Showing posts with label romantic comedies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label romantic comedies. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Tuesday Intros -- Fa-La-Llama-La


Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
I'll be reading and reviewing Fa-La-Llama-La by Stephanie Dagg for France Book Tours. I read and reviewed Stephanie's previous memoir Heads Above Water where she described her family's move to France and attempt to start a camping and fishing vacation retreat. I guess she has
successfully done it now, because she has llamas and goats and all sorts of barnyard fowl. I'm sure this new novel, which she describes as a romantic comedy, will be just the mood lifter I need during the coming weeks.
Here's the intro:
"How are you fixed for the next week or so?" my cousin asked.
Talk about a silly question. I glowered at my phone.
"Joe, it's nearly Christmas," I reminded him. "I'm temporarily living with my parents, as I know you know. I will be eating too much, which is bad since it will go straight to my hips, and probably drinking too much, which is also bad, but given recent events, I'm not sure I care. With any luck I'll forget about them."
The events that Noelle wants to forget about are losing her job, being dumped by her fiance and the death of her grandmother, so she takes a pet-sitting job feeding llamas in France over Christmas.
Hope you're reading something to raise your spirits or to challenge your mind.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Dreaming of France -- Samba


Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

I'd  never heard about this movie, Samba, but found it "on demand" in my cable television movie section. It was under comedy, which, when considering a French movie, is always questionable. But there were some laugh-out-loud moments and some poignant moments.
Here's the trailer, in French, bien sur!


As  you can tell, Samba travels to Paris and works, sending money home to his mother and sisters in Senegal. He lives with his uncle and everything is fine until he tries to get a work permit for a permanent job. After Alice helps get him out of detention, he lives life on the edge, borrowing or purchasing other people's IDs to try to get work and running from the police.
Our college-aged son joined us for most of the movie and we ended up discussing immigration and the similarities between the U.S. and France, along with some of the differences.
Omar Sy is beautiful and an engaging actor. He was, by the way, born in France, not Senegal like the character he plays.
We watched this movie for $4.99 on demand. Well worth it for some beautiful shots of Paris, along with some inner knowledge about the trials facing immigrants.

Thanks so much for playing along with Dreaming of France. Please leave your name and a link to your blog on Mr. Linky below. I really appreciate your participation and I hope you'll leave a comment plus visit each other's blogs.


Wednesday, October 07, 2015

Book Review -- The Trouble With Words.

It's hard to imagine that a romantic comedy can feature a young widow who has a date with her husband's grave every week, and a young man who has just found out his mother is dying, but somehow, Suzie Tullett pulls it off in The Trouble with Words, her most recent novel published by Safkhet Publishing.
The main character, Annabel, decides she wants to have a baby since she and her husband didn't get around to it before he was killed by a hit and run driver. So Annabel goes out on the town to find the perfect sperm donor, and she meets Ben. Ben agrees to deliver the goods just before he makes a promise to his mom that he will settle down before she dies, with  no idea that day might be coming sooner than he knows.
The turkey baster efforts bring Annabel and Ben closer together, but no closer to their goals.
The two main characters both tell the story from their viewpoints, and they're surrounded by a cast of well-meaning family and friends who only help botch up their impending relationship.

Here's an excerpt from Annabel's Sunday morning visit to her husband's grave:
 Opening out the deckchair, she plonked herself down in it. “So how’s your week been?” she asked. She paused, not that she really expected a reply, but it was nice to know he was listening if nothing else. “Mine’s not been too bad,” she continued. “The shop’s still doing okay. Oh, and your mum called round the other day.” Remembering the visit all too well, Annabel tried not to scowl. “She said to say hello.”
She reached down and dipped her hand into her bag again, this time pulling out a flask of coffee. “Caffeine, just what I need after the hassle of getting here,” she said. “As usual the traffic was horrendous.” Pouring herself a drink, she knew her ramblings were an attempt at stalling the inevitable; that she was worried about Tom’s reaction once she’d told him what she was up to. While her plans for the future might be a positive move on her part, she certainly wasn’t daft enough to think everyone would understand. If anything most people wouldn’t, especially if his mother’s reaction had been anything to go by.
This novel was a sweet escape with likable characters and plenty of laughter. Give it a try.

