Remy Renault, Author at Ask a New Yorker

Posted March 19, 2013& filed under Eating & Drinking, General, Getting Away.

The Brooklyn Brewery has recently begun distribution of its core products in France with the majority of its business concentrated in the Paris region. While limited distribution has been occurring in some capacity since last September, the product was officially launched in February. Four promotional events were held in the French capital over the course of the month. One event, entitled ‘In Good Company’, was held at Le Dauphin, an expensive Paris restaurant. At the tasting, beers brewed by the Brooklyn Brewery were paired with dishes served by the restaurant. The event was also accompanied by a dose of humor from Brooklyn brew master Garret Oliver. Their East India Pale Ale, for instance, was paired with an orange-flavored tandoori lamb, the concept being to complement the citrusy lamb with the traces of pineapple and melon found in the ale. Needless to say, the event was success even if one were to suspect the neglect suffered by beer among Parisian restaurateurs. Other tastings held throughout the month were more casual but nonetheless still effective in promoting the product.
House of Beer, a Paris-based beer distribution enterprise, plans to slowly develop the brand as an artisanal product. It will only be sold and served in carefully selected bars and specialized retail outlets. Brooklyn Lager, along with specialty beers like Brooklyn East India Pale Ale, will indefinitely remain less than scarce on the shelves at Monoprix and G20. The French beer market is currently falling, although the demand for specialty beers remains high in certain circles of connoisseurship, which will be the prime demographic House of Beer plans on targeting. Brooklyn-based beers have already proven to be very successful in France with them already having sold twice what they expected. It would appear their plans to expand the product’s market little by little by initially appealing to connoisseurs have been no less than fruitful. The current plan is to continue expanding the market by approximately twenty percent each month. House of Beer sells the products to wholesalers who then distribute it to bars and various ‘caves à bières’. Eighty percent of the French market is concentrated within the Paris region. So far, only three products have been officially released: the signature Brooklyn Lager, Brooklyn Brown Ale, and Brooklyn East India Pale Ale. Brooklyn Summer Ale will be added in April with several other products appearing throughout the course of the rest of 2013.

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by: Remy Renault

Posted March 5, 2013& filed under Arts & Entertainment, General.

As many New Yorkers may be aware, a mini-festival entitled Rendezvous with French Cinema is currently being held in New York City at multiple venues. Gallic star, Audrey Tautou, has crossed the Atlantic to “present” her native cinema, as she expressed prior to a recent promotional screening of the new French film ‘Populaire’ at the Paris Theatre in Midtown Manhattan, when correcting a reporter who had inquired if she was in New York to “defend” it. Participating locations for the festival include the IFC Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Regardless of what Tautou embodies to the typical film lover, it cannot be denied such an event is intended to help promote the recognition of cinema as an art form. Certainly, there are numerous films in the festival worth watching. You can find the full schedule at their website, http://rendezvouswithfrenchcinema.com.
For many here in New York, the evening’s host, Tautou, represents European cinema’s new trend, having starred in such box office hits as Amelie and A Very Long Engagement, both directed by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, as well as a recent American-inspired romantic comedy, ‘Délicatesse’. Following in a line of actors and actresses which includes but is not limited to Gérard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, and Brigitte Bardot, Tautou has come to symbolize French cinema in the past decade. Screening during this festival, is Tautou’s representation of Francois Mauriac’s Thérèse Desqueyroux. Mauriac’s mid-century attack on complacent bourgeois values was competently adapted by the late Claude Miller with Tautou in the starring role as a depressed and conveniently married, chain-smoking woman somewhere under the age of forty. She wishes to escape the confines of her comfortable yet emotionally crippling upper middle class surroundings in 1920s France. The film contains visually pleasing cinematography along with exquisite set pieces. Tautou reveals her strengths as an actress in this literary adaptation.
Whatever one has to say on the subject, it is clear New Yorkers love French cinema. Tautou was sure to acknowledge this as she attended the ‘Populaire’ premiere wearing a provocative black frock. If one wanted to over think things, could it be concluded her donning such a garment is indicative of the French propensity for sexual candor?

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by: Remy Renault

Posted February 26, 2013& filed under Arts & Entertainment, Dating, General, Humor.

