The cultural choices of the “Point”: Giant Cluedo or delirious vaudeville?


Sif you haven’t seen At loggerheads by Rian Johnson, released in 2019 and featuring the extraordinary Daniel Craig in the role of Benoît Blanc, “best detective in the world”, go for it. The man, surrounded by a 5-star cast (Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis…), there solved a murder in an English mansion, in a delicious atmosphere worthy of AGatha Christie. And, if you are part of his cohort of fans, do not neglect this sequel, which marks the return of the great Benoît Blanc to business.

The film takes place in full first containment. A handful of happy few, including a masculinist pseudo-influencer, a wanabee senator and an ex-model known for her racist outings, receive an unusual invitation sent by their very wealthy friend Miles Bron, a tech genius quite clearly evoking the character ofElon Musk. To make them forget the Covid, he concocted a murder party a weekend on his private island off the coast of Greece. Except that the “false murder” turns, of course, into the real massacre. And, among all the guests, each has a good reason to kill… Funny, grating, pop and intelligent, this giant Cluedo has everything to become cult.

Glass Onion: a story at loggerheadson Netflix.

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Barking with Wegman

“Who loves me loves my dog”, it is said, Henry IV would have exclaimed to himself one day, and there is no doubt that William Wegman would have approved of the royal adage. Wegman? If you don’t know his name, you know nothing about the shots of this great photographer born in 1942 where dogs reign in deeply human, dignified and comical attitudes at the same time.

To the gallery George-Philippe and Nathalie Vallois, 33 and 36 rue de Seine in Paris, the first exhibitionn monographeu of the artist, designed by Martin Bethenod, invites you to discover in 60 pieces, made between 1970 and 2022, the fascinating journey of the man who considered his work as a “shared playful activity”. First with his animal muse, a Weimaraner named Man Ray who had with his master the honors of saturday night live by David Letterman, but also with the viewers of this deceptively simple work, of which Bethenod reveals to us here little-known parts, revealed in particular by a rather biting painting.

“William Wegman, Conceptual Agility”, until January 28, Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, Paris 6e.

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Rock ‘n roller with Iggy Pop

The year got off to a strong start with the release of the very rock’n’roll twentieth album by the iguana. At 75, the Michigan native still has this “thirst for life”… Surrounded by the cream of rock musicians: Chad Smith and Josh Klinghoffer (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Duff McKagan (Guns n’ Roses), Travis Barker (Blink-182), Stone Gossard (Pearl Jam), the late Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters), Eric Avery and Chris Chaney (Jane’s Addiction), and Dave Navarro (Jane’s Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers)… survivors of the genre! But these punk grandpas, who rose to fame in the 1980s (ok, they’re not that old but we live fast and we die young in rock music), prove to us that they haven’t gathered dust.

Every Loser (released January 6 via Gold Tooth Records-Atlantic Records)

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Go live with Feydeau

Do not rely on the officially displayed “full” for Flea in the ear on the website of the Comédie-Française. This revival of Lilo Baur’s backfiring staging, unveiled for the first time in the Richelieu room in 2019, is being played until March 15, 2023, and places, we are assured, are freeing up every day. But the show, frankly, is unmissable! In the very pop setting of a mountain chalet from the 1960s, from which we would see a Louis de Funes playing Oscar or Hibernatus, the Frenchman’s troupe gives a lascivious, hysterical and absolutely hilarious version of Georges Feydeau’s iconic play.

At the Hôtel du Minet Galant, where Madame Chandebise, who thinks she’s been deceived, thinks she’s confusing Monsieur Chandebise with gallant company, husbands, wives, friends, lovers and look-alikes meet in a disheveled maelstrom that leaves no respite to the public. Obviously, doors slam, secret walls are hidden, snowballs fly and daring couples indulge on stage in completely delirious sexual gymnastics. Nothing is free, everything is straightforward, funny and vulgar just enough. In Chandebise at the end of his tether, Serge Bagdassarian is, as usual, brilliant. As for Benjamin Lavernhe, he is incredible as a South American husband rolling the r and crazy, to the point of wanting to “stir” everyone, with jealousy. Come on, hurry up to get a seat…

Flea in the earby Georges Feydeau, directed by Lilo Baur, at the Comédie-Française, until March 15, 2023

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Discover Ousmane Sembène at the Cinémathèque

Do you know Ousmane Sembene? Born 100 years ago, the 1er January 1923, the Senegalese filmmaker was first a writer, and remained so when he embarked on a self-taught film career that was immediately rewarded with the Jean-Vigo prize in 1966 for The Black of… (the first feature film by an African director selected at Cannes), telling the story of a young woman employed in Dakar as a governess in a white family whom she follows to France. This essential film opens the retrospective of a master at the Cinémathèque de Paris almost all of whose films shed light on the most topical themes: Ceddo (1977) brings face to face an imam and the ceddo warriors, who do not want to give up their spirituality by converting to Islam, a documentary censored at the time in his country; just like in France Thiaroye Camp, denouncing a bloody page in the history of Senegalese skirmishers and who won the jury prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1988.

The filmmaker looked with as much lucidity and often with humor at his own society, as in the brilliant feature film entitled The mandate (1968), and was also committed to the condition of women, until his last film, Moolaade, before dying in 2007. We find the writer recently reissued in bookstores, O country, my beautiful people (1957) at the Presses de la cité, his second novel after The Black Docker and before God’s Pieces of Wood, inspired by the 1947 strike of African railway workers on the Dakar-Niger railway line.

From January 5 to 15 at the Cinémathèque de Paris.

READ ALSOOusmane Sembène, this unforgettable sacred monster of the 7th African art


The cultural choices of the “Point”: Giant Cluedo or delirious vaudeville?