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If he hadn’t killed himself 30 years ago Patrick Dewaere would be 65 today

Patrick Dewaere (26 January 1947 – 16 July 1982) was a promising and popular French actor in the late 1960s and 1970s. He made his breakthrough with his first major role in Bertrand Blier’s anarchic comedy Les Valseuses (1974) where he and Gérard Depardieu starred as two young delinquents. He teamed up again with Depardieu in Blier’s Oscar-winning comedy Preparez Vos Mouchoirs.
Despite Dewaere’s obvious talent for comedy, he was often successfully cast as a fragile, neurotic individual. Shortly after the release of Paradis Pour Tous (1982), a black comedy where his character committed suicide, the actor killed himself by shooting himself with a rifle in Paris; he was 35 years old.

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Wonderful portrait of a poilu (literally “hairy one” – and it shows!), the name given to French WW1 infantrymen. Click for full image (1266×1620)

Most of you won’t be able to see the documentary La France Sauvage on Arte TV, so here’s an idea of what you’ll miss:


View all 26 photos (20 Minutes)

From The Atlantic: Salvaging the TK Bremen

Just over a month ago, the TK Bremen, a Maltese-registered cargo ship, ran aground high on Kerminihy beach in Brittany, France, during a severe storm. The TK Bremen weighed over 2,000 tons, measured 109 meters (330 ft), and was carrying more than 220 tons of fuel oil — which immediately began leaking. Inspections were made, and the damage was deemed too severe to repair, so salvage and scrapping operations began. The surrounding dunes are part of a nature reserve, so workers took extra precautions as they offloaded the fuel oil, tore the ship apart, and trucked away the pieces. At a cost of nearly 10 million euros (13 million dollars), 40 men worked day and night for two weeks to dismantle the vessel, including its 10-ton engine, and clean up the beach. One month after the wreck, the cleanup process is nearly complete.


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“For reasons that are obvious now that we’re no longer five years old, Barbie often gets a bad rap. But once upon a time, the little plastic doll with the impossible proportions was one of our most beloved toys. We’re assuming that it was the same for a French woman named Jocelyne Grivaud who is hoping to change the way that we see Barbie by incorporating her image into some of art history’s most famous works.”

Visit gallery | Via Flavorwire

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Can’t get excited about those skinny bimbos fighting for the Miss France title? Here’s the alternative: Miss Ronde 2012.

This year’s pageant was fierce but the clear winner was Hyslyne Blanchon, a 29-year saleslady in a department store. She’s 170cm (5’7″) tall and weighs 96kg (211lb). She used wise words during her acceptance speech: “Miss Ronde France is a cornerstone in the edifice of self-acceptance. The National Committee is working to change attitudes so that round ladies can be truly integrated in our society and accepted by the media, without whom this evolution is impossible”.

The contest was fought between 21 sizeable ladies. It looks like they had a lot of fun:

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Marc Simonetti from Annecy has been a professional artist for 10 years now, and is in great demand for his cover arts, concept arts for video game companies and long feature films, and matte paintings for TV advertisements.

Visit his website, and admire his work on DeviantArt.

Even if you spent all day recovering from your Wikipedia withdrawal, I doubt you’d ever find this obscure page. Wikipedia user “Ardonik” apparently seeks not only to translate the phrase “I ate my cat” into “every written language ever conceived by man,” but also to employ it in a master plan where he ends up with a movie plot. Obviously.

Don’t bother submitting the French version – he already has that one sussed:

Make your own contribution | Via Buzzfeed

If she hadn’t been killed nine years ago Marie Trintignant would be 50 today.

Marie Trintignant (21 January 1962 – 1 August 2003) was a French actress, the daughter of actor Jean-Louis Trintignant and his second wife Nadine Marquand. She first appeared on screen aged 4 in her mother’s film, My Love, My Love. When Marie’s baby sister Pauline died when Marie was 8, she became withdrawn and virtually stopped speaking. Her parents divorced in 1976. Throughout her early life she was afflicted by severe shyness, but despite this, by her mid-teens she decided to become an actress. She played in over thirty movies, and was nominated five times for France’s most prestigious acting honor, the César Award. She was the mother of four sons, from four different relationships.

Marie Trintignant died aged 41 of a cerebral edema on 1 August 2003, as a result of being repeatedly punched by her boyfriend Bertrand Cantat, lead singer with the French rock group, Noir Désir, during a domestic dispute provoked by a text message. Cantat and Trintignant had been lovers for 18 months. Medical evidence suggested the slightly built Mme Trintignant had been struck in the face at least 19 times. Her death caused considerable emotion in France where the popular media divided into pro- and anti-Cantat camps and celebrity magazines were dominated for months by the “affaire Trintignant”. Bertrand Cantat was sentenced to 8 years in prison for manslaughter. He was released for good behaviour in October 2007 after serving four years. Marie Trintignant is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, in Paris.

Another joke from Miss Cellania:

A thief in Paris planned to steal some paintings from the Louvre. After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings and made it safely to his van. However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.

When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and make such an obvious error, he replied,

“Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings. I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh.”

(And you thought I didn’t have De Gaulle to tell you this one!)

Well, I figured I have nothing Toulouse.

He opened his first boutique on in Paris in 1991 with Princess Caroline of Monaco as his first customer. Today, 20 years later and in a celebration of two decades in business, legendary designer Christian Louboutin is to become the first ‘guest creator’ in the history of Parisian cabaret club Le Crazy Horse. To mark the occasion a dapper Louboutin has posed for an exuberant portrait, lifting his top hat as two naked ladies framing him kick their Louboutin-clad feet in the air.

More: Christian Louboutin celebrates 20 years of his red soled shoes with Crazy Horse cabaret show

What if the French presidential candidates were blind and had to rely on their rivals for guidance?

That’s the scenario chosen by the Federation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (FAF). Their 2012 calendar shows six of the presidential hopefuls with dark glasses and white canes, supported by political rivals. The idea is to draw attention to the problems and injustices that touch the nearly 400,000 people in France with a visual handicap.

Show above are two of the six pictures. Click here to view all.