Lilly's log - French, Russian, Spanish and Italian

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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Fri May 05, 2017 8:19 am

Systematiker wrote:El tiempo entre costuras was the first thing I watched when I started working on Spanish again last year. I never read the book, but the series gets a bit better, she grows a backbone and starts to take a little more charge of her life.


Yay, that gives me a little hope! So far her naive way of dealing with her problems infuriates me in every episode!

Systematiker wrote:I also watched all of Cable Girls - I suspect you won't like it, because the characters are pretty much stock and the plot is thoroughly predictable. I enjoyed it in part because precisely that it such a brainless downtime watch. El Pais panned it for having little originality, and they were right. Odd music choices, too. Again, I liked it, but I think I want something else out of video media than you do


Oh my, if even El Pais expects more from TV, then it must be really brainless ;) You're right, I think we have different expectations. I rarely watch mindless entertainment, because it feels like a waste of time when there are so many thoroughly good things out there. I think I was 16 when I had the feeling for the first time that a whole lifetime won't be enough to read all the good books and watch all the good movies / series. University libraries give me anxiety attacks because I can't really read much more than 20,000 pages a year and only have a limited number of years on this planet. I didn't even scratch the surface of the video library of my old Film Studies department, although I watched one excellent movie a day for like a year. Basically I leave the mindless entertainment for those days when I'm really burnt out. Series are more of a daily thing though so it's somewhat painful when they stay totally predictable and ridiculous. And I already have much more tolerance there than my husband who really starts to suffer a lot if something is too "colourful". I usually only watch them in other languages though so that it's productive at least for language learning.

At the same time I think that I also have the problem of using the yardstick for the really good stuff on little silly local productions that simply don't have the ambition to be good, probably one of those moments where knowing too much about certain things ruins the enjoyment. I must remember that Spanish series are usually produced for the average ama de casa between cleaning sessions or teenagers and unemployed young people who watch everything that flickers without discernment.

I think TV is particularly bad here because this society has always been particularly conservative and bent on always making the wrong decisions. A good but somewhat depressing overview over the succession of bad decisions in Spanish history can be found in Juan Goytisolo's España y los españoles. Somewhat cynical perhaps, but very true. And Spanish decisions haven't become any better since the book was published (1979). And those are of course mainly the decisions of men, because well, Spain! It gets even more depressing when one considers the role of women in Spanish society - the main audience for TV series. The lady next door washes clothes 5 times a week and at any moment during the day I can look out of the window and see at least one lady cleaning her balcony. They do that every single day! I mean, seriously, how dirty can things get in one day? And the majority of them are middle aged women, so there are no small children who make things dirty all the time! Women around here in general really seem to have no ambition to do more with their lives than watch the kids and clean the house from top to bottom once a day, with a stolen hour of some silly telenovela here and there and a run of the mill historical or romantic novel (like El tiempo entre costuras) before bed. To these kinds of women the main character of El tiempo entre costuras would probably count as "active" although she basically behaves like the eternal victim who stumbles from one problem to the next. And well, the rest of the TV audience is part of the next generation that is completely broken here - teenagers with the attention span of an average youtube video and anyone not educated enough to find work in other countries: http://politica.elpais.com/politica/201 ... 62946.html If that's the target audience then one can't really expect anything more than mexican style evil twin brother writing and bad acting.

Ah, Spain ...! I'll be quite glad when I finally finish my Iberian audio SC! I've been really tempted to switch to podcasts, but those are actually too easy for me *sigh*.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby Systematiker » Fri May 05, 2017 1:37 pm

Yeah, it took me a bit to realize that. I think it has in part to do with when I came of age in relation to how television is used as a medium. I grew up with "story of the week" type stuff, before the sea change of DVD season releases and long-format storytelling (and when it happened I was really into classic cinema, so I didn't get on board. I think it's pegged to The Sopranos in the US). The streaming format gives us even more possibilities, but I still have this internal distinction where I expect a film to do the things I expect a good book to do, to deal with the human condition, to have a plot and be contextually situated in its storytelling, but TV is still, in my gut reaction, inherently mindless. And that's what I often expect of it, a break from the complicated situations of reality (that's why I don't much like "gritty" police procedurals, for example, I don't need my entertainment to be as real as the sort of stuff I want a break from).

I totally get you on the reading, though - I struggled when we moved away from the Munich libraries (and not just the city library, but the LMU, the BSB, and I had borrowing rights at the specialized theology and philosophy tower...sigh). We're in the process of packing to move and it hurts to weed books, but we already have over twice the amount of boxes packed with books as we do with other household goods (we're both readers). The older I get, though, the fewer novels I'm able to read, there's so much professional reading to be done.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Fri May 05, 2017 1:57 pm

Russian

I finished another chapter of my book and I actually ran into the problem that I didn't want to stop after 2h although I had other stuff to do. Certainly a good sign!