Many of the millennial stereotypes are there, and they never fail to make a twenty-four-year-old college graduate chuckle even if the content may occasionally be simplistic and reductive. Much like Lena Dunham’s debut feature film Tiny Furniture, the television show seeks to comment on the current generation of sometimes underemployed but always self-consciously individualistic recent college graduates currently inundating neighborhoods such as Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Dunham’s character Hannah says it best when she concedes she and many others her age are ‘slaves’ to a city that does not want them. In actuality, the ‘slaves’ part would apply to just about every single person born in the 1980s carrying a Bachelor’s degree. Whether or not every single resident, aspiring or actual, remains unwanted by the great metropolis is up for debate, however.
What’s indisputable is the main characters on Girls share the malaise of a generation of university-educated individuals facing a future that offers them little more than uncertainty and the virtual inevitability of broken promises. What does one associate with the millennial generation? Gender neutrality? Well that’s certainly a motif running through all of Dunham’s work. Whether or not she is partial to the prevalence of feminized men among the twenty-something cohort is not always easy to tell, but one thing made clear all too often is that the classically conceived relationship between a dominant man and a submissive woman becomes seemingly more elusive with each passing year. One does not need to be particularly perceptive to realize how impotent many of the male characters on the show can sometimes be.
Hand in hand with underemployment and individualism comes “white privilege”, something most of the characters in Dunham’s work are quite privy to and admittedly so, as well. How else would one describe recent liberal arts graduates getting some assistance on the side from their immediate elders? Dunham’s character Hannah is trying to become a novelist and is certainly not starving in the process. Many would associate such characteristics with the increasingly common symptoms of what many members of the boomer generation would choose to label delayed adulthood.
Needless to say, the show remains entertaining and addictive, due to its relentlessly raw humor and admirable attempt at honesty. As a result, it will remain popular for months and perhaps years to come, as many people in their twenties will manage to relate to it on some level, male or female, straight or not so straight. It’s hard to criticize the show’s creators when it’s clear their motive is ultimately to make fun of themselves, since they are well aware of their faults and adequately conscious of the superficialities that often go along with being a ‘young person’ in the 21st century. Dunham knows many young people, herself included, substantially predicate their self-worth on whether or not they reside in Manhattan or a fashionable section of Brooklyn, and she’s confessing to such vanity she sees in herself.

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by: Remy Renault

Posted February 18, 2013& filed under Arts & Entertainment, General.

As Hollywood prepares to congratulate itself next weekend on another year
filled with admirable cinematic efforts I wish to present you with my thoughts on
a few of the fine actors and actresses who have delivered performances
recognized byAMPAS.

Daniel Day-Lewis appears to be the favorite to win the Oscar for Best
Actor. No one would doubt Day-Lewis is an exceedingly talented thespian, and there
is nothing the Academy appreciates more than a respected veteran of the screen
engaging the public with a theatrical interpretation of a colossal historical
figure. The worthy Day-Lewis is certainly not known for understatement, and
never fails to impress.

Joaquin Phoenix’s reasonably more subtle performance as a World War II veteran
disillusioned by the broken promises of the dubious cult of Scientology in Paul
Thomas Anderson’s The Master is also worthy of note.

Other nominees include Bradley Cooper for Silver Linings Playbook, Hugh Jackman
for Les Miserables, and Denzel Washington for Flight.
While my enthusiasm for the Academy Awards has perhaps waned over the
years, I inevitably remain intrigued and curious to know which films receive
attention from year to year in anticipation of the grand pageant known as the
Oscars.

This year has seen some historical developments within the category of Best
Actress.The eighty-five-year-old Emmanuelle Riva, who will be turning eighty-six
on February 24, became the oldest actress nominated in history when
her heart-wrenching performance in Michael Haneke’s Amour all but
exceeded expectations. She plays an octogenarian suffering from successive
strokes as her helpless husband looks on in despair. Riva, an icon of French
cinema, is known to many for her role as ‘Elle’ in Alain Resnais’s seminal
modernist classic from 1959, Hiroshima, Mon Amour. The other star of Haneke’s
Amour, Jean-LouisTrintignant (The Conformist, My Night at Maud’s), was
unfortunately overlooked for his subdued performance as the husband. The
nine-year old Quvenzhané Wallis captured the national spotlight when she became
the youngest ever female nominee upon delivering an endearing performance in the
gritty realist drama Beasts of the Southern Wild from novice filmmaker and
Wesleyan graduate Benh Zeitlin. Set in the Louisiana bayous following a
devastating meteorological disaster, the film was an unexpected but sensational
success over the summer. Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence, and Naomi Watts are
also nominated, for Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, and The Impossible
respectively.

The Best Picture race appears to be wide open at this point. Due to its
victories at both the Golden Globes and the Producers Guild Awards, Ben Affleck’s
Argo has been reliably predicted to win despite its lack of a Best Director
nomination. As many probably know, Driving Miss Daisy (1989) was the last film to
pull off the feat of winning Best Picture without its director receiving
requisite recognition. As always, however, a competently executed historical epic
helmed by Steven Spielberg can never be counted out, regardless of the
circumstances.Leading with twelve nominations certainly does not hurt Lincoln’s
chances either. Other films up for the top prize include Amour, Silver
Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty, Life of Pi, Beasts of the Southern Wild,
Les Miserables, and Django Unchained.

Nevertheless, the grand spectacle set to take place next weekend should
not detract attention from some of the other films released this past year that
may not have been on the radar of most Academy voters. One such film is Abbas
Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love, which is currently running at the Film Society
of Lincoln Center. This satirical study of a father-daughter relationship that
develops between a young Tokyo prostitute and one of her aged clients as she
struggles to escape the abuse of her overly possessive boyfriend is not to be
missed.

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