12

Before Tomorrow

Che

Chéri

Entre Les Murs

Every Little Step

Gomorra

Hunger

Hurt Locker

L’Heure d’Été

O’Horton

One Week

Sugar

Sunshine Cleaning

The Soloist

Un Jour, Tu Comprendras

Whatever Works

2009 – 2010

2001

A Star Is Born

Ajami

An Education

Broken Embraces

Cairo Time

Cooking With Stella

Extraordinary Measures

Fish Tank

Glenn Gould

Greenberg

Herb & Dorothy

I Am Love

Inside Hana’s Suitcase

Jaffa

L’Elégance Du Hérisson

L’Enfant Prodige

Les Beaux Gosses

Lies My Father Told Me

Mao’s Last Dancer

Mary & Max

Pranzo Di Ferragosto

Red Shoes

Sherlock Holmes

Soul Kitchen

The Blind Side

The Kids Are Alright

The Last Station

The White Ribbon

The Young Victoria

Un Prophète

Vilaine

2010 – 11

Another Year

Bruit Des Glaçons

Carlos

Casino Jack

Copie Conforme

Curling

Des Hommes et Des Dieux

Great Directors

Hanna

Howl

I Love You Phillip Morris

In A Better World

Jane Eyre

L’arbre

L’illusioniste

La Danse

London River

Midnight In Paris

Names Of Love

Noms Des Gens

Precious Life

Score

Somewhere

Tall Dark Stranger

Tamara Drewe

The King’s Speech

The Year Dolly Parton …

Venus Noire

When We Leave

2011 – 12

A Separation

Boy

Café De Flore

Carnage

Circumstance

Damsels In Distress

Deep Blue Sea

Des Vrais Mensonges

Et Maintenant, On Va Ou?

