PARIS (AFP) – Quentin Tarantino shot his movie about wartime France in Germany to save money but now directors like Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese are returning to glamorous Paris thanks to generous tax breaks.

The city has just got a major cinematic outing with the worldwide release of the partly Paris-set sci-fi blockbuster "Inception" and is now set for more celluloid exposure with 20 feature films being shot here this year.

The frenzy of film-making comes after a lacklustre 2009 and is in large part due, say industry officials, to a new 20 percent tax rebate offered for foreign features and television productions.

The rebate, of a maximum four million euros (5.2 million euros), was brought in last year to match a similar scheme in neighbouring Britain and other European countries that made them more attractive locations than France.

"The tax rebate has fully achieved its goal," said Franck Priot of Film France, a state-financed body that seeks to attract international film projects.

That goal is to "generate economic activity and enable foreign filmmakers to film France in France and no longer simulate it elsewhere," he said, without directly referring to Tarantino's 2009 war film "Inglourious Basterds."

Last year, the only major American movie to be shot in Paris was "Inception," whose English director Christopher Nolan filmed in the French capital for just a week in the summer.

But this summer alone, three major US projects are planned.

Allen began shooting his latest work last week, with French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy taking her first major film role in a movie set in the 1920s.

Despite a starry cast including Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard and American talents Owen Wilson and Kathy Bates, pre-publicity for "Midnight in Paris" has focused on the supermodel-turned-singer's big screen debut.

Next month, Scorsese, the Oscar-winning director who made a star of Robert De Niro with "Taxi Driver," begins shooting "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" about a boy who secretly lives in the walls of a 1930s Paris train station.

And pop star Madonna will spend three days here in August to shoot part of her film "W.E.", about Britain's king Edward VIII and the American divorcee for whom he abdicated in 1936.

The major US production company Paramount has meanwhile outsourced special effects for "Thor," a live-action film based on a comic-book superhero, to the French company Buf.

Twenty-two productions have taken advantage of the tax incentive already, resulting in 330 days of shooting and 100 million euros spent on crews and sets, according to industry figures.

Thierry de Segonzac, who heads the French cinema industry trade organisation FICAM, said he believed that the tax break could soon be generating 200 million euros a year in spending by foreign production companies.

Priot of Film France argued that the new tax inventive was merely icing on the cake for what he said was an ideal country in which to make a film.

"In France you have international stars, crews that are admired across the world, a country that fascinates the entire planet ... and special effects and animation studios on the same level as Pixar or Dreamworks," he boasted.

He did however concede that France was lacking a large-scale film studio like Berlin's Babelsberg or Pinewood near London.

That gap is to be filled when France's first modern megastudio, launched by director Luc Besson, opens its doors in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis in 2012.

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A summary of events Monday, July 26, Day 97 of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that began with the April 20 explosion and fire on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean Ltd. and leased by BP PLC, which is in charge of cleanup and containment. The blast killed 11 workers. Since then, oil poured into the Gulf from a blown-out undersea well until BP managed to stanch the leak Thursday — at least temporarily — with a massive, deep-sea cap.

BYE BYE, HAYWARD

BP is jettisoning CEO Tony Hayward, whose verbal blunders made the oil giant's image even worse as it struggled to contain the Gulf oil spill, and will assign him to a key job in Russia, a person familiar with the matter said Monday. Hayward is set to step down in October and take a post at TNK-BP, the company's joint venture in Russia, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not been made by the British company's board.

CLOSING THE WELL

The move was being made more than three months after an oil rig explosion set off the spill and less than two weeks after a temporary cap finally stopped the oil from leaking. The government's oil spill chief, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, said in Washington on Monday that efforts to solidly seal BP's busted deep-sea well are set to begin in a week. Allen said the so-called "static kill" — in which mud and cement are pumped into the top of the well — should start Aug. 2. Because the well is now capped, that effort will be more controlled than a previous failed effort, a "top kill" in which mud was shot into the still-spewing well. A relief well is nearly complete for the final stage, a "bottom kill" in which mud and cement are pumped in from deep underground. Allen said that work could begin Aug. 7 and could take days or weeks, depending on how well the static kill works. Delays are possible, though. Tropical storm forecasts last week forced crews to suspend their work about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast for several days. Allen says he'll order an evacuation again if a similar storm forms.

