French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius wrote and "directed" the film La Classe Americaine (YT clip/full) in 1993, comprised entirely of scenes from Warner Brothers movies. Warner agreed to let the French TV channel Canal+ use its 4000-movie catalog free of charge and rights for a month, resulting in a pastiche parody of Citizen Kane, in which two journalists investigate the cryptic meaning Orson Welles' last words.

After La Classe, Hazanavicius directed two films lampooning the James Bond ouevre : OSS 117 - Nest of Spies and 0SS 117 - Lost in Rio, both starring actor Jean Dujardin. Which brings us to 2011 - Hazanavicius and Dujardin have just released a new film (via Warner Brothers in America) entitled The Artist, a heartfelt, old-school romance without the aid of spoken dialogue or sound, [p]rojected in black-and-white in the classic 4:3 aspect ratio... [more inside]
posted by obscurator on Nov 4, 2011 - 14 comments

Brief advertisement for France's Canal Plus: 00:01:07 secs.
posted by econous on Jan 16, 2007 - 36 comments

French culture in crisis ? After the Vivendi Universal french CEO Jean-Marie Messier fired Canal+ chairman Pierre Lescure yesterday, many questions arise in France. Will Vivendi, through Canal+, continue to help French cinema the way Canal+ did in the past ? Is this the last straw in a long series of acts and declarations from Vivendi's CEO against "Franco-French cultural exception" ? Has The Man finally won in France ? What's to happen in all the other countries were Vivendi (or any of the BigCo) basically owns the culture through local companies ?
posted by XiBe on Apr 17, 2002 - 10 comments