Footnote

In Darkness

Into The Abyss

Iron Lady

L’Homme Qui Voulait Vivre Sa Vie

Machine Gun Preacher

Marécages

Norwegian Wood

Payback

Pina/Ora

Poetry

Rebelle

Restless

Roméo Onze

Salmon Fishing In The Yemen

Salt Of Life

Take Shelter

The Artist

The Forgiveness Of Blood

The Lady

The Skin I Live In

The Way

Vents Contraires

2012 – 13

1er Amour

2 Days In NY

A Royal Affair

Amour

Before Midnight

Bling Ring

Blue Jasmine

Fill The Void

Frances Ha

Gatekeepers

I’m So Excited

Kon Tiki

L’Homme Qui Rit

Love Is All You Need

Molière À Bicyclette

No

Place Beyond The Pines

Populaire

Promised Land

Quartet

Reality

Renoir

Rust & Bone

Saveurs Du Palais

Sessions

Still Mine

Superstar

The Butler

The Way, Way Back

Wadjda

2013 – 14

Enough Said

Les Beaux Jours

Triptyque

Last Vegas

Cutie and the Boxer/Danse Macabre

Old Boy

Philomena

Diego Star

Marius

Inequality for All

Inside Llewyn Davis

August: Osage County

Grande Bellezza

Le Passé

Gloria

One Chance

Tim’s Vermeer

Lunchbox

Bethlehem

Like Father, Like Son

9 Mois Ferme

Uvanga

Fading Gigolo

Jeune & Jolie

Tracks

Boyhood

2014 – 15

Love is Strange

Mummy

Saint Vincent

Diplomatie

Whiplash

Homesman

Mr. Turner

Deux Jours, Une Nuit

Félix et Meira

Still Alice

Leviathan

Gett: The Trial of Viviane

Ansalem

Red Army

Wild Tales

Monsoon

White God

Boychoir

Woman of Gold

5 à 7

Salt Of The Earth

Preggoland

Lambert & Stamp

Dancing Arabs

Saint-Laurent

Nouvelle Amie

Some Kind of love

Infinitely Polar Bear

Amy

Jimmy’s Hall

Mr. Holmes

Sugar Coating

2015-16

Grandma

Coming Home

Beebe Boys

Labyrinth of Lies

Trumbo

Hitchcock/Truffaut

Canadian/Québecois

Before Tomorrow

Cairo Time

Cooking With Stella

Glenn Gould

Inside Hana’s Suitcase

L’Enfant Prodige

Lies My Father Told Me

The Young Victoria

Curling

Marécages

Triptyque

Diego Star

Mummy

Félix et Meira

Preggoland

Beebe Boys

At tiff in September, I saw a small interesting film, Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation which opened to rave reviews at the Venice and tiff, the kind of movie Cinemagique regularly programmes. The next thing I knew, Netflix had bought world rights, and it disappeared out of sight. No release, no reviews, no screenings. About a month ago, it popped up on Netflix – all 70 million subscribers getting access. In retaliation, all the big American theatre chains, boycotted the release of Beasts on their screens. No one cared.

Some thoughts about Netflix:

• Netflix is every movie lovers’ future.
• It provides on-demand Internet streaming to all of Australia, New Zealand, South America, Japan, North America and parts of Europe (Denmark, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland and United Kingdom). 70 million subscribers.
• Netflix is presently screening many of the films we presented over the past 12 months.
• Netflix gives its subscribers top quality movies and shows they can’t see anywhere else. Its TV productions–nominated for 34 Emmys this year–are elaborate ads for the Netflix brand. Watch for Oscar nominees next month.
• Still to come in the next month: Adam Sandler’s Ridiculous Six; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend as well as Pee Wee’s Big Holiday. None of these films will get to movie screens. None of these films, Cinemagique will have access to.
• Streaming is the new global reality. The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Verdi’s Rigoletto,”grossed $2.6 million in North American movie theaters alone, with an estimated audience of 113,000, streamed into more than 800 movie outlets. An additional 125,000 saw the broadcast on 900 screens in 30 countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, Russia and Latin America.
• Baseball’s video-streaming of all its games is a skill set in very high demand.
• But more than style or premise, it’s the Netflix business model that has scared the knickers off Hollywood, an empire, to be honest, that has never been very good at technology and really struggles with large scale. Hollywood, for example, took a pass when TV, emerged in the 40s.
• The threat for Cinemagique is that low-budget movies, like Beasts of No Nation, bypass theatrical release altogether, streaming directly to Netflix subscribers before we even know of their existence on Netflix.
• That, I dread is Cinémagique’s future: Netflix as a humungous Godzilla – devouring every up-market, smart movie every day;. Plus as a cinematheque – 8 Coen Bros. movies are presently showing.
• Netflix is but the beginning: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, Hulu Plus, Amazon Studios, CBS and Now TV all American-driven, are planning similar services. Hollywood as we know it, is under siege.

My recommendation certainly to all Cinemagique members to subscribe Netflix. We certainly hope to have Cinemagique for years to come, but if we don’t have quality movies from week to week, our future is very much upon us.

Other thoughts were that she looked older than in her 30’s.  Also, the film could use some fine tuning: it had that good amusing Hepburn/Tracy type dialogue, but it felt like two films. One filled with joyful repartee, and the other bending heavily under a cloud. It went quickly from comedy to drama.   

For me, this film had a special meaning. I have been attempting to buy a bench in Central Park for years.  If fact, I went there 2 years ago specifically to choose a bench and decide on the dedication. (It would be my memorial bench) Unfortunately, the week I was there, (in Oct.)  a freak snowstorm occurred which brought down so many trees that the Park  was closed. I haven’t gone back since, so the project is still in limbo.

I’ve seen many of the benches shown in the film. The one that said “She had the lamb chops” being one of my favourites. But I also found out that one of theideas I was playing with for my plaque has already been used. (“We’re home”). Back to the drawing board.

Martha

***

I found the film a marvel, and intend to tell as many people I can reach not to miss it. A convincing love story bound to take Americans by surprise, as it did the young Brian.

The casting was perfect. Has the great Glenn Close ever been better? Every scene was just long enough to tell the story. One of the women who spoke after said she enjoyed the journey provided by the gentle pacing. So did I.

