Eat, Drink and watch Dark Shadows!

Movie Studio Grill!

This is a theater with loungy seats AND tables or a bar that you can sit at, find your reserved spot, and order your food from a menu that includes everything from burgers and pizzas to quasadillas.  The place has a full bar too so don't forget the cocktails!   Every table has a red button and when you turn it on, you get service, even throughout the showing of the movie, so keep those drinks coming and enjoy the show!  How cool is that!

hello "Mr. Normal"

Bye Bye Nicolas

A socialist, the first since Mitterand was re-elected in 1988, takes over France.  He has vowed to fight against German-led austerity measures and to tax the rich…..time will tell if he can bring France back from a brink shared by its other European neighbors.

Though it is a democracy, and so since 1789, France is on its Fifth Republic.  Through the years these republics have essentially stretched, reformed and morphed their constitutions!!!!

The President and the Prime Minister in the French political system, the first- and second-highest authorities respectively, are not always of the same party and must learn to work together.

The current Prime Minister is François Fillon, he is appointed by the President after being nominated by the majority party in the National Assembly for an indefinite term.   My understanding is that the Prime Minister manages the daily affairs of government but has no real power….that is how it seems to me anyway.

I am sorry to see Sarkozy go, he was the first in a long time, if not ever, French president that was truly Pro-American.  I think he made a valiant effort to take France out of its sometimes Dark Ages tendencies…

Right before the weekend he was asked to comment on if he lost, his answer: "There will be a handover of power. The nation follows its course. The nation is stronger than the destiny of the men who serve it"

A Must See

 

 I watched a strange and fascinating movie the other day.   "Séraphine" is a French movie that came out in 2009, based on a true story.   If you look it up and read about it, it is often described as a tragic story.  Perhaps, for us looking in, but not so much for her, I wouldn't think.   Her being Séraphine Louis aka Séraphine de Senlis.  Séraphine was a naive, self-taught painter, who, as a poor housemaid, often used things such as animal blood from the kitchens or clay she collected on river banks, as her materials to paint with....

She was born in Arsy (Oise) in 1864 and did domestic work all her life, starting in a convent where it is rumored she first had the visions and inspiration to paint.  Her works are repetitive images, that are often described as fluid and moving, of vivid color and inspired by the outdoors and the nature she seemed to love.  Often times she would paint in a trance like frenzy and it is said that examinations of her signature, often cut into canvas with a knife, revealed several layers of paint.  

In 1932 Séraphine was put into a lunatic asylum for the very "chronic pychosis" that probably fueled her talent and from this imprisonment was no longer able to paint.  She died in 1942 there, alone.   

Of course there was a life lived in between these dates I've put down.  I hesitate to say it was a lonely life because she created a beauty that was so intense, whether it was one she observed outwardly or one that lived inside her, she could hardly have been lonely or even poor or even "crazy" as the creator of such scenes that continue to inspire today....having kept her company as she painted them and still dancing on canvas for us today.