Film Review: Oxygen

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Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Wednesday, 05 May 2021 21:25

Written by Gilbert Seah

OXYGEN (France/USA 2021) **1/2
Directed by Alexandr Aja

French horror helmer alexander Aja has made quite a name for himself in horror movies with his brand of exquisite colourful bloody horror.  His most famous works include THE HILLS HAVE EYES and HAUTE TENSION.  In his new horror outing, OXYGEN, a Netflix original film, he is given a bigger budget with a sci-fi premise.

A woman wakes up in a cryogenics pod.  She has apparently not remembered anything of her past especially not how she got there.  She breaks out of his mucky suit and tries to escape what she thinks has been forcible confinement or even a kidnapping.  The thing is that the oxygen level is low - and hence the title of the movie.  At one point in the movie, the lab computer MILO announces: Oxygen is at a level of 29%, Probability of Survival is zero.  The suspense is set high.  The woman, later disclosed to be Elizabeth Hansen (Mélanie Laurent) has to figure out a way to escape before the oxygen levels reaches zero.

Director Aja is limited in having to make a large portion of the film about one woman in a confined space.  He brings the audience out into the open with a few beautifully shot flashback scenes when Elizabeth reminisces the past, trying to recall her life with her husband.  Aja’s limitations can be observed in the middle fo the film when it starts to lag, because of lack of material.

The special effects are nothing too fancy but sufficiently convincing for the audience to believe the setting of the film.  Cyrogenics is the production and behaviour of materials at extremely low temperatures, which has nothing to do with the film though Elizabeth is supposedly woken up in a cryogenics laboratory.

To Aja’s credit, he has included a number of appropriately scary images - a few of these psychologically horrific.  The first is the image of a white mouse in a maze that appears to be going on forever.  If the mouse makes it around one corner, it will encounter and another and another and another - the camera pulling back to reveal an initiate number of possibilities in the maze.  The sight of a sharp needle especially one attached from a syringe is a sight that will make anyone cringe.  Aja has Elizabeth wrestle the arm of a machine programmed to inject with a needle into her eye.  White rats dying and a grey blob mucky substance include other scary images that Aja uses.

Netflix has asked reviewers not to reveal the discoveries Mélanie Laurent’s character makes about herself, aside from her name nor the location of the action beside that it taking place in a cryogenic unit - two solid twists in the plot.
Director Aja’s hefty aims of a sci-fi horror sinks under its lofty goals. The shift from a claustrophobic entrapment thriller to a sci-fi thriller, the unsatisfying film also suffers from a tacked on happy ending.

OXYGEN is a Netflix original and as all Netflix films can be viewed in different languages.  As OXYEGN is filmed originally in French, it is best viewed in French with English subtitles, if need be.  OXYGEN is available ob Netflix May the 12th.

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Production de déclarations de revenus si vous avez reçu des prestations liées à la COVID-19

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Category: Finances

Published: Monday, 03 May 2021 09:35

Written by Édition Nouvelles

(EN) Si, l’an dernier, vous avez reçu une aide financière du gouvernement en raison de la pandémie, votre situation fiscale pourrait sembler un peu différente cette année.

De nombreux Canadiens ont reçu une ou plusieurs nouvelles prestations d’urgence et de soutien, dont notamment la populaire Prestation canadienne d’urgence (PCU).

Certains bénéficiaires pourraient maintenant être tenus de payer de l’impôt sur ces prestations, selon leur situation personnelle, le type de prestations d’urgence reçues et les autres sources de revenus, de déductions ou de crédits.

De quoi ai-je besoin pour me préparer?Vous devez tout d’abord rassembler vos documents fiscaux. Selon la façon dont vous avez demandé des prestations, vous recevrez par la poste un feuillet T4A ou T4E (émis par Service Canada).

Vous devriez recevoir un feuillet T4 de votre employeur si vous étiez employé en 2020. Si vous êtes un étudiant de niveau postsecondaire, votre établissement vous remettra également la déclaration T2202, soit le Certificat pour frais de scolarité et d’inscription.

Rassemblez tous les documents que vous pourriez avoir liés à des choses comme le déménagement, le bureau à domicile (si vous ne pouvez pas utiliser la nouvelle méthode simplifiée), ou les dépenses médicales. Utilisez ces registres pour réclamer des déductions et des crédits.

