Grégoire Colin Day

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‘Tall, lean, and possessing moody features, French actor Grégoire Colin has been acting in films and on the stage since he was 12. Acting goes back in his family for several generations (centuries, he said in an interview elsewhere.) His grandfather was part of a traveling theatre that brought entertainment to the villages. His father was a theatre director in Paris who also established an acting school Rennes and gave classes in Avignon. A big part of Colin’s childhood was spent in the theatre. He was watching plays by Beckett and Shakespeare when he was 8 or 9.

‘Although Colin found steady work in his native country for years, it was not until 1992 that audiences outside of France became aware of him. That year, he had the title role of a disturbed, enigmatic teenager in Agnieszka Holland’s Olivier, Olivier and gave an unnerving performance that caught the attention of international critics and art house audiences. In his twenties, he directed experimental films and wrote his first scenarios. He kept acting with independent auteurs (Rivette, Zonca, Jacquot, Breillat…).

‘Colin went on to excel in roles that demanded of him a sober, sometimes dark, complexity. In 1994, he starred as a serious young monk in another art house favorite, Milcho Manchevski’s Before the Rain, and that same year portrayed a teenager looking for love in the wrong places in U.S. Go Home, the first of his collaborations with director Claire Denis. He and Denis collaborated again, two years later, on the widely acclaimed Nénette et Boni, in which the actor starred as a lovelorn pizza maker; in 1999, he again stepped in front of Denis’ camera to play a young Foreign Legion recruit, in the military drama Beau Travail.

‘Colin did some of the strongest and most disturbing work of his career to date in Erick Zonca’s La Vie Rêvée des Anges (The Dreamlife of Angels, 1998), an internationally celebrated film in which he played a coolly monstrous club owner. After doing some lighter work in Jacques Rivette’s Sécret Défense, a comedy drama that cast him as a young man bent on killing his father, Colin stepped into period costume to portray a Jewish radical and poet living in pre-World War II Pairs in Disparus (1999).

‘Colin hasn’t made any movies in the United States to date, but he has said a dream of his is to work with U.S. directors. “I don’t know where to find any of the great American moviemakers, anyway,” he has been quoted as saying. “Where’s Abel Ferrara? Where’s David Lynch?” In 2008, he created his production company Tsilaosa Films. La baie du renard, his first short film, screened to great acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009.’ — collaged

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Grégoire Colin Fan Site
Grégoire Colin @ imdB
Grégoire Colin @ tumblr
Gregoire Colin’s DVDs @ Amazon
‘Crushing on Gregoire Colin’
‘Grégoire Colin, un acteur né sur les plateaux’
‘La tangente Grégoire Colin’
Video: ‘A fake penis’
Gregoire Colin’s films @ mubi

 

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Extras

Grégoire Colin, et vous, qu’avez-vous perdu?

Teaser: ‘Reflections’ w Hidetoshi Nishijima & Grégoire Colin

interview with Grégoire Colin

 

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Interview

 

When and how did you actually start making films with Claire Denis?

Our cooperation started about seventeen years ago in a usual way – through casting. But actually it wasn’t an ordinary casting because Denis had the actors read an extract from Seneca and then dance. It was an interesting experience to work with such a text, and then simply just dance and feel how you are being observed.

How did this long-term cooperation influence you?

I met Claire Denis for the first time when I was eighteen. I remember that the first thing I told her was that I didn’t want to act any more. I started acting when I was very little, when I was twelve. I worked on several movies that made me quite disappointed. I wanted to focus more on music and writing. And I wanted to work on my own film, because that time I was just shooting a short experimental movie. But Denis’s approach was completely different. When we were first cooperating on US Go Home, she was forcing me to improvise because that’s what her lifestyle was. And in this way I got the feeling, that as an actor, I can work creatively on something too. Before that, I had been feeling more like a robot, I hadn’t felt anything while I was acting. In her directing, she let herself be influenced by the actor a lot, by his position and motions. Seldom did she decide in advance the width or angle of the shot. That was one of the reasons that it was hard for me to cooperate with a director because they would always have everything prepared in advance.

