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Monsieur Hulot
Monsieur Hulot is a character created and played by French comic Jacques Tati for a series of films in the 1950s and '60s, namely ''Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot'' (1953), ''Mon Oncle'' (1958), ''Playtime'' (1967) and ''Trafic'' (1971). The character of Hulot (although played by another actor) also appears briefly in François Truffaut's '' Bed & Board'' (1970). He is recognized by his overcoat, pipe and hat, and his distinctive lurching walk. He is clumsy and somewhat naive of the evolving world around him, but still has a friendly, well-meaning, and good-natured persona. His escapades usually involved clashes with technology and the problems of living in an increasingly impersonal and gadgetized world. In ''Trafic'', Hulot, the designer of a new camper-car, "struggles valiantly… against the perpetual roadblocks of cars, policemen, bureaucrats and just people".Judith Crist, “A Honey of a Jam,” ''New York Magazine'', Dec 11, 1972. Vol. 5, No. 50. The name of "Monsieur H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Tati
Jacques Tati (; born Jacques Tatischeff, ; 9 October 1907 – 5 November 1982) was a French mime, film-maker, actor and screenwriter. In an ''Entertainment Weekly'' poll of the Greatest Movie Directors, he was voted the 46th greatest of all time (out of 50), although he directed only six feature-length films. Tati's '' Playtime'' (1967) ranked 43rd in the 2012 ''Sight & Sound'' critics' poll of the greatest films ever made. As David Bellos puts it, "Tati, from ''l'Ecole des facteurs'' to ''Playtime'', is the epitome of what an ''auteur'' is (in film theory) supposed to be: the controlling mind behind a vision of the world on film". Family origins Tati was of Russian, Dutch, and Italian ancestry. His father, Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff (1875-1957), was born in Paris, the son of Dmitry Tatishcheff (Дмитрий Татищев; also spelled Tatishchev), General of the Imperial Russian Army and military attaché to the Russian embassy in Paris. The Tatischeffs were a Russian nobl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked without interruption" as having made him "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies". In 1996, ''Entertainment Weekly'' recognized Keaton as the seventh-greatest film director, and in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him as the 21st-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema. Working with independent producer Joseph M. Schenck and filmmaker Edward F. Cline, Keaton made a series of successful two-reel comedies in the early 1920s, including ''One Week'' (1920), '' The Playhouse'' (1921), '' Cops'' (1922), and ''The Electric House'' (1922). He then moved to feature-leng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fictional French People
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose often referring specifically to novels, novellas, and short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games. Definition Typically, the fictionality of a work is publicly marketed and so the audience expects the work to deviate in some ways from the real world rather than presenting, for instance, only factually accurate portrayals or characters who are actual people. Because fiction is generally understood to not fully adhere to the real world, the themes and context of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comedy Film Characters
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term originated in ancient Greece: in Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by political satire performed by comic poets in theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance pitting two groups, ages, genders, or societies against each other in an amusing ''agon'' or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old". A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions posing obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth then becomes constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to resort to ruses which eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Kids In The Hall
The Kids in the Hall is a Canadian sketch comedy troupe formed in 1984, consisting of comedians Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson. Their eponymous television show ran from 1989 to 1995, on CBC, in Canada. It also appeared on CBS, HBO and Comedy Central, in the United States. The Kids made one film, ''Brain Candy'', which was released in 1996. They reformed for various tours and comedy festivals in 2000. They later reunited for an eight-part miniseries, '' Death Comes to Town'', in January 2010. An eight-episode revival season was released on May 13, 2022 on Amazon Prime Video. Their name came from 1950s TV comedian Sid Caesar, who would attribute a joke that did not go over well (or played worse than expected) to "the kids in the hall", referring to a group of young writers hanging around the studio. Early history Bruce McCulloch and Mark McKinney were working together doing Theatresports in Calgary, performing in a group named " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson (born 6 January 1955) is an English actor, comedian and writer. He played the title roles on the sitcoms '' Blackadder'' (1983–1989) and ''Mr. Bean'' (1990–1995), and the film series ''Johnny English'' (2003–2018). Atkinson first came to prominence in the BBC sketch comedy show ''Not the Nine O'Clock News'' (1979–1982), receiving the 1981 British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance, and ''The Secret Policeman's Ball'' (1979) where he