I always enjoy the energy your friend – Dr. Rappaport? – gives to the Q&As although I don’t always agree with him: I remember he was bored with “Two Days One Night”  starring the luminous Marion Cotillard. He asked me if I was furious with him tonight and I said yes: why would he take off for a leak in the middle of a good movie?

I hope you keep him as a regular.

Rv.

P.S. Nice tribute you gave to Paul Almond.

*****

Dear Peter: I really enjoyed the film 5 a 7. Thank you for taking a chance and showing it. Very sophisticated, loved the setting, beautiful cinematography, dazzling female lead, great parental couple bit, witty repartee. I would recommend it as an antidote to all the violence that abounds. On the lines of My Summer in Provence, When Harry Met Sally, etc. Worth distributing.

Pearl

*****

An unlikely love story (but why not?) set in New York: he’s 24, Jewish, an unpublished writer, she’s 33, French, sophisticated, a married mother of 2.  Cameos from real-life New York powerhouses in the arts, cuisine, and politics as well as knock-out performances by Glenn Close and Frank Langella as Daniel’s disapproving parents in several brilliantly written scenes.  No guns, no bad grammar.

*****

I was totally charmed by this movie!!! The writing was clever, playing on our imagined stereotypes of French family life and sophisticated New Yorker’s supposed every day life. She was completely charming and gorgeous and seduced most of the audience myself included. That he could win her over, this unpublished wannabe writer, gives us all hope. 

The idea of newbie but charming leads positioned against stars like Langella and Lambert Wilson is novel and works like a charm. As for sophisticated New York, of course, Alan Gilbert of the NY Phil , Julian Bond and others are typical guests at our small intimate dinner party, enlivened by two perfect NY children.

This is what movies are all about. BRAVO

Bob Butler

P.S It will sell and build an audience

*****

Peter – I loved the film, thought it could use some editing, but mostly, it was a charming frolic, at least that’s how I viewed/experienced it. 

Those looking to psychoanalyze these characters miss the point – I see it more as a Woody Allen-esque romp (complete with judgmental Jewish parents, delightfully done by FL and GC – she didn’t play it ‘jewish” enough but that’s just me).

Now, you can use this if you don’t give attribution to me, I WAS that 33 year old woman (although not divorced, not a mother and not beautiful) who fell in love with and lived with for 2 years a 26 year old starving writer in NYC (he later went on to become a famous Pulitzer prize winning biographer/ historian).  His parents were also shocked and judgmental when he brought me home one Thanksgiving. 

These stories DO happen, but even if the viewer doesn’t have such a direct experience to reference, it’s still a delightful movie! Oh, and I loved all the great NYC footage – the bench inscriptions were a lovely note….and better that they didn’t refer too literally to the next scene.

Hope this is helpful. Thanks for sharing this with us.

*****

Okay I didn’t hate it last night. I love movies about NYC but I found it really sappy and a cross between The Notebook and The Way we were.  Felt it was much more of a film made for tv!!

I guess I am a bit of a cynic.

Kathleen

*****

I thought that the movie was not up to our usual standards. 

You would think that a film which is being touted as a feel-good rom com, with enough Hollywood names to make one notice, would easily be able to find some distribution…I guess that is until the movie is actually screened by the distributors.

We can sit down and talk about the details if you like but briefly, it was poorly written, badly directed, hardly edited and the casting was questionable, at best. I can easily see why this film has problems. 

Dr. J

Finding Vivian Maier

It’s already disappeared of course, but this fine doc has been my favorite movie of the summer. A young guy buys a box of 35 b&w negatives at an auction, and then devotes years and this film to finding out who took them.

Trailer

Begin Again

Made by John Carney (Once), A sweeter version of Inside Llewan Davies. Lots of Greenich Village music, the ever likeable Keira Knightley & Mark Ruffalo.

Trailer

Million Dollar Arm

Despite a Disneyesque version of both India and major league baseball, this Jon Hamm  sappy rollout has a few enduring charms.

Trailer

Jersey Boys

A delightfully odd adaptation of the Broadway musical oddity (albeit a bust with  the critics), Clint Eastwood directing for Frankie Valli, a biopic about Valli and his group, The Four Seasons. To my great surprise, I remembered vast swatches of lyrics to songs I thought I had never heard of.