BABY TURTLES

Hundreds of tiny baby turtles with their dime-sized, paddle-like feet dragged through the sand on Monday heading for a new home in the Gulf of Mexico despite the threat of oil some 400 miles away. Born just days ago, these endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtles were released off the Texas coast to a perilous life fleeing predators — and now also oil from the BP spill. Unlike a decision to move loggerhead turtles in Florida to safer waters, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service decided in June to go ahead with the annual releases of thousands of Kemp's ridley turtles off the coasts of Texas and Mexico. Loggerheads, which mostly nest and hatch in Florida, are being moved to that state's eastern coast to get them out of the oil's path. Federal biologists hope by the time the silver-dollar sized Kemps swim to the spill zone, BP will have cleaned up the toxic gook. They say keeping them in captivity would cause greater harm.

SUCCESSOR

BP executive Robert Dudley, an American who has been overseeing oil spill recovery efforts, is likely to be Hayward's successor. The company's board met Monday but it was unclear whether it had made the change official. A statement was expected early Tuesday, when the company files its second quarter results.

WHAT'S TNK-BP?

It's not yet clear what Hayward's role will be with TNK-BP, but the job suggests BP still holds more faith in Hayward than much of the U.S. public and political establishment do. Analysts consider the Russian venture one of BP's crown jewels; it accounts for a quarter of the company's production and is Russia's third-largest oil firm. Repeated calls to TNK-BP's offices in Moscow went unanswered Monday. BP owns half of the oil firm. Moving Hayward gives insiders who believed he was scapegoated for his off-the-cuff remarks — rather than his performance — a chance to keep a highly trained professional in the company.

BP

In New York, BP shares rose almost 5 percent Monday as the stock market anticipated a formal announcement about Hayward. Shares of BP PLC rose $1.79, or 4.9 percent, to close at $38.65 Monday in New York. BP shares closed up 4.6 percent at 416.95 pence ($6.45) in London. BP's earnings report is expected to include preliminary provisions for the cost of the Gulf disaster, which analysts say could be as high as $30 billion.

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday urged state lawmakers to lobby for House-passed initiatives endangered in the Senate, while Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell complained congressional Democrats were out of touch with voters.

The two leaders gave starkly different assessments of the country's current course in partisan-tinged speeches at the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Their comments to the bipartisan gathering previewed potential election-year attacks by both parties in their struggle for control of Congress.

Pelosi credited last year's $787 billion stimulus package, passed over deep Republican objections, with creating or saving as many as 3.6 million jobs so far. She asserted that more jobs will be created in the first eight months of 2010 than in the eight years of Republican George W. Bush's presidency, though Republicans have frequently disputed those numbers.

"The fact is that those eight years took us into a financial crisis, a deep recession and took us into deep deficits," the California Democrat said.

A short time later, McConnell countered that the massive stimulus "hasn't kept us from losing another 2 1/2 million jobs" with unemployment at 9.5 percent.

The Kentucky Republican cited the stimulus and the landmark health care overhaul as prime examples of "far-reaching pieces of legislation that have been rushed through Congress on a party-line vote in the teeth of public opposition."

"So there's a serious and sustained disconnect between some in Washington and the rest of the country on issues that have major impact on people's lives, and it doesn't appear to be getting any better," McConnell said.

Both congressional leaders occasionally drew sporadic applause.

McConnell also ridiculed the federal response to the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the stimulus program, saying, "What about either one of those makes you want to give more power to Washington?"

Pelosi urged continued investments in education, energy efficiency and health care — which she called "the pillars of stability in this budget." She credited the stimulus program with putting people to work on transportation projects like rebuilding roads.

On that front, the speaker exhorted state lawmakers to take up the fight to renew elements of last year's stimulus bill. She touted such House-passed initiatives as giving states more money for Medicaid — the public health care program for the poor — and another measure injecting $10 billion in grants to school districts to avoid teacher layoffs.

Pelosi said those initiatives can ease the budget problems many states face, but she warned the measures won't pass without support from some Senate Republicans. Dozens of House-passed measures have stalled in the Senate.

She said as many as 30 states have based their budgets on the expectation that Congress will pass a six-month extension of increased federal spending on Medicaid.

"You are the most eloquent and persuasive voices on this subject," she told state lawmakers. "You know best why this is necessary."

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