paysages calligraphiés dans lesquels l’âme s’immerge. Une constante : un message personnel, un texte, une musique, une phrase, un mot, une sensation qui servent de point de départ… mais que l’on n’a plus besoin de déchiffrer – « que l’évidence impose au-delà des mots, que le fond du texte passe par-delà le sens… Calligraphier textes et citations opère comme des gammes qui me conduisent à l’improvisation, au swing, à la façon du jazz ! »

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Digby Wren, CEO of the French Rendezvous, today launched the 2007 Book Fest Programme with the announcement that this years program will concentrate on the most read contemporary French authors of the 21st century and the inaugral childrens program.

Running from 1 July to 1 August, and with many authors participating in over 20 events, this year’s French Rendezvous Book Fest will be the most international ever with francophone countries being represented for the first time.

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Born in 1959 in Paris from parents artists (his father is an artist engraver and its mother poetess), Dahmane discovers very young person the charm of the female forms, and as of the 15 years age its passion for photography associates it.

This union will give rise to thousands of images, exploring the infinite resources of the sensuality which a body of woman with naked half in the intimacy can release or, conversely, exposed taking into consideration passer by in public places.

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A #1 bestselling author in France, Fred Vargas repeatedly captivates her many admirers across the globe with suspenseful mysteries featuring Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, "a Gallic cousin to Ruth Rendell’s Chief Inspector Wexford" (The Washington Post).

In the same way that Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti and Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano have won countless fans on this side of the Atlantic due to Penguin’s robust commitment to the best international mystery writing, Vargas’s Commissaire Adamsberg is poised to conquer Australia in a series of novels that are "truly original . . . like nothing else in contemporary fiction" (The Sunday Times, London), beginning with "Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand"

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Adam Zamoyski has written the story of the Congress of Vienna [1813-15], which was to bring about the political reshaping of Europe and whose legacy affected international relations for a century.

In the wake of his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, Napoleon’s imperious grip on Europe began to weaken, raising the question of how the Continent was to be reconstructed after his defeat.

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