Entertainment
- Paris, the Novel, by Edward Rutherford, historical fiction
- Seven Ages of Paris, by Alistair Horne, history - I listened to this sweeping history of Paris and enjoyed it very much. It’s 20 hours and 49 minutes long and worth every minute. The narration by Derek Perkins is superb.
- In Montmartre, by Sue Roe about the art scene
- In Montparnasse, by Sue Roe about the art scene
- The Paris Bookseller, by Kerri MaherEve, about the writing scene in Paris
- My Life in France, by Julia Child with Alex Prudhomme
- A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway
- Dawn of the Belle Epoque - The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends by Mary McAuliffe
- Paris, City of Dreams - Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Creation of Paris by Mary McAuliffe
- Twilight of the Belle Epoque - The Paris of Picasso, Stravinsky, Proust, Renault, Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, and Their Friends Through the Great War by Mary McAuliffe
- The Honourable Woman
- The Americans
- Bureau des Legendes
- Liaison on AppleTV+
- Les Engrenages
- Astrid et Raphaëlle - Autistic archivist Astrid Nielsen and impulsive inspector Raphaëlle Coste work together to solve crimes in and around Paris. Over time, they develop a touching friendship. Highly recommended.
- “Memory is tricky. We remember how it felt, not necessarily how it was. Songs grow out of memories.”
- “We want to go back and fix something that has already vanished and can never be corrected. But we can correct it in a song . . . .”
- Le bureau des légendes, a great spy series (one of the best pieces I’ve ever watched)
- Call My Agent, a very funny French TV series about a top rung Parisian talent agency on Netflix
- No Second Chance which is in French but written by Harlan Coben, a famous American writer, also on Netflix
- Deutschland 83, a funny German spy story
- Engrenages (Spiral in English), a wonderful series now in its eighth series
Books About Paris
Gregg Rutter, a photographer from Minnesota, recommends these books about Paris on episode 478 of the Join Us in France podcast:
Gregg later recommended the following books:
Jodie Foster interviewée en Français
Jodie Foster est très talentueuse. Actrice et réalisatrice très impressionnante. J’adore.
Pour que je prenne un rôle, il faut que ce soit quelque chose qui m’obsède. Et je savais très bien que mon âge, la cinquantaine, allait être une période pauvre. C’est un moment un peu confus pour les femmes. Les gens ne savent pas écrire de scénarios pour les femmes de 50 ans. Ce qui m’intéressait, c’était de jouer des personnages plus vieux que moi, comme dans Désigné coupable [2021] ou Hotel Artemis [2018]. Mais c’était difficile, parce qu’on me proposait un peu les personnages que j’aurais joués à 40 ans. Et je n’ai plus 40 ans.
Podcast: ‘Washington Welcomes’ Hosted by David Rubenstein
The Economic Club of Washington, DC has a podcast called Washington Welcomes. David Rubenstein, co-Founder of Carlyle Group and the Economic Club Chairman, interviews global leaders to discuss the major issues of the day. Rubenstein is witty and attracts a high caliber of guests. The episodes are under an hour long.
Highly recommended.
Recommended TV Series
These are among the TV series I’ve enjoyed, in no particular order:
Last updated: February 10, 2024
Film: ‘Möbius’
I’m adored the French TV series “The Bureau” (“Le Bureau des Légendes”) created by Éric Rochant. I’ve started exploring Rochant’s other work hoping for similar entertainment.
Rochant wrote and directed a 2013 spy film called “Möbius” starring Jean Dujardin and the stunningly beautiful Belgian actress Cécile de France.
Dujardin portrayed George Valentin in the 2011 award-winning silent movie “The Artist”. Dujardin won numerous awards for that work including the Academy Award for Best Actor. That was the first time a French actor won that award.
Rochant relies on familiar actors in both “The Bureau” and “Möbius.” Brad Leland portrays a senior CIA official both in both pieces. And the wonderful Ukrainian actor Aleksey Gorbunov, who plays Karlov in seasons 4 and 5 of “The Bureau,” plays a similar role in “Möbius.”
So if you can’t get enough of “The Bureau”, check out Möbius. “Möbius” isn’t in the same league as “The Bureau” but it’s a very enjoyable spy story filled with intrigue and romance.