You acted in films of many different famous and extraordinary directors. How did they influence you in your own directing?

For example, recently I was working with director Naomi Kawase (on a film called Nanayomachi – editor’s note) and I was shocked by her style of work because I’d never experienced anything like that before. But I learned a bit from everyone, of course. It’s like looking into different kitchens and then choosing what is suitable for you from each recipe. In the end you don’t even know which particular influence is taken from where.

In Anja Salomonowitz’s Spanien, you were casted as the director’s first choice but above all as an actor with a strong physical presence and yet the film turned turned into a linguistic adventure.

Yes, that’s true. For an actor it is naturally always an advantage to be the first choice. Anja really wanted me to be in her film, it’s hard to be blasé about that. For me the language challenge was my main priority. As to the other aspects of the role, there was a subtle almost erotic element involved. It has to do with lines, bodies, and movements that you are either aware of or not. And when you point the camera at someone, you have to want to film that person. It is a kind of loving gesture. Sometimes you get to know someone through his or her films and then the real encounter is disappointing. I hope it wasn’t too disappointing with me. In my work I usually take my point of departure from movement: I envision how I might be in the given situation. It has to do with the interaction between a way of looking at things of speaking and moving so that the viewer can believe in the character. This subtle alchemy is absolutely necessary when trying to embody a character. If it works, all is fine. I always try not to resort to the same old mechanisms. It is extremely tempting if something worked well before and you suddenly find yourself confronted with a similar situation. When an actor experiences certain emotions, repetition is a natural response. To me it’s more interesting to constantly invent something new, to virtually put myself into a different body every time.

Could you tell us something about the short film you directed Fox Bay?

Working on Fox Bay was quite difficult for me because several years before that I had been working on feature films with very strongly directed structures. This short film was a bit different, and I shot it in a way as a compulsory pre-step before the eventual shooting of a feature-length film. At the same time I used a short form so that I could make a more emotionally based story which probably wouldn’t be possible with a longer film. The story itself came to me very quickly. I know Pier Paolo Pasolini’s films and books, and it’s probably good that I didn’t read one of his short stories in the book Stories from the City of God until after the shooting. Otherwise, I would have adapted that one probably. I found many similar points in it, even in the story structure.

 

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21 of Grégoire Colin’s 61 roles

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Agnieszka Holland Olivier, Olivier (1992)
‘A haunting, sometimes harrowing film about the mystery of family, it begins as a study of an unstable French provincial mother who so dotes on her 9-year-old son, Olivier, that it drives her husband into a rage. Then one day little Olivier rides off on his bicycle to take lunch with his ailing grandmother. He never returns. The ramifications are devastating… Six years later the detective on the case picks up a 15 years old hustler in Paris. Could he be Olivier? He seems to know things only Olivier could know. He returns to the country house and his provocative, enigmatic presence puts the family through some radical convulsions… The mystery is eventually solved, but Holland leaves many other riddles unresolved at the heart of this dysfunctional-family romance.’ — nzff.co.nz

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Excerpt

 

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Milcho Manchevski Before the Rain (1994)
‘A strange, confusing, and confident picture from the Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski. He has the sensibility of someone who has seen quite enough to rid him of political illusion; watching the film, you’d never guess that he’s only thirty-five. The first and third parts are set in Macedonia, where a young monk (Gregoire Colin) harbors a refugee (Labina Mitevska) from the local Albanian minority. His uncle, the chunky and fearless Aleksandar (Rade Serbedzija), has come home to get some peace. Not a chance: this is a place where villages are torn in two. The middle section, a scrap of a love affair set in London, is less successful, although even here the editing is so beautifully paced that Manchevski makes you sense fault lines running all over the world. He sees through hope and bigotry alike, and even when his complex rotary narrative makes no logical sense it never stops making emotional sense. In Macedonian.’ — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

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The first 10 minutes

 

