Larry Ellison, the co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle Corp., is a fierce competitor, to put it mildly. This is a man who helped build a $177-billion company, and who likes to unwind by funding ludicrous hydrofoiling racing catamarans.

Increasingly, Ellison’s company is competing with the cloud computing wing of Amazon.com Inc., and he does it with zeal. Oracle funded an anti-Amazon group called the “Free and Fair Markets Initiative” to attack the rival. Oracle also worked desperately to derail Amazon’s bid for JEDI, a lucrative Defense Department cloud contract, going so far as to sue the federal government, alleging it illegally favored Amazon.

Now, Ellison is making friends with his enemy’s enemy, who happens to be the president of the United States. On Wednesday, Ellison will host a fundraiser for President Trump at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Top contributors are expected to shell out $250,000 for a photo, a golf outing and a round-table discussion.

Click Here: IQOS White

Trump has his own issues with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive officer, who also owns the Washington Post. The paper’s coverage has consistently enraged the president, and Trump has made no secret of his dislike for Bezos, Amazon or the Post. Perhaps most delightfully to Ellison, the president articulated his desire to “screw Amazon” and block it from the JEDI contract, according to a book written by a former speechwriter for the secretary of Defense.

Late last year, Amazon lost JEDI to Microsoft, though a court on Thursday froze the contract as Amazon pursues a lawsuit against the government. Amazon is now the one accusing the government of political bias, citing the very public record on the matter.

Is Ellison’s interest in Trump inspired by their shared contempt for Bezos? Who knows? On the one hand, it’s not out of character for Ellison to raise money for Republicans. He backed Marco Rubio in 2016.

Then again, backing Trump is uniquely controversial. Recode called Ellison “one of Silicon Valley’s most eccentric and independent-minded leaders,” observing that those traits might make him immune to “blowback” from Oracle workers. Silicon Valley workers in general have become more activist; in November 2018 Google employees walked out over the company’s sexual harassment policies.

It will be interesting to see who else — if anyone — from the Silicon Valley elite follows Ellison. If Sen. Bernie Sanders keeps racking up wins in the Democratic primary, will the capitalists in tech really support a self-proclaimed democratic socialist? Founders Fund partner Keith Rabois has said he’d vote for Trump over Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has proposed breaking up the big tech platforms. (Rank-and-file tech employees, meanwhile, seem happy to support Sanders, who received more money in political contributions from employees at big tech companies than any other presidential candidate in the last three months of 2019.)

In 2016, Rabois’ colleague Peter Thiel bet on Trump. He spoke in Trump’s support at the Republican National Convention. Thiel was basically alone in Silicon Valley in supporting the nominee that no one thought would win, but he continued to support the president in the face of near-universal disdain from the rest of the tech industry. That bet clearly brought Thiel closer to the president. In October, Thiel and Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg dined at the White House.

Even when a president is unpopular with your employees, staying close to power has big benefits for business leaders. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has quietly kept the lines open to the president. Earlier this year, some tech industry bigwigs, including Marc Andreessen, the prominent venture capitalist; Sarah Friar, the chief executive of Nextdoor.com Inc.; and Gregory Becker, the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank; dined with Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo. A person familiar with the dinner told Bloomberg at the time that it was an attempt to drum up support for the Trump administration.

If people in Silicon Valley are coming around on Trump, they’re keeping it quiet for now. There are clearly risks associated with aligning with the president. But the owners of multibillion-dollar companies are well aware of potential benefits. And if they think he’s going to win, they could see risks to staying away, too.

View this post on Instagram

The Daniel Patrick x James Harden @adidashoops collab is available now Link in bio!

A post shared by DANIEL PATRICK (@danielpatrick_) on Feb 14, 2020 at 7:10am PST

To that extent, his sporting uniform gave him an early appreciation for the power of clothing — how what you wear instantly conveys who you are. “Like for ice hockey, we had a lot of gear … that was an expensive one for my parents,” Patrick said with a laugh.

Eventually Patrick’s vision for a clothing label usurped his dreams of athletic greatness, and he dropped rugby to attend a local fashion school for a short while to learn the basics of the profession. His original plan was to launch his own label in New York. However, a detour to Los Angeles changed everything.

Despite growing up in another part of the world, the U.S. loomed large in his mind. “I was always into hip-hop and rap music and American culture,” he added.

He was instantly attracted to L.A. “The weather’s nice here,” he said. “There’s that celebrity culture here. In the last five or six years, some of the top men’s streetwear brands are coming out of L.A. So it kind of worked out to be a good choice.”

