Pleasure Reading 3. Chapter 3

Larry went to work in a coal mine near Lens, in northern France, where he got to know his coworker, a Pole named Kosti. Kosti was an uncouth man, but he was educated and knew a lot about mystical religion, and this arouses Larry's interest. In the spring, Kosti and Larry left the mine and wandered across Belgium and into Germany, where they found work on a farm. They stayed there through the summer, but Larry decided to leave after Becker's daughter-in-law Ellie, whom he didn't even like, crawled into his bed one night. He made his way to Bonn, where he remained for a year. Meanwhile, Isabel married Gray Maturin, and they settled down in Chicago. Within three years she gave birth to two daughters. Gray prospered and became a partner in the family business. He and Isabel were wealthy and happy. Then in October 1929, the New York stock market crashed. Gray's father Henry died of a heart attack and Gray was destroyed financially. He couldn't find another job and his health broke down. With no other option available, he and his family went to live on their plantation in South Carolina.

Pleasure Reading 2. Chapter 2

The narrator spent several days in Paris early in the autumn of that year on his way to Marseilles where he met Larry for the first time after the young man had left Chicago. Larry said he spent his time in Paris loafing and reading. The following spring, Mrs. Bradley and Isabel arrived in Paris, ready to begin a long vacation. Soon the young woman asked Larry about coming back, and he told her there was no way he would. He said he was trying to find answers to philosophical questions about God and the soul. He told her that they could live off the $3,000 a year. But Isabel didn't want to live on such modest means. Unable to convince him to come back to Chicago, they agree to break off their engagement. Isabel returned to the house where her mother was staying and walked in on a tea party attended by rich, high−society people. She looked at the way they were dressed and
listened to the way they talked, realizing that this was what she needed and wanted. For her point of view this was the best way to live. Elliott helped Isabel to forget Larry. And Mrs. Bradley and her daughter went to London. There, they met more rich and important people, and Isabel could be introduced to young, rich men. The narrator visited London too. He and Isabel met in the English countryside and the young woman opened up and told him about the conversation she had with Larry that led to their breakup. Also she told Maugham about the couple's final night in Paris when they went drinking and dancing. Isabel said she had concocted a plan to seduce Larry forcing him to come back to Chicago. At the last moment, though, she had changed her mind and kissed him only.

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The article Cannes 2013 lineup: a programme of heavy-hitters and unexpected gems written by Peter Bradshaw was publiched in the Guardian on April, 18. The article reports at length that the 2013 Cannes Film Festival is going to be extraordinary one.


It's an open secret that in recent years Cannes has consolidated its primacy among the film festivals of the world. More than the first cuckoo, the announcement of the Cannes competition list is the first sign of spring. Speaking of major entries in competition they are Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac, Steve McQueen's Twelve Years a Slave, Stephen Frears's Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight. There is the expected parade of heavy-hitters and some former Palme d'Or-winners: Roman Polanski, Nicolas Winding Refn, Paolo Sorrentino, Steven Soderbergh, Alexander Payne, Joel and Ethan Coen, François Ozon, Takashi Miike, Hirokazu Kore-eda, James Gray, Abdellatif Kechiche and Asghar Farhadi.

There is a lot of comment on the competition openers. Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby features Leonardo DiCaprio as the charismatic and mysterious Gatsby himself. The opener for the Un Certain Regard sidebar section — the "alternative" selection Cannes purists whimsically insist is the soul of the festival itself — is Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring. And the sexiest and most hotly anticipated choice in competition without a doubt is Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives, starring Ryan Gosling and Kristin Scott Thomas. It is necessary to emphasize that Cannes 2013 is a great festival for Japan, and two very different Japanese auteurs are represented - Takashi Miike's Straw Shield and Hirokazu Kore-eda's Like Father Like Son. One of the hottest tickets in competition must surely be Steven Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra, an HBO project that has blossomed into feature-film status. If ever there was a director who owed his position to Cannes it is James Gray, an American auteur that this festival has doggedly promoted – but whose prestige at Cannes has never quite translated elsewhere. The actor-writer-artist James Franco is appearing at Cannes as a director, with his As I Lay Dying, a version of the William Faulkner novel, adapted by Franco himself. And many others famous celebrities will appear at the ceremony Cannes 2013.

