rambles

questions:

a) is there a new adrien brody in my life?
b) is there ANOTHER FRENCH ACTOR OTHER THAN GERARD DEPARDIEU?

answers:
a) maybe, and if so, it would be mathieu amalric....
b) YES, his name is mathieu amalric. he is that other french guy that is in a lot of movies that make it to the us.

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fun facts (in which i admit that maybe there are more than 2 actors in france):

gerard depardieu's son also acted! until he died - he was in his 30s - last october. also just learned that catherine deneuve's daughter, chiari mastroianni, is an actress as well. i guess we're into legacies here. she was in 'conte de noel' with amalric and her mom. chiari and mathieu were also in 'comment je me suis dispute...(ma vie sexuelle)' which launched his career and that of a lot of other french actors...crazy all the liens...

ANYWAY you probs know amalric as being the latest quantum of solace villain and that guy who wrote a book with his eyelashes in the diving bell and the butterfly. COOL

UNRELATEDLY...
i have not just been adding to my list of movies to see this week; i have also been promenading (sounds more natural to use that verb in french...) about the city participating in a couple of cours alternatifs offered by paris 1. they are basically just history lectures. coincidentally both of the ones i went to focused on history of medicine/science. wednesday we started at the louvre, saw the part where the scientific societies used to meet. we continued through the latin quarter and to the ecole de medicine where paul broca (after which broca's area of the brain is named) studied.

today was a tour of the salpetriere, the HUGE hospital that at one point held 15,000 people?! we actually got sort of lost while walking around. the only reason i had heard of it before was because marie antoinette was held there for a while before her execution. the thing was built in the 1600s, i am still utterly amazed that medical work continues to occur in a place that old. it was built to house/imprison sick people and poor people and crazies and prostitutes with venereal disease, but it wasn't actually a medical hospital until the end of the 18th century. before its medicalisation, i guess they all just hung out. and went to the church. the church was actually really cool - it had an awesome square floor plan, separated into a bunch of wings so that the men, women, children, mentally ill could all be seated separately while watching the same service.

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this guy named pinel is credited with encouraging 'moral treatment' at the hospital, the kind in which you don't chain up women who are mentally ill. he came along after the revolution, when the place was stormed and tons of people were killed. sort of a gruesome history. still a cool place to see.

oh fun fact - salpetriere = saltpeter = because they used to make gunpowder there.