Along with the influence of early-’90s aesthetics, Patrick’s design work is infused with other touchstones from his adolescence. They range from the outré fashion experiments that David Beckham dabbled in decades ago when he first met Victoria Beckham (which sent tongues wagging and paparazzi cameras flashing) to Sean “Diddy” Combs’ braggadocio, which the musician channeled into his fashion label Sean John.

Patrick’s background on the sports field also served him in several ways. For one, it instilled in him a powerful work ethic.

He also has taken classic sports apparel — nylon warm-up suits, oversized basketball shorts and team jerseys — and updated it with eye-popping neon colors, retro logos or funky riffs on familiar patterns such as camouflage and bleached-out tie-dye.

Patrick’s clothes have a relaxed vibe that’s somewhere between athleisure and streetwear, which might be attractive to L.A.’s creative class. After all, for the last decade formal menswear codes have eroded. In some circles, the suit, the dress shoe and the crisp black T-shirt have largely been replaced by more casual fare, and Daniel Patrick, the brand, encapsulates the new, more laid-back menswear uniform of the moment.

“I’m there on the pulse,” he said when asked about his design process. “It happens a lot where I’ll think, ‘I’m going to do neon,’ and then the next season I see all this neon.”

During a visit last year to his headquarters in downtown’s Fashion District, a classic industrial loft-like space, mannequins were dressed in pieces from the fall 2019 collection, which included slouchy camo cargo pants or outerwear with paneled inserts. “I’ll get an idea about something, and it’s just in the air,” Patrick said. “It’s instinctive to some degree. ”

Patrick founded his brand right around the time Instagram began to gain popularity. He leveraged the platform to make inroads with new, digitally native consumers and has been able to catch the rising tide of streetwear as it continues to sweep through the menswear market.

However, the designer still remembers his tough early years when he was just scraping by, hoping to sell a jacket to make rent. However, he said he stayed hopeful about the future, in part because of the early support from influential L.A. boutiques H. Lorenzo and Traffic.

Now his brand has gained momentum in the affluent Asian market. One of the associates at Patrick’s Melrose Avenue shop uses the Chinese social media-messaging-payment app WeChat to sell clothing to customers there. The designer also said he had been eyeing that market for a possible expansion.

Downstairs from Patrick’s office is where samples are made and the majority of his production takes place. It’s not only convenient to design a piece and have it made just a few feet away, but it also gives the whole enterprise a quaint feel. Among the whir of machines and piles of freshly-made sweatshirts and track pants, Patrick can survey his growing empire.

“I like the idea of Ralph Lauren, how he’s created a lifestyle brand,” Patrick said, listing his goal of having an expanded footwear collection with Adidas, including his own silhouettes as well as a network of stores in China.

If that sounds somewhat audacious, Patrick said he has to dream big to make it big.

“Like, when I was playing rugby, I wanted to be the best player in the world,” he said. “That’s kind of how a kid thinks, right? That sort of thinking stops a bit when you’re an adult. As an athlete, you know your limitations but you can also work harder than anyone else. It’s ballsy to say, ‘Oh, I want to be a billion-dollar business in five years.’ But if you aim for that, you may not do it in five years, but it could happen in 10 years.

“If you aim low, that’s where you’ll land,” Patrick said. “You’ve got to shoot a little higher, yeah. You’ve got to aim high.”

Click Here: IQOS White

I stared at the text one more time, turning my phone slightly as if reading it from a different angle would give me some kind of clarity.

Hey I’ve been thinking a lot. I’m not ready to be in a relationship again. I just never got a chance to heal from my last relationship. I tried to push it aside and move on, but it’s affecting me.

It had been three months since J. and I met on Hinge, and things were going unusually well.

After a solid two-year streak of picking emotionally unavailable guys — the ones I would catch on Tinder despite being “exclusive,” the ones who didn’t want to put a label on things after seven months, the ones who didn’t tell me they were separated but still married — J. was a refreshing change.

I thought back to that Dodgers game we went to. It was only our third date, and he deleted Hinge in front of me without me asking him to. (And not just deleting the app off his phone; actually going into the app to deactivate it, a true knight in shining armor.)

“You really don’t have to do that,” I said, not wanting to scare him off.

“Well, I don’t need it anymore because I have you,” he replied, grabbing my hand.

We were spending three days out of each week together. It didn’t matter what it was — window shopping in Beverly Hills, walking on the pier in my hometown of Hermosa Beach, or sitting in traffic on the 110 — we just liked being with each other.