The article draws a conclusion that we see  a fascinating festival lineup, and as ever the best stuff will almost certainly be the unheralded movies that we don't even realise are there.

As for me, as a film-lover, this artile is a good chance to get to know the last news from Cannes. The 2013 Cannes Film Festival will take place from May 15 to May 26, 2013. The President of the Jury will be American film director Steven Spielberg.

Pleasure Reading 1. Chapter 1

The events of the book began in 1919. The narrator, Somerset Maugham, received the invitation from his friend Elliot Templeton  to a lunch in Chicago with him. There he met Mrs. Louisa Bradley, his friend's sister, her daughter Isabel and Isabel's fiance Larry Darrell. The next day the narrator had dinner with all of them again, where he was introduced to Gray Maturin, a Larry's friend, who also fell in love with Isabel. Gray's rich father offered Larry, who didn't have a job, a promising position in his company. But Larry was still suffering from the shock of seeing his best friend who had been killed during the World War I. He had no ambition or desire to work, and he turned the job offer down. Instead, he said he intended to go to Paris and loafed around for two years. Isabel said she would wait for him.

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The article Robert De Niro's Tribeca mission written by Ed Pilkington was published in The Guardian on April, 14. It reports at length that Robert De Niro's Tribeca film festival, formed just after 9/11, helped New York get back on its feet and now is being in progress.

There is a lot of comment on De Niro's professional career. The actor has been in the business of making films so long – his debut on the big screen was in 1965 – that his work is now being restored. And the actor is thinking about its restoring. The restoration in question is the painstaking return to its original glory of King of Comedy, Martin Scorsese's dark 1982 satire on modern celebrity obsession. The movie has been digitally remastered from the original camera negatives and will be shown later this month on the closing night of this year's Tribeca film festival, with both De Niro and Scorsese in attendance. He hasn't seen the movie in at least 20 years, and he wants to see it – it will bring back memories not just of what the actor did in the movie, but of that period in his life.

It's an open secret that King of Comedy will be one of the highlights of the 2013 Tribeca film festival, the celebration of New York and its movie-making tradition that De Niro co-founded in 2001 when the dust of the fallen Twin Towers had barely settled over Ground Zero. The first festival, in 2002, was framed as a form of economic stimulus, the aim being to attract visitors back to lower Manhattan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Speaking of the festival itself it's necessary to note that each year Tribeca festival has expanded, growing international tentacles until it can now claim to have screened more than 1,400 films in 80 countries, including through its Arabic offshoot, Doha-Tribeca. In the process, it has comfortably achieved its initial objective, generating about $750m (£488m) worth of economic activity for New York.

The author also says that it remains De Niro's ambition to make the festival part of the tradition of New York; that he hopes will be what it will be in years to come, and it's partially that now. His love of the city, and of its cinematic history, remains undiminished. He might have added that the city also gave him his champion, fellow New Yorker Scorsese, who conjured many of De Niro's greatest performances in Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991) and Casino (1995).

It's very likely that Tribeca film festival's struggles with its purpose in life have been exacerbated by the proliferation of movie festivals around the world and the increasingly clogged nature of the annual calendar. Tribeca, dubbed "Hollywood on the Hudson", suffers from its timing so soon after the Oscars. Like any festival, De Niro and Rosenthal are also having to grapple with the challenge of the internet and the opportunities it offers.

Speaking of the festival in this year, it's interesting to point out that the technique will be rolled out to the UK from 16 April, with an initial slate of six of the festival's films being offered for an eight-week run on pay-per-view through Virgin Media and digital platforms. The selected titles include Greetings from Tim Buckley and Fresh Meat. As a further foray into the world of digital film-making at this year's festival, there will be a tieup with Twitter's Vine to launch a six-second film competition. This will be a competition for films lasting six seconds and posted through Twitter's hashtag.

The article draws a conclusion that Robert De Niro is thinking about  he needs to do it for himself.

In conclusion I'd like to say that Tribeca Festival is really becoming more popular than in previous years. And speaking of my favourite film for this year I was impressed by the movie of an Italian director, Claudio Giovannesi, - Alì Blue Eyes where the story of collapsing of two immigrant cultures is told.