Bing Crosby Singing in French
Bing Crosby (1903-1977) sings mainly in French about Paris in this wonderful album. Crosby recorded the album in Paris on May 16, 1953. The orchestrations were by Paul Durand (1907-1977) who wrote Je suis seule ce soir which is in the soundtrack of Midnight in Paris. Crosby’s accent isn’t great but it really doesn’t matter. The love comes through.
‘The Bureau’: A Superb French TV Series
“The Bureau” is a French spy TV series (“Le Bureau des Légendes”) on Canal+ created by Éric Rochant1. The series concerns the daily life and missions of spies within the French Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure or DGSE. The DGSE is the French equivalent of the CIA. Its head office is in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. Variety reports that the creators of the series had the cooperation of the DGSE and that the DGSE liked the series. The series won Best TV Series from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics.
The series begins with the return to Paris of French intelligence officer Guillaume “Malotru” Debailly (Mathieu Kassovitz) after six years as an undercover agent in Syria. Guillaume struggles to reconnect with his former life. But after learning that his lover in Syria (Nadia, played by Zineb Triki), is in Paris, Guillaume breaks agency rules and approaches her as the man he was in Damascus: Paul Lefebvre. As Guillaume begins living a double life, he opens himself up (and the DGSE) to serious dangers.
Henri Duflot (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) portrays the head of the French clandestine service. He’s never himself been an undercover agent and this bothers him because he fears he lacks the respect of his operatives. At the same time, he’s very likable and down-to-earth. He wears garish neckties, which makes him seem more normal.
The beautiful Léa Drucker plays a DGSE psychiatrist with a top secret clearance. Marina Loiseau (Sara Girardeau) portrays a naïve but determined young undercover operative.
The acting is first-rate and the spying seems realistic. This is among the best espionage stories I have seen on TV or in the cinema.
The series concluded after five magnificent seasons. It’s available on Sundance Now including the Sundance Now channel on Amazon.
TV Series: ‘The Americans’
There aren’t many TV shows I miss long after they end. The Americans is one of them. Even though the series ended in 2018, I still miss the anticipation of the next episode.
The Americans is an American television period drama series created and produced by former CIA officer Joe Weisberg. It premiered in the United States in 2013 on the FX network and concluded after six seasons and 75 wonderful episodes.
The Americans is about the marriage of two KGB spies posing as Americans in suburban Washington D.C. shortly after Ronald Reagan is elected President. The series centers around the arranged marriage of Philip (Matthew Rhysand Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell), who have two children – 14-year-old Paige (Holly Taylor) and 12-year-old Henry (Keidrich Sellati). The children don’t know about the true identity of their parents. The spies live next door to Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), an FBI agent working in counterintelligence. From there it gets complicated.
This is one of the best TV shows I’ve ever seen. What makes it special is the interplay between the spying and what’s going in the family of the Russian spies and the family of the FBI agent next door. In the end, I am interested in the personal relationships more than I am the spying. I easily connected with the relationship issues.
The relationship between the more practical Philip and the rule-following Elizabeth makes for some fascinating issues. Keri Russell’s beauty enters the plot in many different ways. The spying was just plain fun to watch, partly because of the now dated technology of the the era (the 1980s) in which the series takes place.
The New York Times said “The Americans” is “one of those rare series that actually has gotten better every season.”
If you want insider information about the show, Slate has a podcast about the show featuring cast, crew and creators.
Lara Fabian
Lara Fabian sings beautifully. Fabian is best known for the dance pop song “I Will Love Again,” which was released in 2000 and peaked at number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Fabian was born in Belgium in 1970 to a Flemish father and an Italian mother. She speaks four languages: French, Spanish, Italian and English. I especially love her French music.
In 2018, I saw her perform in Washington, DC in at the Warner Theater. Her voice knocked my socks off.
Fabian’s music is in the same genre as Laura Pausini with whom she has performed. Together they are an exceptional treat.
You can hear her passion for life — and her fluent English — in this interview.
Laura Pausini
Laura Pausini is an Italian singer who rose to fame in 1993 with her debut single “La solitudine", which became an Italian standard and an international hit.
Pausini’s music releases include fourteen studio albums, two international greatest hits albums and two compilation albums. She mostly performs in Italian and Spanish, but she has also recorded songs in English, French, Portuguese and Catalan.
She has a powerful, beautiful voice. My favorite Laura Pausini song is “Un’emergenza d’amore”, released in 1998.