When I told a group of girlfriends J. had been cheated on by his ex just four weeks before we’d met, they weren’t concerned.

“We can tell he likes you,” they said. “Four weeks is enough time to get over it.”

So his text came as a surprise and really didn’t make sense to me. Why did it take him three months to realize he wasn’t over his ex? Why wasn’t I enough to make him forget about her?

There were questions there that couldn’t be answered with the explanation he had given me. Which leads me to one logical conclusion: This text was total BS.

It was clearly a lame cover-up for some other thing wrong in the relationship. Maybe I wasn’t fit enough, or maybe he didn’t like that one time I got too drunk in front of his friends. Maybe his brother didn’t like me?

I was driving to work on the 405, still thinking about it. What could be the real reason? Why would he choose to glaze over it with this mushy, polite text instead of saying what he meant? And why did I care so much? Did it even matter?

The relationship was over.

My mind kept going back to one thought, though: I wish he had just ghosted me.

When you date someone for three whole months in your late 20s, an in-person breakup is probably warranted, or at least a phone call.

But ghosting gets a worse rap than it deserves.

As both a former ghoster and a ghostee, I find it way more merciful than a text filled with stupid excuses. It’s a clean break. It leaves breakup victims with an open-ended finality that gives them the power to fill in the blanks while providing enough fault on the other person’s end to allow everyone to move on quickly. In a sentence: “He must’ve just stopped talking to me because he didn’t really like me. What a jerk.”

By then, I’d missed my exit and was trying to get back onto the freeway somewhere near Culver City. New plan: I was getting Tito’s Tacos.

As I waited in line at the tiny stand, my mind went back to the men I’ve ghosted. Most of them got the hint. Some of them kept sending texts, demanding my rationale for the silence. But the silence is the answer.

If I don’t care enough to even move my fingers to reply to your text, I’m not worth it anyway. There’s no uncertainty there. In that way, ghosting is a more authentic breakup than a superficial explanation in a breakup text.

It doesn’t serve me well at all to know I wasn’t enough to make you get over your cheating ex and that it took you over 20 dates to determine that, like I didn’t pass some test. That doesn’t provide me with any kind of closure, so why say anything at all?

Save me the “It’s not you, it’s me” cliches to spare my feelings. My feelings are going to be hurt during a breakup either way. Might as well cut it off so there’s no further communication to dissect and painfully analyze.

The best kind of breakups are the ones where there are no more words left to say, whether it was your choice or not.

I got to the front of the line and the cashier asked me what I’d like to order.

“Two chicken tacos,” I say. “And do you happen to have a boyfriend for me back there too?”

He’s unsure how to reply and goes silent. I smile.

The writer is a journalist and author of several books, including “Everyone’s Been Hacked!” and “Becoming a Networking Ninja.” She is on Instagram @danielleradinMMJ

Straight, gay, bisexual, transgender or nonbinary: L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for love in and around Los Angeles — and we want to hear your story. You must allow your name to be published, and the story you tell has to be true. We pay $300 for each essay we publish. Email us at [email protected]. You can find submission guidelines here.

NEW YORK — 

A second wave of flu is hitting the U.S., turning this into one of the nastiest seasons for children in a decade.

The number of child deaths and the hospitalization rate for youngsters are the highest seen at this point in any season since the severe flu outbreak of 2009-10, health officials said Friday. And the wave is expected to keep going for weeks.

Experts say it is potentially a bad time for an extended flu season, given concerns about the new coronavirus out of China, which can cause symptoms that can be difficult to distinguish from flu without testing.

If coronavirus were to begin spreading in the U.S., there could be confusion about whether people are getting sick with it or the flu, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-diseases expert at Vanderbilt University.

This flu season got off to its earliest start in 15 years, with surges of flu-like illnesses seen in parts of the South as early as October. Most cases were caused by a type of flu that usually causes substantial infections only in the spring, at the tail end of the flu season.

That wave peaked in late December and dropped steadily for weeks afterward.

But a second surge began in late January. Last week saw another rise in the percentage of doctor’s office visits that were due to flu-like illness, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We have not yet peaked for influenza. We are still on our way up,” Dr. David Weber, a University of North Carolina infectious-diseases specialist, said of the patient traffic in Chapel Hill.

Overall, the CDC estimated that 26 million Americans have gotten sick with flu this past fall and winter, with about 250,000 flu-related hospitalizations and around 14,000 deaths.