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Patrice Chéreau La Reine Margot (1994)
‘Patrice Chéreau’s 1994 film La Reine Margot paints a vivid canvas of political intolerance and intrigue framed as a romance between Marguerite de Valois (Isabelle Adjani) and her Protestant lover La Môle (Vincent Perez). The film is based on Alexandre Dumas’s historical novel and is renowned for its eroticized and violent depiction of the French national past, especially the treatment of the 1572 St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of French Protestants at the film’s outset. The film avoids avoids the vacuity of so many big-screen historical epics, and if anything makes exactly the opposite mistake of expecting extensive historical knowledge from its viewers. Spectacular performances include Virna Lisi as Catherine, Jean-Hughes Anglade as the wimpy King Charles IX, Gregoire Colin, and Isabelle Adjani, one of the more remarkable actresses of her generation, who does a fine job of portraying Margot.’ — collaged

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Pierre Boutron Fiesta (1995)
‘The film is set in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Gregoire Colin plays the seventeen year old son of a senior Fascist Officer who is taken out of school in France to `volunteer’ for the cause. In order to toughen him up for the fron,t he is sent to work for a gay martinet Major played superbly by Jean-Loius Trintignant. He lives for war and his `luxuries’ but has grown bored self deprecating and cynical as the years have ebbed away. Colin is sent to work and very quickly becomes efficient. There is a non love `love interest’ in the form of some British aristo, who does seem to be there for no particular reason, except I felt to remind us that Brits fought on both sides not just for the Republicans.’ — Tommy D

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Pascal Aubier Le Fils de Gascogne (1995)
‘In this romantic comedy, lanky tour guide Harvey (Gregoire Colin) is told by a stranger that he strongly resembles legendary 1960s French new wave filmmaker Gascogne; before long, he’s assumed to be Gascogne’s son. Harvey quickly becomes the toast of Paris, hobnobbing with directors and Gascogne groupies. But his newfound “fame” may derail his relationship with Dinara (Dinara Droukarova), the film-buff interpreter on the tour. The plot revolves around showbiz, artists and showbiz, and disorder. Its comic aspect comes from a comedy of errors. In terms of style, it is a film in a film. In approach, it is realistic. Le fils de Gascogne is set, at least in part, in a restaurant. It is located in Paris. It takes place in the 1990s.’ — collaged

The first 9 minutes

 

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Claire Denis Nénette et Boni (1996)
‘Nenette et Boni takes place in Marseilles but as the film progresses, that French seaport town looks more like Metaphor City. Winner of the 1996 Locarno Film Festival Best Film award, this movie is nothing if not original: though its dysfunctional family theme has been dramatized in thousands of narratives, from Agamemnon, Medea and Lysistrata through Hamlet and The Myth of Fingerprints, director Claire Denis has forsaken narrative structure for a particularly elliptical method of telling her story. Particularly inviting is her way of letting her principal character slip into fantasies and dream sequences without giving the audience much of a clue as to which is reality and which is the illusion. But all this structural technique takes a back seat to the film’s hub, which is the particular bond felt between the title characters, who are brother and sister. Cinematographer Agnes Godard’s camera focuses most of the time on 18-year-old Boni (Gregoire Colin).’ — Harvey Karten, imdB

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Erick Zonca The Dreamlife of Angels (1998)
‘This is an exquisite first feature from director Zonca. Isa (Bouchez) is an effervescent 20-year-old backpacker living on her wits, until she meets feisty Marie (Regnier) in a clothing sweatshop while she’s staying at a small town in Northern France. They move in together, sharing the house of a family recently traumatised by a car accident – the mother is dead and her daughter is in hospital in a coma. Although small in scale, The Dream Life Of Angels is a touching, beautifully constructed tale. Bouchez is completely adorable and a real pleasure to watch as the peerless foil to Regnier’s more awkward, screwed-up performance (they shared the female performance prize at Cannes). Gregoire Colin is, as usual, mesmerizing and brilliant as the seductive club owner who devastates the friend’s lives.’ — totalfilm.com

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Jacques Rivette Secret Défense (1997)
‘When faced with a murder mystery, would you be clever and cool like they are in the movies? Sylvie (Sandrine Bonnaire) is a serious woman. She lives alone, works too hard, can’t handle relationships and doesn’t speak to her mother – or rather does, when she has to, but it’s not something she enjoys. She’s a cancer research scientist, which means she wears a white coat and messes with test tubes. She never smiles, never has fun and when a persistant ex-boyfriend gives her flowers or asks her out, she doesn’t exactly kick him in the crotch but finds ways of avoiding the “oui” word. Into this super-controlled world bursts her younger brother (Gregoire Colin), claiming he has proof that their father’s business partner, a man called Walser (Jerzy Radziwilowicz), murdered him five years ago. Rivette’s dedication to the reality of the moment, always from Sylvie’s viewpoint, is uncompromising. There are twists to the story that appear more as accidents than plot structured surprises. Colin has an intensity that is powerful and compelling.’ — iofilm.co.uk

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Claire Denis Beau travail (1999)
‘In this military drama, a military man finds his position of prominence questioned when a new recruit wins the commander’s favor. Galoup (Denis Lavant) is an officer at a French Foreign Legion outpost in the Gulf of Dijbouti, where he enjoys a close relationship with the Commanding Officer (Michel Subor) and works with a team of fit young men who work hard all day and play hard all night. When Sentain (Gregoire Colin), a new recruit, joins the troops, Galoup believes that it upsets the delicate balance between the C.O. and the other men. Sentain is well-liked by his comrades for his good humor and selfless nature, and his virtues make him the C.O.’s new favorite. Galoup is jealous of the attention Sentain receives, and he devises a plan to discredit Sentain in the eyes of the other men and have him drummed out of the service. Galoup’s plot is found out, however, and Galoup is stripped of his rank and sent home. Beau Travail was loosely based on Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville, though disco dancing did not figure quite as prominently in Melville’s novella.’ — Rovi

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Ending credits

 

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Catherine Breillat Sex Is Comedy (2001)
‘Jeanne (Anne Parillaud of La Femme Nikita), a director, is making a movie on the French Atlantic coast about young lovers in the primal heat of summer love. The problems are many: The weather’s freezing and wet, which makes nude scenes on the beach less than sexy or romantic for cast and crew. There’s zero chemistry between the lovers. In fact, the unnamed performers (Gregoire Colin and Roxane Mesquida) seem to hate each other. Sex Is Comedy gets a lighter idea across: that sex, particularly the movie kind, can be anything but erotic. There are occasions when it’s unclear, at least to me, whether or not Jeanne is meant to be an uncompromising, dedicated artist with whom we should empathize or an intellectually pretentious figure. Perhaps she’s meant to be a little of both. If you want to see Breillat’s funniest, most accessible movie, this is the one to watch.’ — The Washington Post

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Olias Barco Snowboarder (2003)
‘Talented young snowboarder Gaspard (Nicolas Duvauchelle), works in retired athlete Beshop’s (Jean-Pierre Ecoffey) ski shop in Grenoble while waiting for his big break. Gaspard’s idol, aging champion snowboarder Josh (Gregoire Colin), lures him to ritzy Gstaad, Switzerland. Little does Gaspard suspect that Josh’s largesse — which includes his boarding school jailbait g.f. Ethel (Juliette Goudot) — is not innocent. A dorky Alps-set soap opera with thrilling second-unit photography, Snowboarder has talk-back-to-the-screen potential. Handsome leads — including arthouse heartthrob Gregoire Colin with the least flattering haircut this side of Travis Bickle on a rampage — keep the cheesy proceedings watchable.’ — Variety

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Claire Denis L’Intrus (2008)
‘Claire Denis’s magnificent enigma of a film, The Intruder, explores the troubled soul of Louis Trebor (Michel Subor), a brooding loner with a heart condition who lives with two large white dogs in a forest near the French-Swiss border. As this rugged, ailing 68-year-old outdoorsman travels halfway around the world to begin a new life, his past, present and future, real and imagined, blend into a visually spellbinding depiction of a selfish sensualist’s quest for a longer life with a redemptive final chapter. Ms. Denis, a fearless aesthetic adventurer who lived in Africa until she was 14, has always been fascinated by stories and images of cultural imposition, exile, alienation and the contemplation of the Other. She is also one of the world’s most sensual filmmakers. Working with her brilliant cinematographer Agnès Godard, she spills onto the screen images of man and nature with an attunement to light, shadow, color, texture and mood that approaches the surreal.’ — Venice Film Festival

Trailer

Excerpt: ‘L’Intrus’ w/ Tindersticks playing the score live

 

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Raúl Ruiz Le Domaine perdu (2005)
‘One of Ruiz’ least-known and best movies, a complex mixture of historical detail (WW2, Chilean military coup), autobiographical nostalgia (30’s in Chile), fantasy (characters emerge from a classic French novel), a meditation on time and old age, and much more besides. In fact, if there is one criticism of the film, it is that insufficient time is allowed for all these elements to develop and cohere. I’ve read some reviews which judge Ruiz’ film to be “technically excellent” but at the same time “cold and distant”. While this may be true for many of Ruiz’ works, I don’t find it so for Le Domaine Perdu, and of all his films I think that this is the most emotionally involving, especially the devastating final section. French actor Gregoire Colin is particularly powerful in a slightly less than central but unforgettable performance.’ — freaky flicks.org

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Martin Cognito Exes (2006)
‘A serial killer is at work in Paris. His first victim is a bookseller, found dead in her cellar. Other murders follow in quick succession. The killings are not as random as they first appear. A writer is the first to realise that they are following, to the letter, the pattern of a book she has written. Fearing that her own life may be in danger, she goes to the police and reveals a terrible secret. But things are not quite what they seem. The first “traditional” feature by Martin Cognito, known for his arthouse porn movies Virginie, Claudine and Axelle, Exes’ cast includes Gregoire Colin, Pierre-Loup Rajot, and Tom Novembre.’ — unifrance.org

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The making of ‘Exes’

 

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Micha Wald In The Arms of My Enemy (2007)
‘In this homoerotic epic adventure of vengeance, betrayal and love set in 1856, four young men (two pairs of brothers) cross paths in the savage wilderness of Eastern Europe. The handsome, charismatic Jakub (Adrien Jolivet) and his fragile younger brother Vladimir (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet) are swimming in a river one day, when the powerful and clever Roman (Gregoire Colin) and his nimble, younger brother Elias (Francois-Rene Dupont) sneak up and steal their horses. The deadly aftermath leads to a merciless manhunt and a most unexpected conclusion. The cinematography by Jean-Paul de Zaetijd is superb and the haunting musical score by Jóhann Jóhannsson, Jeff Mercelis and Stephan Micus is rich in capturing the harmonies of the music of the period and the location. In all, this is a visually stunning film and a story that is subtle and touching and impressively sophisticated in the manner in which it is told.’ — collaged

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Claire Denis 35 rhums (2009)
‘Claire Denis’ cinema of elision typically works around an event, or an issue, to best conjure a concept or a tone or a metaphor or a theme or, even, an affect. In her newest narrative film, 35 Rhums, Denis eases this strategy. If L’Intrus (2004) chugged its figure of hurt across the globe and Vers Mathilde (2005) burrowed into itself, 35 Rhums glides through its modest familial spaces. We might say 35 Rhums retains the “signature” Denis style, albeit more streamlined than its immediate predecessors, as all her movies shot in Paris feature more “story” than her excursions to the world’s neglected corners or her documentaries. Predicated on trajectories (to say passage and transportation), 35 Rhums is directional but diversionary; a routine consistently interrupted. Like any good celebration—of life, of moments, of the body, of love—its leisure invites affection. As with all Denis films, it reminds us that we need not know nor express everything to truly feel something.’ — mubi

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Claire Denis Les salauds (2013)
‘Claire Denis has created a menacing and atmospheric neo-noir, as headspinning in its way as The Big Sleep. It isn’t there to be watched and understood in the conventional sense, but experienced or inhaled. Denis has once again commissioned a pulsing original score by Tindersticks that enhances the disquieting mood. Vincent Lindon, a star in the old school of charismatic French masculinity, plays Marco. He is a sea-captain who returns to France when he hears his sister is in trouble. Her husband has committed suicide, driven to despair by debt repayments to a shadowy businessman (Michel Subor) – and also, apparently, by allowing this man to abuse his teenage daughter (Lola Creton) in lieu of cash. So for revenge, Marco sets out to seduce the man’s mistress Raphaelle (Chiara Mastroianni) and mother of his infant son. In the course of this film’s chaotically disordered narrative structure, a terrible revenge appears also to be planned against this little boy, but who carries it out is left a mystery up to the final credits and beyond. It is macabre and dreamlike; the deadpan preposterousness is tricky to negotiate, but leaves behind an oily residue of unease when you have awoken from the nightmare.’ — The Guardian

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Arielle Dombasle Opium (2013)
‘Cutting back and forth between Cocteau — played by Claire Denis regular Gregoire Colin, the film’s sole redeeming asset — whimpering at a seaside detox clinic, his hazy memories of a short but passionate fling with novelist/boy toy Raymond Radiguet (Samuel Mercer, who looks like he was cast out of an A.P.C. catalog, with just about as much range), and musical numbers with cardboard costumes inspired by Cocteau’s own artwork, the film has a free-for-all flair that could perhaps be fun if it weren’t so humorless and shoddily assembled. One howler of a sequence has Radiguet – whose scandalous novel, The Devil in the Flesh, was adapted to the screen by Claude Autant-Lara in 1947 — wandering onto a merry-go-round, where somebody shoves a waffle in his face, blowing powdered sugar up his nose. He then enters a dreamscape where an oracle (Dombasle) adorned in funeral garb and spiral breastplates leads a pack of children dressed in tiger costumes through a low-rent version of Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast decor.’ — Jordan Mintzer

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Agnès B. Je m’appelle Hmmm… (2013)
‘Agnes B’s directorial debut “Je m’appelle hmmm…” will likely be a shock to fans of her elegant, easy-going fashion sensibility. “It’s not about fashion at all,” she joked at London’s French Film Festival last week, as the film opened in her native France. In fact the subject matter is as gritty as it gets. Of course, while this is her first feature, the French polymath is hardly a newbie to film. Her credits include creating the suits for “Reservoir Dogs,” co-producing Harmony Korine’s “Mister Lonely,” and helping to fund the radical stars of French film like Gaspar Noe and Claire Denis. “Je m’appelle hmmm…” reveals her flair for at times visually gorgeous storytelling, as well as experimental leanings.’ — W Magazine

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Mathieu Amalric Barbara (2017)
‘It’s hard to find a singer outside of France to compare to Barbara: In her heyday, from the 1960s up until her premature death in 1997, she was a performer whose songs uncannily put words to the deeply personal emotional states of her listeners. Her diction was perfect, the clarity of her voice pure, tender, almost fragile, and yet absolutely sure of itself. She would sing of love found or broken, of childhood memories, death, even of brotherhood. It’s claimed her hit “Göttingen” was fundamental in putting to bed post-war French-German tensions. In the 1980s, she boldly worked to counter the stigma of AIDS, and her song “Sid’amour à mort” became a sort of anthem for activists. Her slight frame invariably dressed in black, matching heavily made-up eyes boldly set in her pale, aquiline face, Barbara was adored by her fans and many who worked with her. Just this year Gérard Depardieu, a one-time collaborator who waxes lyrical about their friendship, has been on-stage performing his homage, “Depardieu chante Barbara.”’ — Variety

