Brands: motoring enthusiasts on their "Ps"

Swiss watch manufacturer Frederique Constant is the official timekeeper of the 2016 Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, one of the most extraordinary journeys that you can do in a motorcar universe.

With its first edition in 1907, The Peking to Paris Motor Challenge is one of the oldest automotive challenges still running today. Bringing vintage sports cars together side-by-side, their route includes driving in some of the world's toughest lands and requires the participants to maintain a demanding rally-time schedule.

News: Paris was Not the End

A pair of gunmen killed one person and wounded several others during an event in Copenhagen to discuss Islam and free expression in the wake of the attack against French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The gunmen, who are still at large, may have been targeting cartoonist Lars Vilks, who was participating in the event and is known for having drawn caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, Danish police said.

The gunmen fired dozens of shots into the event attended by French Ambassador to Denmark François Zimeray, a spokesman for the French foreign ministry said. The French ambassador wasn’t injured in the shooting.

“The ambassador was in complete shock,” said spokesman Roman Nadal, who said the participants were rushed to a closed room inside the center after the shooting.

French President François Hollande said he deplored the attack and expressed his solidarity with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, his office said in a statement. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was headed as soon as possible to Copenhagen, the statement added.

The attack unfolded Saturday afternoon around 4 p.m. local time at a cultural center in central Copenhagen, at which the French ambassador was set to be the keynote speaker, the French foreign ministry spokesman said. The wounded included police who were guarding the event, he added.

The gunmen appeared to still be at large, according to the French foreign ministry.

Rozanne Vereen poses an Interesting "?"

The scheduling wasn't her doing, but Jamaican filmaker Rozanne Vereen managed to pull off a neat little save during the recent re-run of the 2013 Short Film Festival, which had its initial run as part of the Kingston on the Edge (KOTE) arts fest. This time around, convenor David Morrison ran the films as part of his regular Friday night slate at the Liguanea Club.

Perhaps driven by a need to get the "dross" out first, the evening began with two gleefully campy flops, both written directed and funded by US expatriate Michael "Keyboard Money Mike" Williams. The latter, a cheap (and cheap-looking) Terminator spoof, preceded by a slightly more substantial but still shoddy story about a down-on-his-luck janitor who decides to impersonate his record company boss for kicks.

Director Rozanne Vereen (right) with her two leads from the movie "?"

The came Vereen's work, a cut (above from the get-go, with its atmospheric opening and general air of mystery. Titled '?' — a single question mark - and set in Paris(?), it begins with the aftermath of lovemaking. The man receives a call urgently summoning him to a meeting or assignment of which we are given no details.

he searches for a particular address, and on the way is intercepted and  assaulted, we assume by a group of men. The scene only suggests that the assault may have been sexual, a suggestion strengthened by the man's rapidly deteriorating mental state and paranoia in the aftermath. His hapless wife, unable to cope with these mysterious changes, and unable to extract any details, takes the obvious route of separation, but their troubles do not end there.  

The film is full of uncertainty and has no conventional resolution. But critically, Vereen presents the story to the viewer without seeking to accommodate, a great credit to her narrative and visual skills. The audiences sees the tense exchanges between husband and wife, matched with his direct physical retreat (blocking out all light, refusing sexual advances) as the internal pressure mounts. There is the inevitable impulse to wonder why he chooses not to speak out, even to one whom he is supposed to trust. It subtly speaks volumes about the state of the relationship prior to the incident, but the director gives us no easy answers.

All in all, a very engaging effort, one we hope will be expanded into feature length.

The Time(s) of His Life: Midnight in Paris

'if you could have dinner - or party - with anyone, living or dead, who would it be? and if you could live in any era, which would you choose?

Eternal existentialist Woody Allen has taken those two beyond cliche confections and made a delightful, if typically ego-driven comedic confection, mixed in the metropolitan bowl that is Paris.

"Every street, every boulevard, its won work of art" - so says protagonist Gil Pender, Hollywood screenwriting hack who's looking to make that cliched transition into Great American Novel territory. he's accompanied in Paris by his fiance, the fiendishly materialistic Inez (a fine turn by Rachel McAdams) and her equally unbearable parents. The presence of know-it-all blowhard Paul (Michael Sheen) and his fawning companion Carol (Nina Arianda) make his misery near complete.

There is, however, an escape. A chance walk through the narrow streets at midnight finds our hero lost and at his wits end when a mysterious yellow vintage Peugeot (a 1920 Landaulet, to be more precise) pulls up to the curb and the passengers bid him come in, he begins a journey back to the "Paree" of the  Roaring 20s, peopled by the likes of F Scott Fitzgerald and his troubled, live-wire wife Zelda, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein. Man Ray, Dali, Cole Porter and Picasso.

The latter's muse, Adriana (Marion Cotillard, in yet another irresistibly idiosyncratic performance) takes a shine to the anachronistic author (no one in the alternate dimension seems to notice the radical difference in his outfits or his references), even as his fiance is wasting no opportunity to belittle him in favour of the aforementioned Paul. Turns out that as happy as Gil is in this stylized 1920s Paris, Adriana has an ideal era of her own - the Belle Epoque years that closed out the 19th Century, with its skirt-twirling, high-kicking can-can girls and more artists - this time Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin and Cezanne among others.

having to choose between his fantasy and hers, its obvious which side Gil is going to come down on. Nevertheless, the present offers both its own realizations and welcome distractions, but for those, you really ought to watch.

You ought to watch also, though its certainly been done, the opening montage of up-to-the-minute images of Paris, shot form nearly every conceivable vantage point, and in all kinds of weather. The questions of the beginning. have been taken to their illogical extremes, but even the savviest, most jaded viewer won't mind going along for the ride. In any case, "it never gets any better than it is right now" seems to be the film's core message. Go, and see if you agree.

Like all good magic, romance builds slow: Hugo

This is definitely one of those cases where your patience will be rewarded.

Martin Scorcese's "departure form Gangland" doesn't seem like much for the first 30 minutes or so. Till that time, the easily grasped plot and sub-plots are stretched almost beyond tolerance; having lost his clockmaker father (Jude Law, making the most of his limited minutes), a boy in 1930s Paris ends up in the train station winding the clocks that direct the trains around which revolve the lives of the extraordinary and the also-rans.

But, he has something else. Hidden away in his gear-filled home is an automaton (wind-up man) bequeathed to him by his father, but in need of repair, in particular the insertion of a heart-shaped wind-up key. This particular metaphor preety much becomes a motif for the entire film, which is considerably enlivened by the presence of  Sasha Baron Cohen as the autocratic yet insecure station inspector (rounding up other orphans and hotly pursuing Hugo); Oscar-winner Ben Kingsley in the role of the crotchety real-life cinema pioneer George Mellies, ruined by WWI and largely forgotten, and most of all, the luminescent Chloe Grace Moretz as Mellies' ward (thus also an orphan) and Hugo's "love interest" in the film - at least as far as pre-teen characters are allowed to have love interests.

The real love letter is revealed though, through a stirring collection of clips, to be Scorcese's, directed at the cinema itself. Through the play of the story, we see George Lloyd's famous "clock-hanging" scene (further recreated by Hugo himself), the Lumiere Brothers early clips, including the train arriving at the station (the train becomes a metaphor in another, more harrowing way, but watch the film for that) and recreations of Mellies famed glass studio and his own pieces.

It looks and feels like magic, but  of course, its partly borrowed, and it may come a little too late amid all the chases and the hand-holding to satisfy some viewers. There's no denying however, that like the wind-up man, the picture turns a few neat little tricks when set on its own.