Archive for April, 2008
April 24th, 2008 | 
Author: The 61st Cannes Film Festival, led by jury president Sean Penn, is starting to shape up. Does it seem very last minute for a festival starting in three weeks? It is. This year more than any other was marked by last minute crises over if and when certain films would be finished. Clint Eastwood and Steven Soderbergh contributed to the suspense; their entries were confirmed only hours before the announcement yesterday. And we still don’t know which films will be opening and closing the festival!
Here’s the list of the films in competition:
“Uç Maymun” (The Three Monkeys): Turkey: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
“Le silence de Lorna”: Belgium: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
“Changeling”: USA: Clint Eastwood
“Un Conte de Noel”: France: Arnaud Desplechin
“Adoration”: Canada: Atom Egoyan
“Waltz with Bashir”/ Israel: Ari Folman
“La Frontiere de l’Aube”: France: Philippe Garrel
“Gomorra”: Italy: Matteo Garrone
“24 City”: China: Jia Zhangke
“Synecdoche, New York”: USA: Charlie Kaufman
“My Magic”: Singapore: Eric Khoo
“L Mujer sin Cabeza”: Argentina: Lucrecia Martel
“Serbis”: Philippines: Brillante Mendoza
“Delta”: Hungary: Kornel Mundruczo
Linha de Passe”: Brazil: Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas
“Che”: USA: Steven Soderbergh
Il Divo” : Italy: Paolo Sorrentino
“Leonera”: Argentina: Pablo Trapero
“The Palermo Shooting”: Germany: Wim Wenders
Stay tuned for more news about the festival including my secret advice for seeing festival films without a badge. And it’s legal! See more about visiting Cannes, France.
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Even when you live in what is arguable the most heavenly place in Europe, sometimes you just gotta getaway. And so we took a little break this week in the Var, a region I don’t know terribly well. OK, I visited St Tropez once about five years ago as part of a guidebook update but, as usual, was too frazzled to enjoy it. This time we did.
Just heading aimlessly west, we found ourselves in a little village called La Plan de la Tour (le what de la what?). It’s a tiny stone village buried in the Maures mountains inland from the Golfe de Saint Tropez. We headed to the tourist office and started calling around for accommodation. What luck! We settled on La Bergerie a couple of kilometres outside the village. It’s a typical mas de Provence with a sprawling terrain that includes a swimming pool, vineyards, boules court and outdoor terrace. The room was cheery and the Carantas couldn’t have been more welcoming. This delightful, outgoing couple provided a wealth of local info and conjured up amazing breakfasts.
St Tropez is, as always, an island of pastel houses and boutiques amid an ocean of cars. For a midweek afternoon in April, the traffic getting into and out of town was truly stupifying. I can only imagine the summer gridlock and imagining it is as close as we intend to get to St Tropez in the summer.
It wasn’t really beach weather but I really wanted to check out Pamplonne, St Tropez’s premier beach. It’s 5km of sand curving around a gentle bay with the mountains in the distance. The famous beach hangouts were just barely getting started so we were able to appreciate the silence broken only by wind and waves.
The region surprised me by its rusticity and lack of development. It’s not at all like the Nice region with its urban sprawl. There, you can drive for miles and see little but parasol pines and vineyards–lots of vineyards!
Other spots we were most impressed with include Gessin and Grimaud, two little mountain villages where the narrow streets are festooned with flowers and plants.
We could have used some restaurant advice though. In Plan de la Tour we ate only moderately well and it was quite expensive. Sainte-Maxime was little better. The food was OK but that’s all.
Finally! The Nice Jazz Festival is returning to jazz. After an increasingly pop-rock-funk program the last five or six years, the new director, Gerard Drouot is returning the festival to its jazzy roots. Here’s a preview of the 2008 Jazz Festival that runs from July 19 through July 25.
- July 19: Archie Shepp, Avishai Cohen, Rufus Wainwright, Stacey Kent
- July 20: Ibrahim Maalouf, Barbara Hendricks, The Magnus Lindgren Quartet, Hocus Pocus, George Benson.
- July 21: Sanseverino, Stefano De Battista, Diana Krall
- July 22: Maria Schneider Orchestra, Leonard Cohen, Maceo Parker
- July 23: Nigel Kennedy, Jean-Luc Ponty, Return to Forever (Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Al Di Meola, Lenny White
- July 24: Hubert-Felix Thiefaine, Paul Personne, Michel Portal, San Francisco Jazz Collective, Alain Bashung
- July 25: Garry Burton Quartet with Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow, Antonio Sanchez, Johy Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, Yael Naim, AaRON
- July 26: Bonobo, Pink Martini, Craig Adams, Joan Baez
What a pleasure. OK, the tickets are a little more expensive than usual, ranging from €31 to €51 on “prestige nights” (such as the first concert by Leonard Cohen in 15 years) but this is a good thing. The last few years the concerts have been a crowded, miserable mess in which you spent more time dodging hyped-up toddlers than listening to the music.
As in previous years, the concerts will take place in the Arenes de Cimiez, the verdant hill with Roman ruins in east Nice.
Tickets are on sale now; see the Nice Jazz Festival site for more information.
Restaurants in Nice can be dicey. We can eat well here but you have to choose carefully. Good value for money can be hard to find.
We’ve eaten a few times at Luc Salsedo and have never been disappointed. The cuisine is exquisite and always based on fresh, local ingredients. I find that the €25 lunch menu offers extraordinary value but don’t go in ravenous! Portions are modest. I ordered only the starter and main course. It was fine but I still wanted more. We split a dessert and that did the trick.
The menus change every two weeks and you always have a choice of three for the starter, main course and dessert. The young chef is strong in the vegetable department which especially pleases me. John felt that the foie gras was the best he’s ever eaten in his life. It’s not my thing.
It’s been a long wait but well worth it. The Musée Massena (Massena Museum) in Nice finally opened after a nine-year restoration. For years, I would stroll by the stately exterior wondering when (if ever) I could see what’s inside.
I waited a while after the opening ceremony in March to pay a visit. I took advantage of the special €2.50 fee (it’s usually €4) and chose a Saturday instead of the first and third Sundays of the month when admission is free.
All in all, it was a charming excursion into Nice history. Although the museum claims to own some 15,000 objects displaying the history of Nice, only a fraction were on display. My favorite was the display of photos and paintings showing Nice up through WWII. It gave an excellent idea of a less developed and more relaxed city.
My only complaint (and it’s not a small one) is that there was a lack of labelling on the objects. In many cases, it was not really clear what you were looking at.
Ah, but that’s why admission is only €2.50, the ticket seller told me. In another month or so, all will be in order and the museum will be even more fascinating to visit.