The viruses behind both waves can be hard on children and young adults. But they aren’t considered as dangerous to retirement-age people — good news, since most flu deaths and hospitalizations each winter occur in the elderly.

In fact, the overall death and hospitalization rates this season are not high “because we haven’t seen the elderly as involved in this flu season,” said the CDC’s Lynnette Brammer.

But 92 flu-related deaths have already been reported in children, a higher total at this point of the year than in any season in the past decade. And the hospitalization rates also are far higher than what’s been seen at this point.

The CDC said the reason is that two strains of the flu that are tough on children are spreading in the same season.

The health agency is expected to release an estimate next week of how effective the flu vaccine has been.

So far, only 15 U.S. cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed, and no deaths. All but two of the cases were in people who had traveled to Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the international outbreak. The remaining two were spread from travelers to their spouses.

Schaffner said that for the time being, it is easy to determine a likely coronavirus case by asking about a patient’s travel history.

It’s possible that concern about the coronavirus has led some people with flu symptoms to go to the doctor for testing this year, whereas they might have just stayed home in other years, Brammer said. But there is nothing in CDC data that shows that’s been happening, she added.

Click Here: habitat tord boontje

Still, it’s OK if it does happen, said the CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier.

“People being a little worried and seeking care doesn’t especially worry me, because that’s the point. We’re looking for broader spread within the community,” she said.

To that end, health officials will be using five public health labs that usually test for flu to start checking also for coronavirus. The labs are in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. When a specimen tests negative for flu, it will then be tested for coronavirus, Messonnier said.

The way Marcelo Cwerner tells it, he was leading a boat tour last fall near the village of Alter do Chão, a popular spot for tourists in the Brazilian Amazon, when he spotted a large column of smoke billowing from the forest.

He grabbed his cellphone to alert other members of the volunteer fire brigade he served on, and found out they were already on their way.

For the next four days, Cwerner ferried dozens of firefighters in and out of the area until they finally extinguished the flames.

Despite the victory, the state police did not view him or the other volunteers as heroes.
Two months later, in the early dawn of Nov. 26, officers arrived at his home with a search warrant. They confiscated his computer, cellphone and other items and arrested him on suspicion of setting the very fires he had helped put out.

State police allege that Cwerner, 36, was part of a conspiracy to disseminate images of the fires with the aim of generating international sympathy and attracting donations for the brigade and the Health and Joy Project, an affiliated nonprofit whose headquarters were also raided by authorities.

Lawyers for Cwerner and the three other volunteer firefighters arrested that day say there is no evidence to support that theory and that the investigation is part of a larger crackdown on critics of the government’s policies regarding the Amazon.

Click Here: Putters

President Jair Bolsonaro took office in early 2019 promising to give agribusiness more opportunity to exploit to the world’s largest rainforest, which was already being cleared at increasing rates for logging, mining, farming and grazing cattle.

He has framed the issue as one of national sovereignty and shown contempt for outsiders who point out that the forest serves the entire world as a massive sink for planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Last summer, as fires were raging and French President Emmanuel Macron called on wealthy nations to help put them out, Bolsonaro demanded an apology and rejected offers of international aid.

Some of his worst scorn has been reserved for nongovernmental organizations, which often team up with indigenous communities to protect the Amazon.

During his campaign for president, he vowed that such NGOS would get no government funding and that indigenous communities would not get “one centimeter” of protected land.

Though scientists have attributed the fires in the Amazon to efforts to clear forest for farming and other uses, Bolsonaro has suggested that NGOs could be setting the fires in retaliation for losing funds under his administration.

The morning after police in the state of Pará arrested the brigadistas, as the volunteer firefighters are known, Bolsonaro tweeted: “In October, I declared that many fires could be linked to NGOs. Now the Pará police are arresting some suspects for the crime.”

That same day, federal prosecutors investigating the fires issued a news release stating that they found no evidence that “pointed to the participation of brigadiers or civil society organizations.”

Two days after the firefighters were arrested, the same local judge who authorized the “preventive detention” of the brigadistas determined it was no longer necessary and released the four men while the investigation continued.

They walked out of jail with shaved heads holding hands and were greeted by their families and television cameras.

Police in Pará say the evidence against the firefighters includes wiretaps as well as a video that purportedly shows members of the brigade starting a fire.

The video, according to the police, was discovered on YouTube but has since been taken down and was not shared with the media.

Aliança, a network of pro-bono attorneys who are defending Cwerner and his colleagues, says it has not been shown any of the evidence.

