Paul from Paris

Ad seen in the Paris metro, line 3, Villiers stop

The advertisement’s tagline reads, “Wake up your career by posting your résumé on careerbuilder.fr”.

That’s mundane.

What surprised me is that the ad also promotes Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, a movie coming out this year that’s a sequel to Wall Street, from 1987.

Careerbuilder.fr is running a contest whose winner will enjoy a trip to New York.

The Wall Street pictures, both directed by Oliver Stone, view players in the financial services industry critically: they’re the other side, the bad guys. The judgment of those who choose Wall Street careers is shown, in the movies, as misguided or villainous or nihilistic. The characters in the movies don’t have careers that you’d want to emulate.

Don’t the people at careerbuilder.fr know this? What were they thinking when they approved this campaign?

As a rule, they’re about three meters (ten feet) from the ground.

“They” are small mosaics inspired by the Space Invaders video game (circa 1980). They’ve been in Paris for a while, and they turn up in surprising places.

Paris turns out to be the setting for an ambitious street art project by an artist who calls himself Invader. From the artist’s web site, I learned that installations have been set up in other cities, in France and abroad, as well as at galleries.

There’s also a book about the Paris project.

Finally, Swindle magazine ran a profile of Invader’s work, written by Sheperd Fairey, who considers Invader “one of the most thoughtful and focused artists I’ve ever met”.

The Conseil d’Etat, France’s supreme court in administrative matters, invalidated the visa granted for the motion picture “Antichrist”.

All motion pictures released theatrically in France must carry a visa. In plain English, the visa sets the film’s rating. In France, as in Europe generally but unlike the US, ratings are decided by government, not by a trade association. “Antichrist” held a visa allowing projection for viewers age 16 and over (but forbidden for viewers under 16). The age requirement was justified by the picture’s “violent climate”.

Several groups –Promotion, Action for human dignity, The departmental union of family associations of the Rhône, The evangelical protestant committee for human dignity (all names in English translation)– petitioned the French administrative courts to annul the visa for “Antichrist”. If I follow the petitioners’ arguments, they argued that “Antichrist” should have been forbidden for viewers under 18 (comparable to an American NC-17 rating), or even classified as pornography or inciting violence (comparable to an American X rating).

The Conseil d’Etat sided with the petitioners, but not for the reasons they had argued. In its decision, the French supreme court held that the rating authorities failed to give a reasoned decision: branding the picture as having a “violent climate” does not explain enough to justify the age limitation.

Today’s ruling has the effect of stripping “Antichrist” of its visa. Without a visa, the film cannot be exhibited in France.

Is this censorship? Certainly not.

Nothing prevents the film from applying for and receiving a visa. The Conseil d’Etat did not ban the picture, and the French culture ministry has intimated some sort of temporary measure until a properly reasoned visa is issued.

“Antichrist” certainly has generated controversy. The petitioners in today’s action object to the picture. They are not alone. “Antichrist” won an “anti-prize” from the Ecumenical Jury at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, which judged the picture egregiously misogynist and an apology for burning witches at the stake.

Directed by Cannes regular –and Golden Palm winner– Lars von Trier, “Antichrist” stars Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who won the 2009 Cannes Best Actress award.

Can this critical acclaim be squared with critical and public admonition?

For this critic, the picture and the Cannes jury perpetuates a tradition of shock as art. Whether here’s anything behind or beyond the shock is another matter.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I played Pong; I also played PacMan.

But I don’t play video games or own a video console today. I’m a stranger to the world of video games.

The players in this market are American, Japanese, or French. But they’re practically unknown, compared to motion picture producers.

I was reminded this week about the changing world entertainment landscape when I learned about the rollout of a new video game. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, published by Activision, sold 4.7 million units in the first 24 hours of its release in the USA, Canada, and the UK. It took the record for top first-day sales from Grand Theft Auto IV, which sold 3.6 million units in its first day. Both games produced millions of dollars in “box office” sales from day one.

Once upon a time, it wasn’t easy to find an English-language book in Paris (just as it wasn’t easy to find a French-language book in the US). In the days before Internet access, I was partial to the Galignani bookshop. It always impressed me as worldly and sophisticated, with a deep selection of fine arts books, as well as a generalist collection of quality books in French and in English. The store was happy to place single-copy orders for me; the books arrived after several weeks and cost me more than their list price.

Today, this has changed, thanks to amazon.com. I’m now able to get English-language titles quickly and with a choice between English and American editions. Amazon.com has a base in Europe, so I don’t have to worry about customs duties (and delays) or egregious postal (sur)charges (and delays).

Recorded music followed different rules. Because of territorial distribution arrangements, some titles that were easy to find (and inexpensive) in the US were available only as high-priced, hard-to-find imports in France. Online retailers like amazon.com helped ease supply and lessen price differentials, but less than is the case for books. And online retailers like iTunes sometimes can’t deliver: because of territorial distribution arrangements, some songs or albums aren’t available in the French “store”.

Territorial distribution arrangements are even more restrictive for other forms of entertainment, such as movies and television programs. In Paris, where I live, American movies are usually shown in English, subtitled in French. I know that subtitling takes time. But distributors are capable of releasing a subtitled (or dubbed) movie at the same time as its US release. Usually the lag between a US and a French opening is driven by choices of a French distributor, and usually these choices lead to a French opening months after an American release. (Two exceptions are Woody Allen and James Bond pictures, both of which seem to come out in France before their US release.) Because of exploitation “windows”, this delay slows the eventual video release of American pictures in the French market.

The lag and its consequences is even more pronounced for television programs. I’m American, so I have a particular appetite for programming in English; I don’t want or need subtitles, much less dubbing. Thanks to video streaming, content producers could satisfy my demand. I’d be willing to pay for a download or even one-time streamed video; I would also accept commercial breaks. And my consumption of content in this way would not cannibalize from French broadcasters or cable channels: I don’t watch much French TV, especially American programming dubbed into French. A broadcaster can’t lose a pair of eyeballs it never had to begin with.

Unfortunately for me (and others like me), sources of television programming enforce territorial restrictions strictly. iTunes won’t let me download the programs I want, simply because my bank happens to be in France. Streaming services like Hulu are, for now, limited to the US.

I have guarded hope for the future when I read comments such Disney CEO Richard Iger’s to the Financial Times: “the business model that underpins the movie business is changing”.