‘The Intern’: A Charming Comedy
I enjoyed watching The Intern (2015).
Robert De Niro plays a healthy but lonely 70-year-old retired widower named Ben Whittaker. Ben worked as an accomplished executive who ran a company selling telephone books. Ben wants to connect and be useful to other people. He starts by going to Starbucks each day but that doesn’t get him the human interaction he craves. One day, Ben sees an ad from an online women’s clothing vendor seeking to hire “senior interns.” The firm is loosely based on Google. Ben applies by uploading a video and gets the job. He’s assigned to work directly for the CEO Jules Ostin played by Anne Hathaway. The interaction between the two characters is charming.
The film was written and directed by Nancy Meyers, who also wrote and directed Something’s Gotta Give, a 2003 film starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. That film is about a man (Jack Nicholson) approaching senior citizen status who has a taste for younger women. I also enjoyed that film so I guess I have a taste for Meyers’s work.
Manolhla Dargis, writing for The New York Times explains in magnificent prose that:
The director Nancy Meyers doesn’t just make movies, she makes the kind of lifestyle fantasies you sink into like eiderdown. Her movies are frothy, playful, homogeneous, routinely maddening and generally pretty irresistible even when they’re not all that good. Her most notable visual signature is the immaculate, luxuriously appointed interiors she’s known to fuss over personally - they inevitably feature throw pillows that look as if they’ve been arranged with a measuring tape. These interiors are fetishized by moviegoers and Architectural Digest alike, ready-made for Pinterest and comment threads peppered with questions like, “Where do I get that hat?”
Although I wish I could write the way Ms. Dargis writes, I think the film has something meaningful to say about the way older and younger people can relate to one another in the workplace and elsewhere.
It seems that the film was a hit in South Korea for just this reason (WSJ). South Korean viewers appreciated the healthy and positive energy emanating from Ben, the character ably played by Robert DeNiro.
I did too. And besides, what’s wrong with some eiderdown in one’s life?
The film has a 59% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Film: ’Steal the Sky’
Steal the Sky is a 1988 HBO movie directed by John D. Hancock and starring Mariel Hemingway and Ben Cross. The film is based on the true story of Iraqi fighter pilot Munir Redfa, who defected by flying a MiG-21 fighter jet to Israel in 1966.
In the film, a beautiful American-born Israeli spy Helen Mason (Mariel Hemingway) is sent to Iraq to coerce an Iraqi pilot into hijacking a Soviet-made fighter jet for Israeli defense research. She seduces Munir Redfa (Ben Cross) in order to blackmail him. There are unexpected results when Helen finds herself falling in love with him, endangering the mission, while he is torn between his love for her and his loyalty to Iraq.
Sadly, Ben Cross, best known for playing a runner in the 1981 Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire, died in 2020 in Vienna, Austria. He was 72.
This is among my favorite films. It’s available on YouTube.
TV Series: ‘The Honourable Woman’
‘The Honourable Woman’ is a 2014 British political spy thriller miniseries in eight parts. It was directed and written by Hugo Blick for the BBC and SundanceTV.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is the beautiful, immaculately dressed star of the series. She portrays Nessa Stein, a London heiress whose father was a big-time arms manufacturer and Zionist. Gyllenhaal, an American, does a convincing job of portraying an English woman.
Most of Nessa’s family perished in the Holocaust. She and her older brother, Ephra (Andrew Buchan), are dual citizens of Israel and Britain. On top of this, their mother died in childbirth and their father was murdered in front of their eyes in Jerusalem when they were young children.
The story includes the Holocaust, the Arab-Israeli conflict, kidnapping, rape, chronic trauma and high stakes philanthropy and investment.
The New York Times called the series a “smart, moodily complex thriller” and a “lavish homage to John le Carré.”
I had to watch the series more than once to follow all the twists and turns and loved every minute.
Audiobook by James Taylor
In the audiobook ‘Break Shot: My First 21 Years‘ James Taylor recounts the first 21 years of his life in very personal and moving terms while interspersing his performances of his music.
The audiobook is only 90-minutes long and worth every minute. Here are a couple of highlights that really resonated with me:
Film: ‘Ida’
Anna, a young woman training to be a nun in 1960s Poland is on the verge of taking her vows when she meets her only living relative for the first time and learns that she is Jewish and that her real name is Ida Lebenstein. Together they discover what happened to Anna/Ida’s family.