The nonprofit Instituto Aquífero, which oversees the fire brigade and whose budget was managed by Cwerner, told the Brazilian news portal G1 that the video may be part of a training activity on “control burns,” which are used to contain wildfires.

Beto Vasconcelos, a former national secretary of justice who founded the defense network, said the case has implications far beyond the lives of the firefighters.

“If these arrests can happen to white, middle-class Brazilians, they can happen to anyone,” he said.

Also drawn into the conflict is the Brazilian branch of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, better known as the WWF. After the firefighters were released, Bolsonaro told reporters that actor Leonardo DiCaprio supplied the group with money “to torch the Amazon.”

Police say payments that the Brazilian WWF made to the fire brigade were for photographs of the the fires. But the WWF issued a statement saying the money was for firefighting equipment.

The WWF and DiCaprio also denied that the actor had made a donation. In an Instagram post, he said: “While worthy of support, we did not fund the organizations targeted.”

The Pará state government released a statement calling the investigation into the firefighters an “isolated episode, which does not disrupt the conduct of hundreds of NGOs working together with the government of Pará.”

NGOs, it added, “are fundamental for the preservation of forests in the State.”

As for Cwerner, he and his wife and their two young sons left Alter do Chão and moved back to São Paulo, where they are from. For now, he’s hired a small team to keep his boat tour and hospitality company running while he manages it remotely.

Cwerner and his colleagues, who were forced to hand over their passports when they were freed from jail, are required to appear in court every month in São Paulo and to remain in their homes at night unless they’re working.

Police have not said when they expect to conclude the investigation. Once that happens, public prosecutors will decide whether to press charges against Cwerner and his colleagues, who could face up to five years in prison if convicted of damaging “environmental protection areas.”

As the case has dragged on, he has tried to find comfort in the attention it has drawn to the destruction of the Amazon.

“I now understand that my mission just got wider,” he said.

EAST POINT, Ga. — 

Three people were shot and wounded on Valentine’s Day at a restaurant just outside Atlanta that’s owned by singer and “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star Kandi Burruss.

A man entered the Old Lady Gang restaurant on Friday night and targeted another man, East Point police Capt. Allyn Glover told news outlets. Police say that two bystanders were also shot, and that none of the victims’ injuries were life-threatening.

The shooter wasn’t in custody, Glover said.

The names and ages of the people injured weren’t immediately released.

Serving Southern cuisine, Old Lady Gang is owned by Burruss and her husband, Todd Tucker, and named after Burruss’ mother and two aunts, according to the restaurant’s website. The first restaurant opened in Atlanta in 2016, and the East Point location — in a large shopping complex about 5 miles west of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport — followed in 2018. There’s also an outpost at the Atlanta Hawks’ home, State Farm Arena.

Burruss has been a cast member on “Real Housewives of Atlanta” since its second season in 2009 and met Tucker, a former line producer, on the show. She’s appeared on other shows, including the 2019 iteration of “Big Brother: Celebrity Edition.” She became famous in the 1990s as a member of the R&B group Xscape and co-wrote TLC’s hit “No Scrubs.”

Click Here: Golf special

Looking to increase funding for local quarantine operations connected to novel coronavirus, San Diego county public health officials declared health and local emergencies Friday afternoon.

The action, which must be ratified by the county supervisors on Feb. 19, is similar to one taken by the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors on Feb. 3 and renewed for an additional 30 days on Feb. 10. If approved, it would help the county seek state reimbursement for examining, testing and following up with people in the community who are at increased risk of corona infection and also make it easier to request help from other government agencies.

County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher emphasized that formally calling the current situation — one in which there is no evidence that the virus is spreading locally — an emergency does not mean anything has changed on the ground. Today, the only two confirmed cases of novel coronavirus, which the medical community has taken to calling COVID-19, are two people who arrived in San Diego last week on evacuation flights out of China and who have been sitting in isolation rooms at UC San Diego Health facilities since they started showing symptoms.

“To be clear, today’s action does not signify any increase in risk to the residents of San Diego County,” Fletcher said.

Click Here: cheap all stars rugby jersey

It’s not the first time that the county has declared a local health emergency to help it process an infectious disease threat. On Sept. 1, 2017, the county board made a similar declaration during a local hepatitis A outbreak that killed 20 and sickened nearly 600. In that case, the county used additional authority to order the City of San Diego to begin an aggressive street-cleaning effort and direct and fund a massive hepatitis A vaccination effort which saw the outbreak recede within just a few months.

Though the hepatitis outbreak and the current coronavirus situation have an emergency declaration in common, they’re far from the same.