Trailer

The first shot in Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s tender, profound film, is of a cloudy sky. The second is of a boy staring up at that sky, one arm bent under his head, the other flung out straight on the ground. He’s a pretty child with calm eyes, a snub nose and a full mouth. It’s a face that you get to know and love because, even as this child is watching the world, you’re watching him grow. From scene to scene, you see the curve of his jaw change, notice his thickening brows and witness his slender arms opening to embrace the world and its clear and darkening skies.

Filmed over 12 consecutive years, “Boyhood” centers on Mason, 6 when the story opens and 18 when it ends. In between, he goes to school; argues with his sister, Samantha and watches his mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette), struggle with work and men while paying the bills, moving from home to home and earning several degrees. Every so often, her ex-husband, roars into the children’s lives, initially in a 1968 GTO. It isn’t a dad car (although it does belong to one: Mr. Linklater).  These are people you know, maybe people like you.

The realism is so brilliantly realized that it would be easy to overlook. In “Boyhood,” Mr. Linklater’s inspired idea of showing the very thing that most movies either ignore or awkwardly elide — the passage of time — is its impressive, headline-making conceit. Starting in 2002, he gathered his four lead actors each year for a three- to four-day shoot, working on the script as they went along.

The structure is crucial. Mr. Linklater’s films are sometimes mischaracterized as having no plot, perhaps because they may seem so, when compared with aggressively incident-jammed mainstream movies. One of the fascinating things about “Boyhood” is that a lot happens — there are parties and fights, laughter and tears — but all these events take place in a distinctly quotidian register and without the usual filmmaking prodding and cues.

Instead, the movie ebbs and flows from year to year, interspersed with temporal signposts like a Britney Spears song or a Nintendo Wii. For a filmmaker known for the loquaciousness of his characters, Mr. Linklater has an almost un-American rejection of overexplanation. The film’s visual style is precise, unassuming to the point of seeming invisibility and in the service of the characters, with compositions that remain unfussy and uncluttered, even when the rooms are busy. When Mr. Linklater films a landscape, your eye locks not on the camerawork but on the beauty of these spaces and the people in them — the enveloping greenness of the neighborhood in which Mason first rides a bike, for instance, and the tranquillity of the watering hole that, years later, he swims in with his dad. Mr. Linklater is especially fond of showing two people walking and talking, and you learn as much about the characters’ relationships from how they inhabit space — his two-shots speak volumes — as from what they say. He’s a poet-geometrician of intimacy.

Radical in its conceit, familiar in its everyday details, “Boyhood” exists at the juncture of classical cinema and the modern art film without being slavishly indebted to either tradition. It’s a model of cinematic realism, and its pleasures are obvious yet mysterious. Even after seeing the film three times, I haven’t fully figured out why it has maintained such a hold on me, and why I’m eager to see it again. There are many reasons to love movies, from the stories they tell, to the beautiful characters who live and die for us. And yet the story in “Boyhood” is blissfully simple: A child grows up. This, along with the modesty of its physical production — its humble rooms, quiet moments, ordinary lives — can obscure Mr. Linklater’s ambitions and the greatness of his achievement.

It’s no surprise that watching actors age on camera without latex and digital effects makes for mesmerizing viewing. And at first it may be hard to notice much more than the creases etching Mr. Hawke’s face, the sexy swells of Ms. Arquette’s belly and Mr. Coltrane’s growth spurts. You may see your own face in those faces, your children’s, too. This kind of identification is familiar, as is the idea that movies preserve time. André Bazin wrote that art emerged from our desire to counter the passage of time and the inevitable decay it brings. But in “Boyhood,” Mr. Linklater’s masterpiece, he both captures moments in time and relinquishes them as he moves from year to year. He isn’t fighting time but embracing it in all its glorious and agonizingly fleeting beauty.

Here are a few excerpts from interviews.
Voici quelques extraits d’entrevues…

—

Q: Isabelle is hard to get a read on.

