A Year in Provence
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Movie Reviews of A Year in Provence
Movie Review: Year in Provence
Summary: 5 Stars
That I could spend a similar year. Entertaining and a joy to see and not only for the local.Movie Review: A Year in Provence
Summary: 5 Stars
Funny, charmming and witty. A must see for all those dreaming of living in Provence.Movie Review: Gentle humour
Summary: 4 Stars
This series based on the Peter Mayle's bestseller possesses a sly, pleasant humour about how two ex-Londoners try - often in vain - to insert themselves into ordinary life in Provence, France. As a frequent visitor to Provence, I love how the series showcases this gorgeous area without toppling into travelogue. The best elements, though, involve Peter and Annie Mayles dealing with the locals, many of them eccentric, all of them interesting. The humour isn't broad; it's gentle since nothing ever big or profound happens. The series offers bickering bakers, truffle-smelling pigs, stolen mailboxes and, of course, wonderful wines and spectaular food. The biggest challenge for some viewers will be the dialogue, about half of which is in Provencal French. If you don't know any French, you'll still understand what's going on - sort of. Footnote: If you're only familiar with John Thaw as Inspector Morse in that long-running British msytery series, you might need a while to accept him as the optimistic, if easily frustrated Mayle, but Thaw turns out to be just the right choice as does Lindsay Duncan (Rome) as his smart, less-linguistically-challenged wife.Movie Review: Do you want to move to France?
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this without ever having heard of it before. I really love some of the older British series, like All Creatures Great and Small, and The Irish R.M., so I thought I would try this one. It was worth it. If you have ever wondered what it would be like to move to another country, without being able to speak the language very well, this will give you a little insight. The show is slower paced, which doesn't appeal to everyone; but it has some good comedy at times, and made me wish I lived in a less hectic world like in this show. One of the best things I liked about it was how you could understand the basics of what a person was saying in French, without understanding a word of it. Sometimes some basic words would be said in English by the English actors, other times it was a matter of figuring it out. This is a great program to watch when you just want to sit and relax for a little while. It is divided into 30 minute segments, one for each month of the year.Movie Review: Fun for some, but poor-quality DVD
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been revisiting this wonderful mini-series on DVD, watching it on a hi-res screen, and note that the image-quality is really appalling. It looks like they took an old VHS tape, and strained it through a sieve. Which is probably pretty close to what actually happened, the "sieve" in this case being a really crude digital-compression system. Too bad, because it contains a lot of beautiful scenic photography, which has been turned to mush.
Update: since I wrote this, I learned that many if not most British TV programs were filmed using 16mm cameras to cut production costs. Almost all US television shows and movies are filmed using 35mm, which contains roughly 4 times the detail of 16mm. Also the 16mm film stock they were using at the time often wasn't that great. This wasn't very noticeable on the TVs then. What this means is that these DVDs may have the best picture that will ever be available.