Author: Jade Cuttle
The Cyber Spelling War: all keyboards blazing
| March 25, 2013 | Posted by Jade Cuttle under culture, technology |
Nowadays, a simple spelling mistake on Twitter or Facebook is enough to land you a virtual shot in the head. A careless drop of an apostrophe, a letter used at the wrong time in the wrong place and mark my words, you’re stoned to death by a shower of exclamation marks and abuse before the computer-strained eyes of your ‘friends’ and ‘followers’. But what I want to know is why do we care? Surely an extra letter squatting in places it shouldn’t be isn’t the end of the world? Believe it or not, dictionaries haven’t been around forever. The first appeared in 1604 called ‘A Table Alphabeticall’ by Robert Cawdrey. However, a ‘table’ of barely 2,500 words accompanied by brief, single-word definitions may struggle to define… more
Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre: It’s you, it’s you, hell is a place on earth with you
| December 31, 2012 | Posted by Jade Cuttle under culture, reviews |
Huis Clos (No Exit) is a French existentialist play by Jean-Paul Sartre, first performed in Paris in 1944, that has long been considered a literary masterpiece for its ability to translate philosophy into a palatable form. As if hiding beneath a cloak, complex philosophical ideas are disguised as drama, making them more digestible. The reader is inundated with intelligent ideas without even realising. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of dramatic tension in Huis Clos to define it as drama, but there’s also so much more, and this is no exaggeration employed in a putrid attempt to persuade you to read a play you probably have no intention of reading – but it may just change your life. Or at least… more
Michel de Montaigne and his essays about thumbs
| September 14, 2012 | Posted by Jade Cuttle under culture, international |
If you were to hand Montaigne a quill, a wax tablet and an order to intellectually inspire, this philosophical French writer from the 1500s would craft you a convincing explanation for why you don’t need shoes, compare a king to a deformed “child monster” or write you an essay about thumbs. His ability to assign intellectual appreciation to absolutely anything influenced the work of many, from Descartes to Shakespeare, while forming the foundations of the essay genre and setting its prestige in stone. He’s one of the most influential writers history has seen, and yet most people have never heard his name. So, thumbs. I couldn’t help but grin as I turned to the page, expecting nothing more than a… more
Interview with We Were Evergreen: nursery rhymes, peanut butter and “weird” French quotas
| July 25, 2012 | Posted by Jade Cuttle under entertainment, international, interviews |
The alternative-indie trio from Paris, We Were Evergreen, have recently supported the likes of Ed Sheeran, King Charles and Emeli Sandé. They create mesmerizing melodies that reduce the world and its worries to a heartbeat and beats fit to burst, and their enchanting vocals dip in and out of harmonies, hypnotizing the average hipster and bringing electro back to life. This band doesn’t just make music, music pulses through their veins as they rise and fall to the tinkling xylophone dancing gracefully through the summer air. In an interview with The Student Review, Michael Liot, the lead singer, guitarist and ukulele player of We Were Evergreen, who dances with enough energy to break the stage into two, reveals how his up-and-coming… more
L’Étranger by Albert Camus: a beautifully strange summer read
| July 17, 2012 | Posted by Jade Cuttle under culture, international, reviews |
“Today, mother died. Or perhaps yesterday, I don’t know.” You’ve got to admit, that’s one heck of an opening. The first time I read it, I laughed. I’m not heartless, I was simply shocked. How is it that something so short and simple can be so striking? Perhaps it was an instinctive fear towards death combined with the uncomfortable lack of compassion, or the sudden depths of a story I was plunged into knocking me unexpectedly off my seat. Either way, it prods sharply at your curiosity; a story you’ll be reluctant to emerge from once you’ve started. L’Étranger, first published in 1942, is a classic French philosophical novel divided into two parts: the life before and after an emotionally detached French-Algerian office… more
A taste of French comedy
| June 8, 2012 | Posted by Jade Cuttle under culture, entertainment, international, reviews |
It can be difficult to find foreign comedy funny. If we try too hard, dissecting each sentence, we lose sight of the surprise. It no longer smacks us in the face; instead it just politely taps us on the shoulder. The trick is to delve into it with little thought and approach it with no fear. Pierre Desproges: comedian Pierre Desproges had no fear; that’s what made him so funny. A French humorist from the 1980s, his humour extended into literature with Les Etrangers sont nuls, a catalogue of cultural criticisms written for the weekly satirical newspaper Charlie-Hebdo. He holds no hesitation in calling the reader an “imbecile,” while he himself poses imbecilic questions such as “are the English creatures of God?” Dehumanization is his strongest… more
A taste of French culture
| May 12, 2012 | Posted by Jade Cuttle under culture, entertainment, international |
Music: Christophe Maé An acoustic singer-songwriter from Vaucluse, Christophe Maé’s songs are stained with heartbreak but stitched together with hope. His voice, a patchwork of passionate outcries and soft sighs carried by the roll of a southern French tongue, combines with an earthy melody and the occasional harmonica to fashion a raw and authentic style. Inspired by Stevie Wonder and Bob Marley, Christophe Maé released his first album, Mon Paradis, in 2007, which became France’s second best-selling album of that year. Paving a path to further success, he won the l’Artiste Masculin de l’Année award in both 2008 and 2009 from World Music and NRJ Awards, and has had several songs reach number one in the French charts. La Rumeur, from his most recent albumm On Trace La Route, released in 2010, is hope to a… more