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trouble-Words-Suzie-Tullett-ebook/dp/B0153VEIFI/ 
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Words-Suzie-Tullett-ebook/dp/B0153VEIFI/ 
Amazon EU: http://www.amazon.de/Trouble-Words-Suzie-Tullett-ebook/dp/B0153VEIFI/

More about the author:
Website: http://suzietullett.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/suzietullett
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Suzie-Tullett-Author/221204154583599?fref=ts 

Safkhet Publishing: http://safkhetpublishing.com/

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Movies and France

Earl works evenings, so most evenings I'm home alone or chaperoning Tucker and his girlfriend.
On Earl's two evenings off a week, we try to find something fun to do. Tuesday night, we walked down to the library and borrowed a couple of movies then went to a local coffee shop. We sat at tables along the sidewalk and enjoyed the beautiful September night.
When we had walked home, we watched one of the movies. Made in 1995, French Kiss with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline is a great romantic comedy for anyone who loves France, like I do.
Earl had never seen it before, and I only fell asleep for a small part of the movie. Kevin Kline plays a Frenchman, Luc, who is a thief. I wondered why they had chosen him to play a Frenchman and when I searched it online, I found that the role was originally written for Gerard Depardieu. I like Depardieu, but I can't imagine Meg Ryan falling for him.  Kline has since played other French-speaking parts. The plot is that Meg Ryan is petrified of flying so she doesn't go overseas with her fiance. He meets a French woman and falls in love. She gets up her nerve to fly over and win back the fiance, but meets Luc on the plane. He hides some contraband in her bag and they are thrown together.
Although I love France, I still prefer to watch American movies made in France. The problem is that comedies in France aren't generally  funny. Someone almost always dies. But the other movie we watched on Earl's night off was French, billed as a romantic comedy. We were prepared for bodies to start stacking up as the hilarity ensued.
The movie was called Heartbreaker with Vanessa Paradis and Romain Duris, French actors. The premise is that Duris plays Alex who, with his sister and brother-in-law, runs an elaborate business to break up couples. The examples they gave were a brother who paid them to break up his sister and her lame boyfriend, and a father who hired them to keep his daughter from marrying someone boring.
The beginning was fun as Alex and his crew went to elaborate lengths to convince a woman that she deserved more than the man who preferred to stay by the pool and watch a wet t-shirt contest.
Of course, Alex meets his match when he is asked to stop the marriage of Juliette, an independent woman, to a British philanthropist. Alex takes the job because he needs the money, even though it goes against his principles. He usually only breaks up couples who are unhappy or a bad fit. Juliette puts up quite a fight, which makes Alex fall in love with her. I won't tell you how it ends, but surprisingly, no one dies, which makes it 'ilarious, as the French say.
Both movies were full of lovely French scenes.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Movie Dilemmas

When Earl has a rare evening off, we like to watch movies set in France or Italy, places we hope to live someday.
Last night, we walked to the library and scoured the foreign film section. We ended up with a handful of movies. First, we tried a 1960s movie Divorce Italian Style with Marcello Mastroianni who fantasized about killing his wife so he could hook up with his high school cousin. We watched for about 20 minutes before moving on to another movie.

The next choice was a 2002 French movie called Va Savoir which can be interpreted as "Go Figure." The dvd case described it as a French romantic comedy. We love romance in Paris, but this one was full of angst and overbearing characters. Frankly, most French comedies are not funny to me. Maybe I just don't have that Gallic sense of humor. Why do people die in French comedies? The funniest thing that usually happens is someone gets locked in the closet, which happened in Va Savoir. Earl says I missed a funny scene at around 2 hours, 10 minutes. I had gone to bed by then.
Don't get me wrong, I have liked some French movies, such as Manon of the Spring or Paris with Juliette Binoche, but overall, French movies fall flat with me.
Here's what I figured out. I like American or British movies with American or British humor or romance set in France or Italy -- like A Room with a View (my all time favorite) or Under the Tuscan Sun or French Kiss.
So, I need your help. Please recommend some movies set in France or Italy that I will like.

The Olympic Cauldron

 Many people visit Paris in August, but mostly they run into other tourists. This year, there seem to be fewer tourists throughout the city ...