Entertainment Briefs September 13, 2010
French filmmaker Claude Chabrol dies at 80
PARIS (AP) — French director Claude Chabrol, one of the founders of the New Wave movement whose films probed the latent malice beneath the placid surface of bourgeois life, died on Sunday. He was 80.
Christophe Girard, who is responsible for cultural matters at Paris City Hall, announced the death on his blog. Other City Hall officials confirmed that Chabrol passed away, but declined to provide any details, including the cause of death.
A prolific director, Chabrol made more than 70 films and TV productions during his more than half-century-long career. His first movie, 1958’s “Le Beau Serge” won him considerable critical acclaim and was widely considered a sort of manifesto for the New Wave, or “Nouvelle vague” movement — which reinvented the codes of filmmaking and revolutionized cinema starting in the late 1950s. The vastly influential movement also included directors like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.
Chabrol’s movies focused on the French bourgeoisie, lifting the facade of respectability to reveal the hypocrisy, violence and loathing simmering just below the surface. Often suspenseful, his work drew comparisons with that of Alfred Hitchcock.
President Nicolas Sarozy, speaking during his trip Sunday to the western Dordogne region, compared Chabrol to two giants of French letters, Rabelais and Balzac.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon called him a “great director, producer and screenwriter (who) was one of the grand figures of the ‘Nouvelle vague,’ which revolutionized the style and techniques of cinema by looking at real experience, true life, that which is indiscreet and subtle.”
“With the death of Claude Chabrol, French cinema has lost one of its maestros,” Fillon said in a statement.
Thierry Fremaux, who runs the Cannes Film Festival, told i-Tele news channel that Chabrol “had a much more classic style” than some of the other, more experimental New Wave filmmakers. “But in this classicism there was such an audacity, such freedom and erudition that I think — and history will tell — that his thrillers ... will remain something totally unique in French cinema.”
John Travolta dances Oprah into final season
CHICAGO - Oprah Winfrey isn't just walking onstage for the first show of her final season, she's dancing - with John Travolta.
The 25th and final season of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" starts airing Monday.
In recently released video of the first episode, the TV talk show host and the actor dance hand-in-hand through her stage doors to "Love Train" by the O'Jays.
Winfrey has been tightlipped about who would join her on the season premiere. Other celebrity guests and a musical performance have been hinted at.
On her 19th season premiere in 2004, Winfrey gave a car to the nearly 300 people in her studio audience. It was a $7 million giveaway during which she famously exclaimed, "You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car!"
- The Associated Press