She’s a mystery, that’s what interested me. I wanted to show that when you are a teenager, you are very mysterious to other people. I wanted to play a game with the audience. I don’t have one answer. She is many things. There’s many reasons for her behavior. I wanted people not to judge her, but to try and understand her. For me she’s like many teenagers — they don’t have words to express themselves. Everything is changing in their bodies, and in their emotions. It’s very difficult for them to communicate. That’s something I had experienced when I was a teenager. I wanted to show that.

So there’s some of you in her.

Don’t worry, I didn’t do prostitution. For me, it was a terrible time, I didn’t like it. I wanted to show the difficulty of this period. I was not able to say what happens inside. I didn’t realize the violence of my emotions, of my desire. When you’re a child you think your parents are heroes. When you realize they’re not the heroes you made them out to be, it’s a strong dissolution.

Why did you choose therefore to make the film about a young woman coming of age, and not a man?

“In the House” was about a young male character, so this time I wanted to do a portrait of a young woman. To me there is no big difference between male and female. Very often you could change the sex of the character. What interests me was to show the power of this young woman. She knows her power, she knows her beauty and she uses it. It could be the same for a man.

At Cannes, you got nasty press after making those comments to The Hollywood Reporter. Do you feel you were misquoted?

I didn’t want to do the interview—but you know you have to do it—I had the feeling the journalist liked the film, I’m not sure, but she was nervous about the fact that it was about prostitution. What I tried to say was just the fact that prostitution could be a fantasy. It could be a fantasy of men and women. Just a fantasy. What I tried to say was about the character of Charlotte Rampling who at the end of the film says, “I have always this fantasy, but I never did it.” I wanted to say that every woman has this fantasy. Because the film is not a polemic I think.

I was the new Lars von Trier, I should have spoken about Nazis too. Nazis and prostitution would have been bigger.

You complete your projects at such a rapid rate. What can you tell me about your next film, “The New Girlfriend“? How do you keep this pace up?

I like to do movies. For me it’s always a pleasure. Actually, I suffer more when I don’t do movies. Because my films are very low budgets I’m able to find the money to finance the films.

Do actresses come to you, begging for you to write for them?

In France there is a real pleasure to make movies about women—and very often it’s films that could be successful. Under the Sand with Charlotte Rampling was quite strange. Nobody wanted to put money on the film, everyone said that Charlotte Rampling was over. When the film was released it was a big success.

—– 

Ozon, artiste virtuose, s’impose désormais comme l’un des meilleurs cinéastes français actuels. Réputation non usurpée, talent certifié.

Il ne faut surtout pas conclure qu’Ozon est un parvenu. Bien au contraire. Sa carrière ne se résume pas à deux trois films grand public mais à une longue traversée semée d’embûches avec des films fascinants et politiquement incorrects. Avec une moyenne d’une fiction par an depuis 1997, feu l’enfant terrible du cinéma français continue de tracer son parcours. La première fois qu’on a entendu parler de lui, c’était avec ses courts métrages. La petite mort, un petit chef-d’œuvre bouleversant sous son vernis provocateur, ou Scènes de lits, un court métrage kaléidoscopique et inquiétant. Des films complexes, subtils, d’une grande richesse émotionnelle, qui montrent que le démon Ozon a une double face : celle qui célèbre l’amour mais aussi l’autre, plus sombre, qui fait grincer les dents.

Après les courts, les longs…

Regarde la mer fut une transition permettant au cinéaste de passer au long métrage. Dans Théorème, Pasolini faisait entrer Dieu dans une famille pour étayer une parabole sur le pourrissement de la bourgeoisie. Dans Sitcom, Ozon prend un rat comme élément perturbateur, catalyseur des fantasmes enfouis : lorsqu’un personnage touche le rat, sa vraie personnalité prend soudain le dessus et révèle tous ses désirs secrets. Les amants criminels est un film d’horreur psychanalytique qui mêle le fait divers aux contes de fées et autopsie la crise identitaire de deux adolescents avec son cortège d’ambiguïtés (morales, sexuelles) et de sentiments refoulés (l’homosexualité de Luc). Il en résulte un film troublant, envoûtant, idoine pour le jeune ado en pleine confusion des sens, mais aujourd’hui plus maladroit que foncièrement dérangeant.
Un an plus tard, Ozon sort Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes, une adaptation d’une pièce inédite de Rainer Werner Fassbinder, un huis clos qui sonde les rapports SM entre des personnages dominés par un homme à la fois charmeur, tyrannique et cruel (Bernard Giraudeau, dans son rôle le plus dur). Sous le sable, le quatrième long du cinéaste, traite du deuil de la façon la plus elliptique qui soit (tout est suggéré) ; ce sera le film de la consécration. Il marque également le retour de Charlotte Rampling au cinéma.