Russian hours: 2.45h

Spanish

We watched a couple of episodes of Cromo, which is very good by Argentinian standards, but still doesn't quite reach the heights of a really good series. My husband finds it somewhat infuriating because it has so much potential and then falls short of fulfilling them. There was also a lesson of GdUdE and we listened to some Capusotto stuff. And then I almost burst out laughing at the shop because of a conversation I overheard between the lady at the cash desk and a woman who was behind me in line. Just before leaving for the shop we listened to this video:


It is a man complaining that he can't sleep because of a dog who keeps barking, but he has to get up early to go to work, so that he can fulfil his role in capitalist society, get paid and survive another day to finally go to bed and then to get up early to go to work, so that he can fufil his role in capitalist society, get paid and survive another day and so on, indefinitely, while the damn dog keeps barking. Why did I almost burst out laughing: Well, the lady at the cash desk in the shop was complaining about all the things that were going wrong for her that day, because well, she couldn't sleep because the dog was sick :lol:

In the end we also made a whole list of Argentinian movies to watch! Although we already watched many, we still have a lot left to watch!

Spanish hours: 2.14h

French

I was listening to a France culture documentary and continued reading the French translation of The Expanse. I also ordered a few scholarly books in French that are relevant for my PhD. They look super interesting, so I'm very much looking forward to getting my hands on them. We're also waiting for more comics in French.

French hours: 1.79h

Total: 6.38h
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Fri May 05, 2017 2:40 pm

Systematiker wrote:Yeah, it took me a bit to realize that. I think it has in part to do with when I came of age in relation to how television is used as a medium. I grew up with "story of the week" type stuff, before the sea change of DVD season releases and long-format storytelling (and when it happened I was really into classic cinema, so I didn't get on board. I think it's pegged to The Sopranos in the US).


As a teenager I used TV just the same way as you describe, but since DVDs came on the market I basically kept the TV around only for Arte and then ditched it altogether when I moved to England, since this was the advent of streaming. I simply haven't needed it since then. While I was sharing houses in England I actually refused to pay TV licence, because I really can't bear actual TV - game shows and comedy stuff and silly singing programs. My flatmates were annoyed at me because they thought I was lying about not watching TV at all. Once they lived with me for a while they realised that I really can't bear it and leave the room when they turn on the TV. Such a waste of lifetime! And you're right, Sopranos was the first one, although I have to say that I myself couldn't get into it. Six Feet Under was another one of those early ones. By now series have become what novels used to be. Interestingly it's precisely police stuff that has been truly excellent in this respect: The Wire and True Detective are simply fantastic. Hollywood movies on the other hand are getting shittier and shittier every year to the extent that everything seems to be either a comic adaptation or the sequel of a sequel or a remake of a 30+ year old idea. Oh, another Alien movie *yawn*. Colourful, but usually seriously lacking on the story front. I can watch that stuff, sure, but I get more excited about a new series than about the release of another Star Wars sequel or prequel or whatever. And how many bad Spiderman movies can one possibly bear?

Systematiker wrote:I totally get you on the reading, though - I struggled when we moved away from the Munich libraries (and not just the city library, but the LMU, the BSB, and I had borrowing rights at the specialized theology and philosophy tower...sigh). We're in the process of packing to move and it hurts to weed books, but we already have over twice the amount of boxes packed with books as we do with other household goods (we're both readers). The older I get, though, the fewer novels I'm able to read, there's so much professional reading to be done.


I actually made a decision at some point to allow myself fun reading, because professional reading became such a drain! There are unlimited amounts of it out there and ultimately it doesn't matter whether I read 42 work books or 52 work books a year. Most of the work books I read are very heavy, so I can also only do a limited amount of it and actually remember what I read - like 50 pages at most for general scholarly books and if it's philosophy it's closer to 15 actually. I vaguely remember hearing a philosopher say that he decided to study philosophy because he was dyslexic and the assigned readings for the philosophy courses simply were shorter. I tend to read between 15000 and 25,000 pages a year, so about 50-60 pages a day in good years. If 50 is my sensible limit for scholarly content anyway and I also read philosophy in between, it's perfectly fine to include some novels too. Sometimes I also have to read about torture and at some point I simply can't take it anymore! I basically need novels and comics for my sanity. By the way, my husband is a serious book hoarder. This place is basically starting to become a proper library. I think right now I'd need about 15-20 years to get through the books in this house! The moving box ratio here would be more like 4 to 1 and I say that although I have a whole darkroom to move as well! Well, and trying to force my husband to get rid of some of his books would probably count as emotional violence. In other words, I'm an enabler :lol:
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby Teango » Fri May 05, 2017 9:10 pm

In a similar vein, I gave up being a tv addict and watching unsolicited detritus back in 2006, and it's been one of the best decisions I ever made. I now exclusively use my tv as an external larger screen for my computer to display programmes, movies, and series my wife and I have singled out as personally interesting or at least worth a try. I also triangulate local and global news articles across several sources on the web to get a bigger, clearer, and hopefully less-biased picture of events. Sorry Fox News, exit clowns. In addition to the advent of the Internet, the process of finding interesting and engaging material is all that much easier with the general burgeoning of online access to streaming multimedia and videos on demand over the last decade, although I think there's still a long long way to go when it comes to accessing movies, series, and video clips in languages other than English outside their country of origin.