Hepatitis A is vaccine preventable but was spreading throughout the community, bridging from the homeless to intravenous drug users and striking some outside those communities along the way. By comparison, there is no evidence that a single case of novel coronavirus has spread from one person to another in the region.

PARIS — 

France’s health minister announced the first coronavirus death in Europe on Saturday.

Agnes Buzyn said, “I was informed last night of the death of an 80-year-old patient who had been hospitalized … since Jan. 25.”

The patient, a Chinese tourist from the province of Hubei, had a lung infection caused by the COVID-19 virus. He arrived in France on Jan. 16, then was hospitalized on Jan. 25 under strict isolation measures. His condition deteriorated rapidly, French officials said.

His daughter was also hospitalized but authorities said she is expected to recover.

Europe has 46 cases of the virus that first emerged in central China in December. Nine European nations have reported cases, with Germany having the most at 16.

The virus has infected more than 67,000 people globally and has killed at least 1,527, the vast majority in China. The World Health Organization has called the virus a threat to global health.

Chinese authorities have placed some 60 million people under a strict lockdown, built emergency hospitals and instituted controls across the country to fight the spread of the virus. Restaurants, cinemas and other businesses have been closed nationwide and sports and cultural events have been canceled to prevent crowds from gathering.

The former Villans defender concedes that a talented playmaker will need a move to fulfil his potential, but Old Trafford is not his only option

Jack Grealish is likely to have already made a decision on his future, says Alan Hutton, with a player who is capable of playing “anywhere” not guaranteed to trade Aston Villa for Manchester United.

The Red Devils continue to be heavily linked with the 24-year-old playmaker.

He is considered to have been made a top transfer target for those at Old Trafford ahead of the summer, with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer still in the market for added creativity.

Ils ont été inséparables. Ils se sont aimés. Puis, sans que personne ne s’y attende, ils ont divorcé. Deux ans après sa séparation avec Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel se livre sur ce moment difficile.

Monica Bellucci et Vincent Cassel. Deux noms associés dans l’esprit des Français durant près de deux décennies. Pourtant, en août 2013, après 18 années de vie commune et 14 ans de mariage, le couple annonce son divorce. L’amour que les deux comédiens portent à Deva et Léonie, leurs deux filles, ne suffit malheureusement pas à préserver leur union. Deux ans après cette rupture inattendue, Vincent Cassel se confie à Paris Match et aborde la période qui a succédé à ce moment clé.

Pas de fanfaronnade du côté de l’interprète de Vinz, dans la Haine. Aucune de ces phrases clichées sur l’homme finalement libéré de la tyrannie de sa femme. Vincent Cassel l’avoue franchement, cette période a été compliquée. Il a voulu l’oublier, et plutôt que de se réfugier dans la drogue ou dans l’alcool, l’acteur s’est plongé corps et âme dans son métier. « Ce n’est pas un hasard si j’ai autant tourné l’année dernière, indique-t-il. C’était un moment difficile ». Il enchaîne donc les projets et cela fonctionne. Il n’y a qu’à jeter un œil à la 68e édition du festival de Cannes pour en avoir le cœur net. Deux de ses films y sont présentés en sélection officielle: Mon Roi, de Maïwenn et Tale of Tales de Matteo Garrone. “J’ai voulu revenir à l’essentiel. J’avais besoin de m’occuper, de me rassurer. Il fallait que je remette les pieds dans mes chaussures. Ça m’a fait du bien. Jouer reste passionnant. C’est un moment organique, étrange. Un moment de solitude et d’intimité”.

La solitude, son ex-épouse l’a également ressentie au moment de leur rupture. « Je me suis pris une porte dans la figure », racontait-elle en début d’année à la même publication. Malgré cela, Monica Bellucci et Vincent Cassel sont restés proches et ne s’étripent jamais par médias interposés. “L’amour est toujours là, explique la comédienne. Simplement, il prend une autre forme.” Alors oui, malgré leur rupture Monica le clame haut et fort : « Nous sommes restés amis et nous le resterons toujours ». Quant à l’aspect professionnel, l’héroïne de Malena n’est pas en reste. Elle tourne en effet actuellement aux côtés de Daniel Craig et de Christophe Waltz dans les toutes nouvelles aventures de James Bond : Spectre. Rien que ça.

Découvrez la bande-annonce d’Enfant 44, le dernier long métrage de Vincent Cassel

Crédits photos : Lionel Guericolas / VISUAL Press Agency

Click Here: liverpool mens jersey