Comment produire une déclaration La façon la plus rapide de traiter votre déclaration est de la soumettre en ligne. L’Agence du revenu du Canada offre une liste de produits logiciels homologués dont certains sont gratuits, et vous pouvez les utiliser pour produire votre déclaration de revenus en ligne. Un logiciel approuvé vous aide à remplir et à envoyer votre déclaration afin que vous viviez une expérience simple, rapide et sécuritaire.

Des versions papier sont toujours disponibles, mais des retards pourraient survenir dans la réception de votre avis de cotisation en raison de la pandémie de COVID-19. Si vous avez produit votre déclaration sur papier l’an dernier, une nouvelle trousse d’impôt sur le revenu pour 2020 vous a déjà été envoyée par la poste.

Vous pouvez également profiter du Programme communautaire des bénévoles en matière d’impôt qui organise gratuitement des comptoirs d’impôts virtuels pour les personnes ayant un revenu modeste et dont la situation fiscale est simple.

Que dois-je faire si je dois payer de l’impôt?Si vous avez des impôts à payer pour 2020, l’Agence peut collaborer avec vous pour trouver la meilleure option pour votre situation. Elle peut aussi vous accorder plus de temps et de souplesse pour que vous puissiez effectuer le remboursement en fonction de votre capacité de payer.

Si vous pouvez seulement faire un paiement partiel, ce n’est pas grave. Les options d’entente de paiement ont été élargies afin de tenir compte des défis posés par la pandémie.

Pour en savoir plus, allez à canada.ca/impots.

Vidéo: La prochaine étape dans nos efforts pour mettre fin à la pandémie

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Category: Communauté - Community

Published: Monday, 03 May 2021 10:12

Written by Édition Nouvelles

Les vaccins contre la COVID 19 sont sûrs et efficaces, et ils constituent l’un des meilleurs moyens de se protéger contre ce virus.

Film Review: Les Parfums

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Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Wednesday, 21 April 2021 17:48

Written by Gilbert Seah

LES PARFUMS (Perfumes) (France 2019) ***1/2

Directed by Gregory Magne

Emmanuelle Devos (my favourite French actress) plays a nose in the latest French comedy LES PARFUMS.  She admits the fact to her chauffeur in the film when asked what she does for a living.  “Je suit un nez” comes her reply.  As odd as it might seem in English, the term nose is a common term in French.  Ir essentially means ‘perfumer’ in English.

LES PARFUMS is a charming comedy about two people who are as different as they have similarities.  The two are the nose, Anne Walberg and her reluctant driver, Guillaume (Gregory Montel).

Anne Walberg is a fallen diva.   Devos plays her perfectly to the ’t’.  She seems quite curt and aloof at first.  With her bourgeois streak, one might find her haughty.  But it is something else entirely. A kind of withdrawnness, a difficulty to communicate.   Devos brings the audience brilliantly into her character, making her sympathetic despite her misbehaviour.

Guillaume, on the other hand. is going through a rough patch in his personal life.   He is breaking up with his wife and must sort out the issue of his daughter’s custody.  He wants to have the daughter half the time, but his lodgings do not permit it.  He needs to earn money to get a bigger place before the judge allows him custody.   Socially, it is quite the opposite from Anne. He feels comfortable in any kind of situation, no matter who he is talking to.  Even a little too comfortable.   Which is bound to arouse his client’s curiosity.  From Anne Walberg’s perspective, it almost makes Guillaume her bodyguard.   He does save her bag from being snatched only to be scolded for the deed.  “What if the snatcher carried a knife?”  She admonishes.  She has a good nose but he has flair.  She gets to use it, and sometimes to hide behind it. Guillaume lacks all the qualities required to be a professional chauffeur, but he is good at reading people. He lacks patience, deference.

The two characters play off each other beautifully.

Near the end of the film, she is visited by Professor Ballester in hospital.  Apparently, she had accidentally taken too heavy a dose of sleeping pills.  The chauffeur helped bring her to the hospital as well as contacting the professor.  It is here that the audience is introduced to the term ‘anosia’ a term I have never heard of before.  Anosia, Ballester explains., is the partial or complete loss of smell.  I looked it up on Wikipedia and the condition and word definition exists.  How little we (or I) know.  There is some truth in this fictional tale of LES PARFUMS.

There is a segment in the film where Anne is hired to smell out a cave in order to replicate it - odour-wise for the tourist industry of the region.  This concept is not so far-fetched as can be observed in Werner Herzog’s documentary CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS where the identical idea was introduced.

The film’s premise may seem superfluous.  But like the story’s two eccentric subjects, the film shares their charm.  Misfortune may turn to benefit and a simple film premise may similarly turn into an endearing and charming piece of entertainment.

Trailer: