2012 French Presidential Elections

Recently, the preliminary rounds of the French Presidential elections were held. Known as the "Premier Tour," it entails a beginning election to determine the two final candidates to run for final office. In the case of a majority vote, the candidate will take office and the presidential race will then end. Before the Premier Tour occurred, there were some polls taken and the candidates at the top were François Hollande for the Socialist Party, current president Nicolas Sarkozy running in the Union for a Popular Movement, Marine Le Pen running in the National Front, Jean-Luc Mélenchon running in the Left Front, and François Bayrou for the Democratic Movement.

François Hollande is really pushing from a financial standpoint by raising taxes on the wealthy, banks, and large businesses, creating over 60,000 teaching jobs, and dropping the retirement age by two years. The current president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been telling the public about this efforts in an economic standpoint. He wants to balance France's current budgets and create stability. Marine Le Pen wants to focus on the French economy as well, specifically agriculture and production, taxation, energy, and transport. Jean-Luc Mélenchon wants the public to focus on the crisis of market capitalism, which is a government based on a supply and demand basis. Finally, François Bayrou has many ideas including efforts to safeguard the credibility of the political process, personal freedom, and free software.


If you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_2012, you will see that François Hollande is beating Nicolas Sarkozy by about 1.5%, but it is predicted that Sarkozy is barely squeezing by in the elections in votes and has a chance to reagin office.

Both candidates have promising ideas for the future of France and can bring many positive changes to the table. François Hollande is focusing on the financial problems in the France. I think his path leads to more jobs and revenue for the government, but may get the country in trouble when it comes to foreign trade and their debt. With Nicolas Sarkozy, he is also pinpointing the finances of France, but is expanding his efforts to the economy. This plan also encircles foreign trade and mass production, which might come in handy when he time comes. The country doesn't seem to be crumbling as of right now, so Sarkozy is a fine candiate, but Hollande might bring new ideas, changing things for the better.
                               

Jean de Florette

In class today, we finished the movie Jean de Florette. The movie takes place in Provence, France and involves two families and the land one of them owns. It starts out with character, Galinette, coming home from World War I to his uncle Cesar, who has the nickname Papet. Soon, Galinette shows Papet his passion for flowers and he want to make a living on them. Flowers need good land and water and Papet's land is not sufficient. Fortunately, their neighbors' property has a spring which would be a huge plus. Papet and Galinette go over to the property and to negotiate, which was a failure, and the neighbor eventually dies by falling on a rock. Eager to get the property, Galinette and Papet are heartbroken to see a relative of the neighbor, Jean and his family, move into the home. Unfortunately, Jean has a hum on his back. Galinette and Papet know that there is a spring on the property, so they block it. Jean, Aimee, and Manon, Jean's wife and child, live happily on the property. Jean then buys supplies for rabbit breeding and for farming, leaving him and his family with next to no money. All of Jean's aspirations on the property fail miserably because the nearest water source is one mile away, even though there is one on his property and he doesn't even know it! In the middle of the drought that France is having, Jean decides to dig a well, but dies from a dynamite accident. After that, Galinette and Papet buy the property and unclog the well. Manon, suffering without her father, find them unclogging it and the movie ends. Overall, the movie was very good. I enjoyed the movie the minute Mr. Ebiner pressed play. The acting in the movie was superb and therefore, I could really put myself into all the character's shoes. I would reate this movie an eight and one half out of ten.

The Dinner Game

There are many movies that are originally French and are created into American hits. A prime example would be The Dinner Game, a story about a funny man who makes a wealthy married man have a terrible night. Another example would be the "Adventures of Tin Tin," comic series. It recently was made into an animated movie and won a Golden Globe or Best Animation. In all, there have been over 80 movies that were originally French and were made into American pictures. On the other hand, there have been American movies made into French ones. One includes The Beat that My Heart Skipped, that was first called Fingers in the United States.

The Dinner Game

Today in class, we finished the French movie The Dinner Game. Basically, it is the same plot as the American movie Dinner for Schmucks, but The Dinner Game was the original. The basic plot of the story is that there is a group of wealthy men who have a dinner every week and they each bring a total idiot and they make fun of them. Pierre Brochant meets a man by the name of Francois Pignon, who builds various monuments out of matches. Pierre gets in a fight with his wife about the dinner and that he shouldn't do it, and she leaves him. Following this spat, Francois enters the apartment on invitation and tries to fix the situation. He calls various people to help Pierre and seems to make everything worse. The Story comes out to be very entertaining and funny.

Au Revior les Enfants

The movie that we watched in class called Au Revior les Enfants proved to be very interesting and eye-catching. Eventhought we could only watch the first half, I feel as thought I know what is going to happen. So far, we have seen the lives of children living at an all boys borarding school in France. The main character Julien Quentin, goes back to school at Christmas time and meets a new student, Louis Bonnet, who we later find out is Jewish and his name is really Louis Kippelstein. At this point in the story, it is 1943, a time when Hitler was in his prime and was prosecuting Jews. Our time ended when Louis and Julien were found on the street in the woods when they got lost while playing caputre the flag. They were brought back to the school safely, and Louis wasn't accused of being a Jew, yet. So far, I think that the movie is fantastic. It has kept me enthused and envolved throughtout the story and I am really looking forward to seeing how this story ends.

Au Revior les Enfants

Au Revior les Enfants, is based on a true story during the time of Hitler and the prosecution of Jews. Specificially, this story takes place in 1943, which marks the start of Hitler's rage. This story is told through the eyes Julien Quentin, a small French boy going to a boarding school near Fontainebleau, France. In the real history behind this movie, the director, Louis Malle, was the little boy Julien Quentin, living through this terrible time. As the story progresses, we meet a very bright child by the name of Jean Bonnet, who we later find out is hiding from the Gestapo because he is Jewish and his real name is Kippelstein, not Bonnet. Later, the Gestapo search the school under suspicion, find Louis along with two other students to be Jewish and an anti-Nazi priest, and take the children to Aushwitz, a concentration camp in Poland where they died shortly after in a gas chamber. The priest, however was taken to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration where he died after being liberated.

Les Choristes

Les Choristes, what a fantastic movie! If you haven't seen it, watch it, soon. Basically, this French movie is about a year-round boarding school, called Fond de l’étang (bottom of the pond) for troublemaking boys and the ups and downs of one specific year. We are introduced to some characters in the first part of the movie, including Mr. Rachin, the bitter headmaster, Mr. Maxence, the janitor, and Mr. or Clement Mathieu. Soon we find that there are some trouble makers, some good students, and some thieves.


The story takes a strange turn when Mr. Mathieu creates a choir with these adolescents and strangely enough, a brilliant soloist emerges. The school of about forty children become extremely enthused with the choir and the rest of the story is very heart-warming and it is fill of twists and turns. Overall, I would give this movie a nine out of ten because it always had be watching, even thought it was in French, which is very surprising.