Après le succès critique, le succès public

Le public viendra définitivement vers François Ozon avec Huit femmes, son cinquième film (le plus ambitieux, pas le meilleur) qui réunit un casting de rêve. La bande-annonce, parfaite, laisse entendre que nous allons assister à une partie de Cluedo. En fait, l’ambition d’Ozon est ailleurs. Peu importe la résolution du film, peu importe l’identité du tueur : on n’est pas là pour cela ; et ceux qui s’attendaient à une enquête policière lambda ont fatalement été déçus. Huit femmes, c’est avant tout un magnifique hommage au métier d’actrice et par extension au cinéma.
Après un tel film, Ozon aurait pu prendre une pause bien méritée, mais non. Le réalisateur signe le mystérieux Swimming pool, sorte de shyamalanerie française glacée, dans lequel Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling), auteur anglais de polars à succès, venue se reposer et travailler dans la maison de son éditeur, voit sa quiétude perturbée par Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), la fille de ce dernier. Le cinéaste observe les rapports de force entre ces deux femmes qui, tour à tour, se disputent, se manipulent, s’aiment. Un thriller original et érotique, cérébral et drôle qui précède 5 x 2, autopsie implacable d’un couple en crise à la méthode Irréversible, nouveau trouble instillé par un cinéaste définitivement épatant. Qui revient un an plus tard à ses anciennes amour “trash” en signant Le temps qui reste, où il décortique ses obsessions avec une générosité souveraine.
Après ce feu d’artifice, on lui pardonne volontiers le faux-pas d’Angel, beau spectacle un peu vain sauvé cependant par quelques réjouissances visuelles. On reste à nouveau dubitatifs devant son mystérieux Ricky. Avec Le refuge, le cinéaste revient à un cinéma intimiste qui semble lui réussir davantage.

Nobody makes such deliciously insouciant French Comedies like the French. Here are some of my favorites, mostly recent.

Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain
An innocent develops her own sense of justice, helping those around her.

Delicatessen
Grotesquely larger-than-life inhabitants of a scrofulous tenement have their own little story; visually, the film evokes Gilliam, Lynch, the Coens The sets, special effects, photography, pace and performances all contribute to the brash comic-strip vivacity. Increasingly inventive as it progresses, Jeunet fast, funny feature debut entertains from sinister start to frantic finish.

Les Visiteurs
An 11th century knight (Jean Reno) and his servant (Christian Clavier) are transported from the past into the present and learn to deal with and survive in the modern world.

La Cage Aux Folles
Two gays, living in St. Tropez have their lives turned upside down when the son announces he is getting married. They try to conceal their lifestyle when the fiancée and her parents come for dinner.

Mon Oncle
French auteur Jacques Tati employs his signature character, Tatischeff to bumble his way through the idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies of modern life, albeit in his idiosyncratic but ultimately humorous manner.

2 Days in Paris
Julie Delpy takes her American boyfriend to Paris to meet her parents and several of her ex-boyfriends.

Les Saveurs du Palais
Christian Vincent’s spoof on the cooking obsessions of the Elysee Palace.

Les Intouchables
A quadriplegic and an ex-con make the best of living within their means: sky-diving, Vivaldi, modern art. Evocative of The Diving Bell and Butterfly.

Trois Hommes et un Couffin
Jacques, an Air France steward, One day a package arrives with a cradle, a baby, and the three guyhs find themselves trapped between work obligations and diapers. The bachelors find their lives changed.

