Archive for film
it was just an accident […unlike the Trump administration returning Iranian refugees to Iran]
Posted in Books, Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags censorship, Farsi, femme vie liberté, Festival de Cannes 2025, film, France, Human Rights, Iran, Islamic Republic of Iran, It was just an accident, Jafar Panahi, movie, Oscars (Academy Awards), Palme d'Or, political oppression, refugees, Sydney Film Festival, theocracy, Trump administration, US politics, USA, یک تصادف ساده on October 11, 2025 by xi'an
Les damas que pasan [Emilia Pérez/George Brassens]
Posted in pictures, Running with tags 77th Cannes Film Festival, Adriana Paz, Antoine Pol, Boris Razon, Camille, cartels, Emilia Pérez, film, French film, George Brassens, Jacques Audiard, Les Passantes, Mexico, musical film, organised crime, Telluride Film Festival, The Mexican Choir, youtube on December 31, 2024 by xi'an
Hugo Awards 2021
Posted in Books, Kids with tags Beowulf, book review, epic, film, Hugo Awards, J.R. Tolkien, Martha Wells, murderbot, Old English, prizes, science fiction on December 31, 2021 by xi'an
Martha Wells received another Hugo Award this year for the fifth installment, Network Effect, which I enjoyed as much as the earlier ones. And yet another one for the entire series! A radically new translation [or rather a retelling] of the epic and Old English poem Beowulf translated by Maria Headley also won the best related work Award. (Tolkien wrote a modern version of the poem in 1926.) With the Old Guard being (disappointingly!, imho) the recipient of the best film.
a film about Stan [not a film review]
Posted in Statistics with tags Adventures of a Mathematician, Arianna Rosenbluth, calculators, Edward Teller, film, Françoise Aron Ulam, Hiroshima, John von Neumann, Mici Teller, Nagasaki, nuclear weapons, Robert Oppenheimer, STAN, Stanislaw Ulam on December 17, 2021 by xi'an
the last duel [not a film review]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags Akira Kurosawa, Carrouges, Charles VI, film, film review, France, Hundred Years' War, Normandy, ordalie, Orne, Paris, Rashomon, religion, Ridley Scott on September 23, 2021 by xi'an
The incoming film, The last duel, directed by Ridley Scott, is about one of the last trials by combat (ordalie) in France, in 1386 under the mad king Charles VI. Where the Norman knight Jehan de Carrouges fought a Norman squire, Jacques Le Gris, who stood accused of the rape of Marguerite de Carrouges, Jehan’s second wife. It is inspired from Eric Jager’s book on this story and I found it of some personal interest in that the original events take place in Normandy, near my wife’s hometown… Although the film was shot in completely different locations, including Ireland and the south of France! The rape story is presented there from three perspectives, as in Kurosawa’s (immense) Rashomon, but without the ambiguity of the later,