performed a skit. Subsequent skits on stage have featured solo performances as well as collaborations. His other film work includes the James Bond film '' Never Say Never Again'' (1983), playing a bumbling vicar in ''Four Weddings and a Funeral'' (1994), voicing the red-billed hornbill Zazu in ''The Lion King'' (1994), and playing jewellery salesman Rufus in ''Love Actually'' (2003). He portrayed Mr. Bean in the film adaptations ''Bean'' (1997) and ''Mr. Bean's Holiday'' (2007). Atkinson a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Neil Steinberg of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' said Ebert "was without question the nation's most prominent and influential film critic," and Kenneth Turan of the ''Los Angeles Times'' called him "the best-known film critic in America." Ebert was known for his intimate, Midwestern writing voice and critical views informed by values of populism and humanism. Writing in a prose style intended to be entertaining and direct, he made sophisticated cinematic and analytical ideas more accessible to non-specialist audiences. While a populist, Ebert frequently endorsed foreign and independent films he believed would be appreciated by mainstream viewers, which often resulted in such film ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michel Chion
Michel Chion (born 1947) is a French film theorist and composer of experimental music. Life Born in Creil, France, Chion teaches at several institutions in France and currently holds the post of Associate Professor at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle where he is a theoretician and teacher of audio-visual relationships. After studying literature and music he began to work for the ORTF (French Radio and Television Organisation) Service de La recherche as assistant to Pierre Schaeffer in 1970. He was a member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) between 1971 and 1976. His compositions elaborate on Schaeffarian theories and methodologies which Schaeffer referred to as musique concrète. He has also written a number of books as well as essays expounding his theories of the interaction between sound and image within the medium of film. In particular, the book titled ''L’audio-vision. Son et image au cinéma'', originally published in France in 1990, has bee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called the capital of the world. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France, making the region France's primate city. The Paris Region had a GDP of €739 billion ($743 billion) in 2019, which is the highest in Europe. According to the Economist Intelli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homburg (hat)
A homburg is a semi-formal hat of fur felt, characterized by a single dent running down the centre of the crown (called a "gutter crown"), a wide silk grosgrain hatband ribbon, a flat brim shaped in a "pencil curl", and a ribbon-bound trim about the edge of the brim. It is traditionally offered in black or grey. The name comes from Bad Homburg in Hesse, in the German Empire, from where it originated as hunting headgear. It was popularised in the late 19th century by the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, as a less formal alternative to the prevalent top hat along with the bowler hat and the boater hat. The original homburg conceived in the 19th century was of slightly more generous proportions than seen in 21st-century versions. Although the homburg is traditionally associated with semi-formal wear, it has been extensively applied also to informal attire. As with other hats, it largely fell out of everyday use of Western dress codes for men in the 1960s. Use The Ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Vacances De Monsieur Hulot
''Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot'' (french: Les Vacances de M. Hulot; released as ''Monsieur Hulot's Holiday'' in the US) is a 1953 French comedy film starring and directed by Jacques Tati. It introduced the pipe-smoking, well-meaning but clumsy character of Monsieur Hulot, who appears in Tati's subsequent films, including ''Mon Oncle'' (1958), '' Playtime'' (1967), and ''Trafic'' (1971). The film gained an international reputation for its creator when released in 1953. The film was very successful as it had a total of 5,071,920 ticket sales in France. Cast * Jacques Tati as Monsieur Hulot * Nathalie Pascaud as Martine * Micheline Rolla as The Aunt * Valentine Camax as Englishwoman * Louis Perrault as Fred * André Dubois as The Major * Lucien Frégis as Hotel Proprietor * Raymond Carl as Waiter * René Lacourt as Strolling Man * Marguerite Gérard as Strolling Woman * Claude Schillio as Photographer Christopher Lee provided all the voices for the English dub of the film. Style ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Bellos
David Bellos (born 1945) is an English-born translator and biographer. Bellos is Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University in the United States. He was director of Princeton's Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication from its inception in 2007 until July 1, 2019. Biography Bellos' research topics have included Honoré de Balzac and Georges Perec. Bellos published a translation of Perec's most famous novel, ''Life A User's Manual'', in 1987. He won the first Man Booker International Prize for translation in 2005 for his translations of works by Albanian author Ismail Kadare, despite not speaking Albanian. His translations were done from previous French translations."The Englishing of Ismail Kadare" by David Bellos, '' [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