This jewel is only 82 minutes long and every moment makes good use of the viewer’s time. The story is one example of the decimation of Poland’s Jews during World War II. But in the end, this is not a film about Poland or the Holocaust – but about life.
The film, which came out in 2013, is in black and white. The places photographed are ordinary yet the cinematography is stunning. Each scene looks like a black and white photograph made by a Magnum photographer using a Leica camera. Łukasz Żal is a superb, young cinemaphotographer born in Koszalin, Poland.
Ida is played by Agata Trzebuchowska. Her character is sweet, innocent and beautiful. Her aunt Wanda – Agata Kulesza – is also a fine actress.
Pawel Pawlikowski directed the film. He was born in Warsaw in 1957. At the age of 14, Pawlikowski left Poland to live in Germany and Italy, before settling in Britain. In 2004, he directed My Summer of Love with Emily Blunt and Natalie Press.
This film touched me deeply and left me thinking for a long time about what’s important and what’s not. It is among the best films I have seen.
Music: Stacey Kent
Stacey Kent is an American jazz singer with a glorious voice. She was born in 1965 in New Jersey and is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. Her paternal grandfather was a Russian who grew up in France. He later moved to the United States where he taught Kent French. Once she learned French, it was the only language she spoke with her grandfather. Kent travelled to England after college to study music in London, where she met saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, whom she married in 1991.
I have the impression Kent is better known in France than in the United States. Her album Raconte-moi was recorded in French and became the second best selling French language album worldwide in 2010.
Kent has also faced serious health challenges. In a 2004 interview with Robert Kaiser of The Washington Post, Kent recounted that she’s been in comas three times caused by brainstem encephalitis:
Each time, baffled doctors were not certain they could bring her back. The last coma was in 1999, and Tomlinson nursed her through it. On doctors' advice, he brought records to her hospital room. When she awoke he was playing Mildred Bailey, one of the great jazz singers of the ’30s. “There’s just so much emotion in that voice,” Kent says. “It’s a cry - even when she’s singing a happy song.”
Discovering Great European Television
The Euro TV Place is an excellent source of recommendations for great European television. Linda Jew, the founder of the site, regularly publishes detailed reviews.
I enjoy French television because it helps me keep up and improve my French. Modern television lets you hear the way people speak in everyday life, which often is different from what is taught in foreign language classes.
I’ve enjoyed great television I learned about at The Euro TV Place including:
If you’re interested in exploring new television, The Euro TV Place is a great resource. The blog discusses many new shows each month.
Helen Reddy (1941-2020)
Singer Helen Reddy, who was born in Australia in 1941, died in Los Angeles on September 29, 2020 at the age of 78.
I loved her music. Her first hit was a 1971 cover of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” from the award-winning stage show “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Her trademark song — “I Am Woman,” — came a year later. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1972. Reddy was the first Australian-born artist to win a Grammy and the first to make the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Reddy did not have an easy life. She had a kidney removed at 17 and lived with Addison’s disease.
Film: ‘A Little Romance’
A Little Romance is a 1979 American romantic comedy film directed by George Roy Hill and starring Laurence Olivier, Thelonious Bernard, and Diane Lane in her film debut.
The screenplay was written by Allan Burns and George Roy Hill, based on the 1977 novel E=mc2 Mon Amour by Patrick Cauvin.
The film follows a French boy and an American girl who meet at the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte — 50 minutes south of Paris — and begin a romance that leads to a journey to Venice where they hope to seal their love forever with a kiss beneath the Bridge of Sighs at sunset.
Diane Lane portrays an affluent, intelligent and charming teenager living in Paris. The scenes of Paris are glorious. They made me want to visit Paris and have stayed with me. Thelonious Bernard does a great job portraying the street smart French boy Diane Lane falls in love with. And Laurence Olivier adds a lot to the film.
Music: Jean-Jacques Goldman
Jean-Jacques Goldman is very popular in the French-speaking world. Since the death of Johnny Hallyday in 2017, he has been the highest grossing living French pop rock act. He was born in 1951.
Goldman is the most popular male personality in France. He’s in good company. Sophie Marceau is the most popular female French personality.
Goldman also wrote successful albums and songs for many artists, includingCéline Dion. You can also see them perform together here.
Goldman was born in Paris to an immigrant Polish Jewish father and a German Jewish mother.