Post by davidhr on Nov 3, 2009 12:41:11 GMT -5
This was a good week for the news update to be on Tuesday rather than Sunday…
As originally noted on this site by Restck1989, word broke this past week that Lara would be acting in a musical film "Mademoiselle Zhivago" to be filmed partly in the Ukraine, with the theme being 11 vignettes organized around her upcoming album "Le Secret". Presumably each of the stories would be associated more or less directly with the different cuts on the album, with Lara playing 'the woman' in each of them. The project, organized by Igor Krutoi, her co-creater on the album, would be directed by the Ukrainen Alan Badoev, who has done music videos in the past. It would even include a Spanish ballet, «Compañía Suite Espanola. A description of the film is available at:
madmuazeljivago.livejournal.com/
while the content of 10 of the stories was kindly provided at: www.larafabiannews.blogger.com.br/index.html; the stories are very 'Russian' in character, revolving around love and death.
Lara was to spend 20 days in the Ukraine, coinciding with the break in her concert schedule, with the filming to have begun yesterday. However, shortly before it was to take place, the Ukrainian government closed the country for public events due to the swine flu epidemic. Therefore it has been pushed back to April 2010. [Had the news update been on Sunday, it would have been superseded by this cancellation.]
The ambitious project is great news, combining Lara's desire to act with the chance for a feature film promotion for her album. One wonders how long this was in the planning stage - was it in the planning stages all along, and so explains why Lara had this hiatus of one month between concerts, a schedule that was established at least six months ago? Or did she initially plan this time to be back with her family, and child, as she indicated in interviews? Ironically, for someone who has had so little to do professionally for several years, she is now so busy that the filming has to be suspended for 5 months. Remember, in February she is supposed to use that break in the concert tour to, possibly, act in the film 'Charlie' to be shot in Italy. As also noted by Restck1989, the director this past week indicated he was in the process of flying to meet Lara to discuss the role.
Pushing the filming back to April raises a number of questions. Will it really take place? So many of Lara's 'down the road' projects seem to 'go offtrack' (acting in Victor Victoria being the latest example). Igor Krutoi may be committed, but will the funding still be there? And what does this imply about the release of the album 'Le Secret' - how tied is the album to the film? While what happened in the Ukraine is clearly beyond Lara's control, and undoubtedly safer for her and perhaps even her child, it is sadly reminiscent of many events in Lara's career - great possibilities hindered by happenstance.
[As an aside, this whole discussion - the project, Lara's leaving for the filming, the particular themes, and finally the suspension - were brought to our attention by people reading the Russian/Ukrainian sites. None of it was provided by Lara's people on her site. If an event of this nature is not deemed important enough to acknowledge to her loving fans… perhaps her 'bad karma' is self-generated!]
[As a further aside, her planned November 2nd filming date would seem to be the explanation for why she cancelled her appearance on the popular program "Panique dans l'oreillette" set for that same date, something one imagines she may now regret.]
Some more reviews have come in for EWIM on the web, from sources that were hostile to TLFM, but in this case they are uniformly positive. Most impressive to them is Lara's 'sublime voice'. In general the reviewers also used the opportunity to knock TLFM one more time, noting that EWIM avoids what they thought were TLFM's two prime faults: music that was overly familiar (to a French audience) and subject to comparisons with the original , and what they deemed karaoke-like instrumentation. Of course, to an English audience, the songs in TLFM are novel, while those from EWIM are generally quite familiar. The reviewers also thought Lara should have released EWIM in France before TLFM, or at least as part of a two disc set (with TLFM); or perhaps released TLFM with more unfamiliar songs in piano-voice. It was noted that Lara has been in a disagreement with Universal about releasing EWIM, of which only 25,000 copies have been pressed, and this has suggested to the reviewers that Pascal Negre, who supported TLFM, should be replaced, quickly! The one negative comment: it would have been even better if EWIM were longer than the ~37 minutes. The reviews (in French) can be found at:
www.ptitblog.net/actualites/article-lara-fabian-un-nouvel-album-anglais-de-grande-qualite-3713.html
www.chartsinfrance.net/Lara-Fabian/news-68835.html
www.veryfriendly.fr/Exclu-EWIN-,-le-nouvel-opus-de-Lara-Fabian_a831.html
Meanwhile, TLFM continues to sell, having passed 100,000 copies in France alone, and probably 150,000 copies worldwide (maybe including downloads), as Lara has stated. It actually gained 25 places in France this past week to move up to 62nd, while dropping 9 places in Belgium, to 37th.
Lara has agreed to be the 'chairwoman' in Annecy for the 2009 Telethon to be broadcast December 4 and 5 on France 2 and France 3. (There are different 'chairs' in different cities.)
Farfallina 15 is now being received in Belgium and should be available elsewhere in the coming weeks. It has gotten very good reviews from fans for its pictures and interviews. Scans of its pages (taken from a Russian site) are available on the 'larafabiannews' site indicated above. With respect to the 'questions for Lara' that were discussed in last week's 'news update' (for Farfallina 16), Nathalie has clarified what is expected. As written, the rules seemed to imply that the 10-15 questions should form a unified progression. When fans seemed overwhelmed by the idea of doing that, Nathalie wrote to say that she realized fans weren't journalists, and that it wasn't really expected that they be so orderly - just that each be somewhat coherent.
It turns out that the upcoming week will be much less busy than Lara had recently expected, but she may now get the chance to spend time at home as originally intended. Her performance on "Chabada dimanche" is scheduled to be aired on France 3, November 8th. Recorded on October 2nd, she sang several songs, including "Il venait d'avoir 18 ans".
