Marseille Confidential

I've just come back from Marseille. The Mediteranean city of shutters on pastel buildings, that special light from the sea and boulliabase.
Here's some photos:

That's the Chateau d'If on the island straight ahead - remember the Count of Monte Christo who was imprisoned there?  Turns out it never really has been a prison but Dumas took literary license.

And the incredible fish!

 And la Caravelle where the real Marseilleise go to eat and where below a scene was filmed from the beginning of the French Connection.

 Here's a rowdy bunch in a cafe on the Vieux Port. A flic, a gangster, a member of the film commission, a British diplomat and a postman who I got to hang with. Can you tell which is which? Hint the flic and the gangster (11 years in prison) were collaborating on a screenplay that they were taking to Cannes. Of course.
Tuesday - Cara

Another day, another robbery on the Cote d'Azur

Last month a fed-up jeweler in Nice, on the Cote d'Azur, shot and killed an armed robber who tried to break into his jewelry shop. This jeweler was arrested and held for questioning amid calls from fellow jewelers and the city’s mayor for him to be released. He'd fired at least three shots at two thieves as they attempted to make their getaway from the city-centre store by scooter.
One of the men fell off the bike in an adjacent street and was pronounced dead later in the morning. Police said a considerable amount of jewelry was found on the dead man, while the other perpetrator escaped without capture.

This family’s shop, the owner's son Yann said, had been broken into last year and robbed of 34,000 euros worth of watches and gold jewelry. Yann, who was working with his father when the robbers came into the store at 9am, said “We are totally fed up. Every day when we open up we have butterflies in our stomachs.”
This fear was especially acute, he added, since two years ago in nearby Cannes a jeweler was shot dead by armed thieves. “There isn’t a day when a jewelry shop in France does not fall victim to an armed robbery,” he said.
Even the right-wing mayor of Nice called on the police to release the jeweler from custody. In May during the Cannes Film festival a series of bold armed robberies on the Riviera, netted a haul of 103 million euros worth of jewels from a hotel.

While film stars might not merit our sympathy, the shopkeepers might. At least there is progress on investigations into the Pink Panther jewel thief gang.
Police stormed a villa in southeast France and arrested a member of the notorious Pink Panther gang of jewel thieves who had escaped from a Swiss prison earlier this year.
During a dawn sweep armed police detained Zoran Tomovic, 47, as he tried to flee through a window in the home of an acquaintance in a small town in Provence. But the house was surrounded.
Just last month, a lone gunman walked into a diamond jewelry show at a hotel in Cannes and made off with a breathtaking $136 million worth of valuables — the biggest jewelry heist in years, maybe ever. Police say there was no immediate evidence that pointed to any link between the Pink Panthers and Tomovic with those robberies. They feel he appeared to be more concerned with staying out of sight than with plotting a new heist. And no, he doesn't wear a trench coat and have a mustache like the man above.

Cara - Tuesday

Cannes and the film festial-- The Unlawful Killing of Princess Diana (Sneak Preview)

It's that time of the year and feeling in the need of superficiality mixed with royalty, Nazi's and eurotrash here's my contribution. Within the next two days the twinkliest stars filmdom has to offer will be making the long journey to Europe (or as many call it, "France") to descend upon their raggedy-toothed, chain-smoking old-world counterparts.
from the Croisette to the Corniche
No, it's not a declaration of cosmetic warfare, it's the 2011 Cannes Film festival, aka the first day of the jetset summer (or, at least, the beginning of a fresh, 12-month-long cycle of bellinis and bikinis, for the right people in the right places).
Though you might be forgiven for thinking that the point of the whole thing is for audiences to view and absorb the latest masterworks from the world's leading directors (Woody Allen's kicking it off with his latest, Midnight in Paris, while Lars Von Trier's premiering apocalyptic romance Melancholia), that would be to miss out on the real news of the coming weeks: who wore what, where, how and with whom.
Yes, Cannes is something of an annual fashion show, with its main runway, the Promenade de la Croisette typically packed with the summer smart-casual looks. Of course it's the women that are going to get all the press, with their Balmain-this and glittery-vintage-that, but there's also a wonderful tradition of male dress that's typified by Cannes, a kind of Riviera snappiness that's remained much the same since the mid-20th century. Think Cary Grant in Hitchcock's To Catch A Thief, dandling around Côte D'Azur towns in a linen jacket, open-necked shirt and knotted cravat. Or Sean Connery in Cannes for the premiere of The Hill in 1965, surrounded by bikini-clad beauties and wearing a striped Hawaiian shirt and white chinos.

But also attending Cannes will be Doti Fayed to spread the word about his documentary over Diana's death. Conspiracy theories abound but this is quite chilling.
I bring this up because at Shakespeare and company, the iconic bookstore on the Left Bank, Leighton and I did an event a few years ago. Poor Leighton missed the Metro connection and was late so in the meantime I invited my friend, Jean Mulés the retired head of the Brigade Criminelle, the elite homicide unit, to say a few words. I wanted to stall the crowd and he'd helped on my research for my book set in Sept 97 a few weeks after Diana's death. Monsieur Mulés graciously stood at the microphone and instead of a few words, at the crowds begging after he revealed his role in the Diana investigation, spoke for fifteen minutes. And what did he say? Of course it was all in French but he answered the big questions - Was there a conspiracy? Did the Royals engineer Diana's death? What about that Fiat Uno seen speeding away in the tunnel? According to Mulés, after a ten year investigation and exhaustive search of 2,573 Fiat Uno registered owners and thousands of interviews, he and his team found no evidence that he could present in a court of law to indicate anything other that the driver, Henri Paul (who wasn't scheduled for work, had been drinking) caused the accident due to being under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
Notice his words carefully, he has always prefaced his explanations with the caveat 'no evidential findings' to indicate malice of forethought or premeditation. There you have it and if you believe in conspiracy theories the field is open.
Cara- Tuesday