Guillaume, Les Garçons, à table
Guillaume’s rather temperamental upper middle-class mother, has three children, two of whom she considers as her sons and another she calls Guillaume. Through a series of painful chain of experiences, Guillaume will discover little by little who he is actually and will manage to break free from her pernicious influence.

La Nuit Americaine
Truffaut’s hilarious movie, in the pantheon of films about filmmaking Also of interest – is the manner in which Truffaut captures behind-the-scenes shenanigans, employing gliding crane shots and flashes of abrupt editing to make us fully aware of the majestically artificial way the world is depicted by filmmakers.

Two Russian 12-year olds were discovered to have been swapped when one of the fathers, insisting his daughter looked nothing like him,  refused to pay child support until a DNA was performed.

Again after a paternity test, it was discover that two South African women had gone gone with  the wrong baby. By then both mothers had been breast feeding, and decided to keep the baby they went home with.  The boys grew up like brothers, and at 15, one moved in with the other.

When two-week-old twins Kasia and Nina were taken to a Warsaw hospital in 1984 with pneumonia, Nina was swapped with another baby. Seventeen years later, Kasia met another girl across town. DNA later confirmed the switch, and the results have reportedly taken a heavy toll on the mother of the twins.

When Dimas Aliprandi had suspicions that he was an illegitimate child, his DNA proved him right. When his biological family were located, the family that raised Dimas moved onto the farm of his birth parents, where the two families now work side by side, harvesting vegetables and living together as one big family.

Marlene Chan remembers Morrie Rohrlick, painter, entrepreneur, academic, bon vivant who died this past week in San Miguel de Allende.

REMEMBERING MORRIE:

All of us who adored him, will miss Morrie Rohrlick. On behalf of Cinémagique, our heart-felt condolences go out to his wife and soulmate, Ruth, his family and friends.

Morrie and Ruth have been front row fixtures at Cinémagique from its inception; both are also longstanding contributors to the McGill Community for Lifelong Learning (MCLL). Just before leaving for his annual trip to Saint Miguel de Allende, Morrie made his presentation on David Hockney, conveying Hockney’s passion for art, making art, the meaning of art in one’s life.

Next to Picasso, Hockney was Morrie’s greatest influence. He once told his grandson: ‘Hockney is my life!’  The confused grandson had understood his grandfather to have said, ‘Hockey is my life!’ Morrie was all for play and mystery.

In 1986, Morrie and Ruth were walking down Cork Street, home to contemporary London galleries. Coming towards them was Hockney, sporting what Morrie described as ‘disheveled chic’. Hockney’s hair was dyed blond; he was wearing his signature striped tie, striped shirt, striped suspenders, striped socks peeking emphatically above well-worn shoes.

So at his Hockney presentation, Morrie mimicked Hockney, sporting his own horizontal striped sweater. And, with trademark humour, Morrie chose a painting of Hockney facing Picasso across a table: Picasso, not Hockney, wearing the striped shirt. Morrie the trickster, subtly and not so subtly, ‘turned the tables’. His legacy lives on in his paintings, drawings and photo-collages.

Below are the films and nominees we’ve had the privilege of presenting over the past year.

AUGUST : OSAGE COUNTY

Best Actress – Meryl Streep

Best Supporting Actress – Julia Roberts

BEFORE MIDNIGHT Richard Linklater,

Best Adapted Screen play – Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke

Récipiendaire du César du Meilleur film d’animation en 2013,

BLUE JASMINE Woody Allen

Best Actress – Cate Blanchett,

Best Supporting Actress – Sally Hawkins

Best Original Screenplay – Woody

CUTIE AND THE BOXER Zachary Heinzerling

Best Documentary

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS Joel et Ethan Coen

Best Cinematography – Bruno Delbonnel

Best Sound – Peter F. Kurland, Skip Lievsay, Greg Orloff

LA GRANDE BELLEZZA Paolo Sorrentino

Best Foreign Language Film

PHILOMENA Stephen Frears

Best Film – Steve Coogan

Best Actress – Dame Judi Dench

Best Script – Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope

Best Music – Alexandre Desplat