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Elia Suleiman It Must Be Heaven (2019)
‘Elia Suleiman is in every scene of “It Must Be Heaven,” but he only speaks four words. The writer-director-star finds himself in a New York taxi cab in the midst of a globe-trotting journey after fleeing his drab routine back home. Asked where he comes from, he replies, “Nazareth,” then clarifies: “I am Palestinian.” And that’s pretty much all you need to know. For the rest of the movie, Suleiman’s deadpan stare says it all, as the slapstick auteur’s latest installment in his ongoing chronicle of Palestinian identity settles into his usual playful routine. Once again, the Chaplinesque Suleiman drifts through an ambivalent world, and his solemn expression does the bulk of the talking.’ — Indiewire

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, The fox one seemed to be winner, and I too am tempted. Slightly late HB to the mighty Godard! ** Bill, Hi. Interesting that the fox popped so much. And it’s true when I spotted it in my searching, I grabbed it lickety-split. Ah, I see, about the tech issue. Thank you for sharing the diagnosis. I hope an improved alternate route pops. Hoping your schedule lets you dip into that festival. It does sound sirenic. ** Sypha, Hi. I too am quite high on the last books buche. I think that might one of my purchases and meals. ** Kat, Hi, Kat! Very cool. How’s it going? It’s, duh, a big fave day of mine too, and I actually have crosstown access, which must add to the personal excitement. I’m doing pretty okay. The novel: it’s still in the stressful phase of finding its eventual publisher. So nothing to report apart from anxiousness and digit crossing. As soon as it lands somewhere and has a birthplace, I’ll share my hopeful joy. Thank you for asking. What’s going on with you? ** _Black_Acrylic, It is! Yes, the teapot. That’s one of the ones that I feel like I need to go peak at it in person before I gain sufficient confidence in it, which I will do. But yeah. ** jonathan, Hey, J! Very awesome to see you here! Lenôtre stopped getting artists and designers to do their buches several years ago, and it’s never been the same, but, at the same time, their buches do look more actually edible now in a way. I definitely want to go check out the orchids one in the flesh. The photo and towering, impractical build holds much promise. Tea is pretty big amongst buche ingredients this year, yeah. It’s the new matcha. Yes, do sort out a way to get back here to the big P! It’s been way, way too long. Realy enjoying being a looky-loo on all the work and projects you’ve been up to thanks to social media and saying ‘drat’ a lot under my breath that I couldn’t VR my way into their folds. ** Steve Erickson, I have not seen ‘Portrait of a Lady On Fire’, no. Good? Oh, just to tie up a not very important loose end: ‘The Irishman’ is in fact being ‘released’ here on Netflix, or rather has been released. No theater showings. I’m among those who saw the title ‘Little Joe’ at a glance and thought it was about Mr. Dallesandro. Everyone, Here’s Mr. Erickson’s review of Jessica Hausner’s LITTLE JOE. ** Nick Toti, Hi, Nick! Good to see ya. Yes, I think I can speak on behalf of my blog and say that it would be very happy to host that juicy post. And add that it’s grateful for your offer. And tell you that it awaits said post with bells on. Thanks, man! ** sleepyj, Hi. Oh, whoa, Sierra Madre. I grew up a ten minute bike ride from Sierra Madre’s main drag in the upper edges of neighboring Arcadia, and I cycled up there all the time to hang out and so on, and my high school friends and I used to take acid on the grounds of that monastery in the hills of Sierra Madre, if you know where that is, so I know that quaint place well. And I’m even happy and rather amazed to hear it’s still quaint. Crazy. Are you from there originally, or … ? Xmas song. Among the traditional ones … hm, I might embarrassingly have to go for ‘Little Drummer Boy’, I think due to some forgotten but still resonating memory or other that has attached to it for some reason. Beyond the traditional bunch, my favorite is ‘Father Sgt. Christmas Card’ by Guided by Voices. This. And what’s yours? Pony up please. ** Okay, and off we go. Today the blog becomes a career overview kind of thing regarding the cool French actor Grégoire Colin, probably best known outside of France as being the regular, go-to actor in many of Claire Denis’s films. Give him your kind attention if you will. See you tomorrow.