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Jean Dujardin (Best Actor) did it. Michel Hazanavicius (Best Director) did it. And all the crew who worked on the film can be proud (Best Costume Design, Mark Bridges; Best Original Score, Ludovic Bource), they did it too! “The Artist” is the first silent and foreign film that has won the Oscar for Best Picture in more than 80 years… And Dujardin is the first Frenchman ever to win the Oscar for best actor. Far from me the idea of being chauvinistic but at least we can enjoy this great success! Roger Ebert even titled his article “The Artist” and “Hugo”: A very French Oscars (he could have also mentioned Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris”), adding ‘It was like an episode from “The Twilight Zone.”‘. Lou Lumenick was being witty when he tweeted: ‘How THE ARTIST won Best Picture — pretty much by default’. On his article published on the New York Post,…⇒ READ MORE

Sudan’s ongoing military campaign in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states is a reality but not one you can see. One you guess from satellite imagery, one you read from witnesses’ stories. Now we have something more, a report by Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Kristof has just reported from Yida, South Sudan. Some interesting points from his article, full version here. “Bombings, ground attacks and sexual violence — part of Sudan’s scorched-earth counterinsurgency strategy — have driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in South Kordofan” “While the Sudanese government is trying to suppress an armed rebellion in the Nuba Mountains, it is civilians who bear the brunt of the suffering” “The Sudanese government bombed this refugee camp in November, and, just a week ago, it bombed the nearby town of Jau, in South Sudan” “Unless outside countries…⇒ READ MORE

Every once in a while, I read articles about artists who don’t make their own work. The most recent one was published last month on BBC website: ‘Hockney takes a swipe at Hirst technique’. Hockney, 74, has a poster advertising his new exhibition (David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, opened at the Royal Academy in January) which reads: “All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally“. Asked in a Radio Times interview if he was having a dig at Hirst, Hockney said: “It’s a little insulting to craftsmen, skilful craftsmen.” According to this article, Hirst has previously defended using assistants to complete his paintings. He employs up to 100 people in a “factory” that works as a production line for his spot paintings and completes the painstaking work on installations like his diamond-studded skulls. Speaking to Time Out in 2006, Hirst likened himself to an architect running a practice, rather…⇒ READ MORE

Last month, David Galbraith updated his article published in July 2010, and in which he was investigating the location where the web was invented: “One of the more interesting consequences of the details below, that hasn’t been picked up anywhere, is that technically the web was invented in France, not Switzerland”. Great news but Galbraith adds: “The Franco-Swiss border runs through the CERN campus and building 31 is literally just a few feet into France. However, there is no explicit border within CERN and the main entrance is in Switzerland, so the situation of which country it was invented in is actually quite a tricky one“. Not such great news after all, but I like the way Galbraith concludes, very diplomatically: “So although, strictly speaking, France is the birthplace of the web it would be fair to say that it happened in building 31 at CERN but not in any particular country! How…⇒ READ MORE

Voilà une soirée qui m’intéressait beaucoup mais à laquelle je ne pourrais malheureusement pas me rendre (une fois n’est pas coutume…). Mais cela reste un événement Steampunk de premier ordre je trouve, et comme vient de le rappeler l’excellent French Steampunk sur Twitter (@frenchsteampunk), c’est donc ce soir que The Maxi Monster Music Show se produira sur la scène du Palace. Présentation de ce show : Orchestre de phénomènes de foire, le Maxi Monster Music Show plante le décor d’un surprenant cabaret clandestin librement inspiré du cirque d’antan et du cinéma burlesque. Dans l’ambiance feutrée d’une roulotte grinçante, l’affolante Poupée Barbue, maîtresse de cérémonie au charme vénéneux, exhibe tour a tour ses curieux complices : la Femme Tronc, l’Homme Fort, l’étoile filée du Bolchoï, l’être aux deux visages, l’Ange Noir et le Fakir insomniaque. Singulière et attachante, cette famille de freaks vous embarquera dans un concert road-movie horriblement drôle et bouillonnant d’inventions. Un…⇒ READ MORE