David
As originally noted on this site by Restck1989, word broke this past week that Lara would be acting in a musical film "Mademoiselle Zhivago" to be filmed partly in the Ukraine, with the theme being 11 vignettes organized around her upcoming album "Le Secret". Presumably each of the stories would be associated more or less directly with the different cuts on the album, with Lara playing 'the woman' in each of them. The project, organized by Igor Krutoi, her co-creater on the album, would be directed by the Ukrainen Alan Badoev, who has done music videos in the past. It would even include a Spanish ballet, «Compañía Suite Espanola. A description of the film is available at:
madmuazeljivago.livejournal.com/
while the content of 10 of the stories was kindly provided at: www.larafabiannews.blogger.com.br/index.html; the stories are very 'Russian' in character, revolving around love and death.
Lara was to spend 20 days in the Ukraine, coinciding with the break in her concert schedule, with the filming to have begun yesterday. However, shortly before it was to take place, the Ukrainian government closed the country for public events due to the swine flu epidemic. Therefore it has been pushed back to April 2010. [Had the news update been on Sunday, it would have been superseded by this cancellation.]
The ambitious project is great news, combining Lara's desire to act with the chance for a feature film promotion for her album. One wonders how long this was in the planning stage - was it in the planning stages all along, and so explains why Lara had this hiatus of one month between concerts, a schedule that was established at least six months ago? Or did she initially plan this time to be back with her family, and child, as she indicated in interviews? Ironically, for someone who has had so little to do professionally for several years, she is now so busy that the filming has to be suspended for 5 months. Remember, in February she is supposed to use that break in the concert tour to, possibly, act in the film 'Charlie' to be shot in Italy. As also noted by Restck1989, the director this past week indicated he was in the process of flying to meet Lara to discuss the role.
Pushing the filming back to April raises a number of questions. Will it really take place? So many of Lara's 'down the road' projects seem to 'go offtrack' (acting in Victor Victoria being the latest example). Igor Krutoi may be committed, but will the funding still be there? And what does this imply about the release of the album 'Le Secret' - how tied is the album to the film? While what happened in the Ukraine is clearly beyond Lara's control, and undoubtedly safer for her and perhaps even her child, it is sadly reminiscent of many events in Lara's career - great possibilities hindered by happenstance.
[As an aside, this whole discussion - the project, Lara's leaving for the filming, the particular themes, and finally the suspension - were brought to our attention by people reading the Russian/Ukrainian sites. None of it was provided by Lara's people on her site. If an event of this nature is not deemed important enough to acknowledge to her loving fans… perhaps her 'bad karma' is self-generated!]
[As a further aside, her planned November 2nd filming date would seem to be the explanation for why she cancelled her appearance on the popular program "Panique dans l'oreillette" set for that same date, something one imagines she may now regret.]
Some more reviews have come in for EWIM on the web, from sources that were hostile to TLFM, but in this case they are uniformly positive. Most impressive to them is Lara's 'sublime voice'. In general the reviewers also used the opportunity to knock TLFM one more time, noting that EWIM avoids what they thought were TLFM's two prime faults: music that was overly familiar (to a French audience) and subject to comparisons with the original , and what they deemed karaoke-like instrumentation. Of course, to an English audience, the songs in TLFM are novel, while those from EWIM are generally quite familiar. The reviewers also thought Lara should have released EWIM in France before TLFM, or at least as part of a two disc set (with TLFM); or perhaps released TLFM with more unfamiliar songs in piano-voice. It was noted that Lara has been in a disagreement with Universal about releasing EWIM, of which only 25,000 copies have been pressed, and this has suggested to the reviewers that Pascal Negre, who supported TLFM, should be replaced, quickly! The one negative comment: it would have been even better if EWIM were longer than the ~37 minutes. The reviews (in French) can be found at:
www.ptitblog.net/actualites/article-lara-fabian-un-nouvel-album-anglais-de-grande-qualite-3713.html
www.chartsinfrance.net/Lara-Fabian/news-68835.html
www.veryfriendly.fr/Exclu-EWIN-,-le-nouvel-opus-de-Lara-Fabian_a831.html
Meanwhile, TLFM continues to sell, having passed 100,000 copies in France alone, and probably 150,000 copies worldwide (maybe including downloads), as Lara has stated. It actually gained 25 places in France this past week to move up to 62nd, while dropping 9 places in Belgium, to 37th.
Lara has agreed to be the 'chairwoman' in Annecy for the 2009 Telethon to be broadcast December 4 and 5 on France 2 and France 3. (There are different 'chairs' in different cities.)
Farfallina 15 is now being received in Belgium and should be available elsewhere in the coming weeks. It has gotten very good reviews from fans for its pictures and interviews. Scans of its pages (taken from a Russian site) are available on the 'larafabiannews' site indicated above. With respect to the 'questions for Lara' that were discussed in last week's 'news update' (for Farfallina 16), Nathalie has clarified what is expected. As written, the rules seemed to imply that the 10-15 questions should form a unified progression. When fans seemed overwhelmed by the idea of doing that, Nathalie wrote to say that she realized fans weren't journalists, and that it wasn't really expected that they be so orderly - just that each be somewhat coherent.
It turns out that the upcoming week will be much less busy than Lara had recently expected, but she may now get the chance to spend time at home as originally intended. Her performance on "Chabada dimanche" is scheduled to be aired on France 3, November 8th. Recorded on October 2nd, she sang several songs, including "Il venait d'avoir 18 ans".
David
