Frogsmoke

I'm sure somebody's not going to be amused at the Elysée…
Source (b3ta) | Via J-Walk

This weekend, the French contributed over five million euros to Sidaction, an annual event in aid of the fight against Aids (Sida in French). However, French TV refused to broadcast this 37-sec film, considered too graphic. Catch phrase: in the world, one person dies of Aids every 10 seconds. (Be warned: NSFW)

Godard filmed the last scene of “Breathless” without crowd control and with a hand-held camera.
This week in The New Yorker, Richard Brody writes about Jean-Luc Godard, with a related slide show online. In an mp3, Brody discusses watching Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, their tumultuous friendship, and French New Wave cinema.
Click here to listen to [...]

Today's Links:
Safety fears over French nuclear technology Telegraph)
'Le scrapbooking' takes France by storm (Times)
French Extremists Dream of Jihad in Iraq (AP)
France's Nouvel awarded 'architecture's Nobel' (AFP)
Anti-Semitism in France becoming more ‘traditional’ but also more violent (EJP)
Female French students resort to sexual favours to secure a home (Times)

French website Usinagaz hosts dozens of online games, including the one shown above, inviting players to liberate Ingrid Betancourt from the FARC rebels. There's also a game that lets you throw hatchets at celebrities. The most popular people killed there are Paris Hilton, Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni.

French TV channel Arte showed this report in its Tracks program last February. The documentary follows the Anonymous movement against the Church of Scientology. It's unlikely this sort of program will ever be aired in countries where Scientology is recognized as a religion. In France it remains categorized as a sect cult — and thus [...]

Click to see larger image (Worth1000.com)
The French hate it when foreigners take over their companies but they're quite happy if it happens the other way round: Pernod buys Absolut vodka firm for $8.87 billion
France's Pernod Ricard has won an auction to buy Sweden's Vin & Spirit AB VSG.UL, the maker of Absolut vodka, in a [...]

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Via Times Online

French hunters go on warpath to stem invasion of wild boars
It is a national icon, immortalised on the heraldic crests of the aristocracy, the favourite dish of Asterix and Obelix, and the target of tens of thousands of hunters in the hills and forests of la France profonde for more than a thousand years. But [...]

The Department of Cultural & Social Geography of the Göttingen University (Germany) has a website filled with photographic impressions of East Asia and the Pacific. Here are two pictures from French Polynesia:

Rowers in the sunset of Moorea

Traditional Earth Oven – Bora Bora
I'm not sure I could live there, but it looks like an exciting holiday [...]

This weekend's links:
Furious electro-dance style sweeps France (Reuters)
France and Britain clash over Beijing Olympics (Times)
Sarkozy: The man who's made a mockery of France (Daily Mail)
Carla Bruni, a perfectly lovely predator (Times)
Purple teeth and headaches as Bordeaux 2007 tastings begin (TTC)
You can always get what you want (Carla Bruni profile, The Scotchman)
France ready to fly out [...]

On The World Of Kane: a large collection of clips from famous French sixties films, among which Alphaville (1965):

"Jean-Luc Godard’s homage to pop art and pulp fiction."
Hard boiled detective Lemmy Caution is sent to spy on Alpha 60, the giant computer complex which governs a monstrous city called Alphaville in Jean-Luc Godard’s surrealist urban nightmare.
Discover [...]

For sale at Amazon.com: Naughty French Maid. Four pieces: lace up front dress with attached apron, headpiece, choker and feather duster. Available from Xsmall to Xlarge, at $44.
Curious detail: they're sold in the category Office Products.

This beautifully typographed ad (click to see larger version) is part of a campaign for the grand opening of "Colette's Gardens". These gardens are in the south of France and dedicated to Colette, one of the most famous French female writers.
From Wikipedia:
Colette was the pen name of the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (January 28, 1873 [...]

Maya Barsony is a wild lady from a musical family (her father is 70s pop singer Jacques Higelin). Her first solo album Femme d'Exterieur is due in May of this year. The clip above is the first one from that album.
Maya is also a good Frogsmoker: on her MySpace site she likes to show [...]