I think there are some great or simply fun modern tv series out there, and I've watched a wide variety of them over the last decade (e.g., Blunt Talk, Black Mirror, Supernatural, Dexter, Breaking Bad, Lucifer, Hannibal, Battlestar Galactica, Better Call Saul), and my wife and I also like to keep up-to-date with movies, but we like to do so without sections being edited out to make way for continual interruptions from advertisers. Personally, I couldn't bear one more socially condescending reality freak show, or piece of propaganda lightly hopping, skipping, and jumping between perpetual terrors under every bed and Geico geckos or portly MnMs lurking around every corner. I'd had enough, I wanted to reclaim the gogglebox as my own again, along with some sanity and peace of mind. I missed the days of "Kung Fu" and "Monkey Magic", and although I never thought I'd say this, I even started to miss "The Waltons" and "Last of the Summer Wine" (please don't hold this against me). Therefore I decided to make a change to my routine by not having the tv constantly on in the background, and I'll genuinely admit it's made a positive difference in my life.

Don't get me wrong though, if reality tv shows, adverts every 5 minutes, and constant updates on the struggle between Oceania and Eurasia is the type of thing floats your boat, feel free to dive in, feed the machine, and sing along every night. I'm just saying it wasn't for me, for which I feel an affinity with Rita's mother in the scene from "Educating Rita" where she says, "there must be better songs to sing than this".
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Fri May 05, 2017 9:25 pm

Teango wrote:I'm just saying it wasn't for me, for which I feel an affinity with Rita's mother in the scene from "Educating Rita" where she says, "there must be better songs to sing than this".


Yes, yes and one more time, yes!

I mean sure, I grew up with TV. It was always on, I knew all the series, I watched all the cartoons and I simply enjoyed that silly state of numbness that approaches after the 3rd hour of TV. It was a bit of peace when I was unable to quiet my brain. Basically the TV allowed me not to think. And I stayed in this vegetative state for most of my school years when I was still waiting for my life to start. That's what it's like when you're stuck in some provincial backwater town and feel like a trapped animal.

I remember when I was a teenager I read an article that if you push into that 3rd hour of funky brain wave inducing TV flickering you start to not remember what you see, unless it is repeated. So when one of the TV channels started to repeat all the episodes of their silly daily telenovela on Saturday I wrote them an angry email that they are forcing my brain to remember this badly written shit by repeating it. I never received a reply :lol:

When my mum's TV broke her work colleagues congratulated her. In my family nobody has a TV anymore. We all choose what we watch and when we watch it!
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby Fortheo » Sat May 06, 2017 12:45 am

Systematiker wrote:Yeah, it took me a bit to realize that. I think it has in part to do with when I came of age in relation to how television is used as a medium. I grew up with "story of the week" type stuff, before the sea change of DVD season releases and long-format storytelling (and when it happened I was really into classic cinema, so I didn't get on board. I think it's pegged to The Sopranos in the US). The streaming format gives us even more possibilities, but I still have this internal distinction where I expect a film to do the things I expect a good book to do, to deal with the human condition, to have a plot and be contextually situated in its storytelling, but TV is still, in my gut reaction, inherently mindless. And that's what I often expect of it, a break from the complicated situations of reality (that's why I don't much like "gritty" police procedurals, for example, I don't need my entertainment to be as real as the sort of stuff I want a break from).

I totally get you on the reading, though - I struggled when we moved away from the Munich libraries (and not just the city library, but the LMU, the BSB, and I had borrowing rights at the specialized theology and philosophy tower...sigh). We're in the process of packing to move and it hurts to weed books, but we already have over twice the amount of boxes packed with books as we do with other household goods (we're both readers). The older I get, though, the fewer novels I'm able to read, there's so much professional reading to be done.


Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your outlook, there's enough variety in t.v to satisfy just about anyone of any preference.


blaurebell wrote:Russian

I finished another chapter of my book and I actually ran into the problem that I didn't want to stop after 2h although I had other stuff to do. Certainly a good sign!

Russian hours: 2.45h



Definitely a good sign! your log is giving me hope on my low motivation days :)
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby Systematiker » Sat May 06, 2017 1:33 am

Y'all keep working on my happy dissonance here and I'm going to lose my tolerance for less-than-stellar TV... :lol:
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Sat May 06, 2017 7:18 am

Systematiker wrote:Y'all keep working on my happy dissonance here and I'm going to lose my tolerance for less-than-stellar TV...


:lol: And there I thought I had an exceptional tolerance for silly TV - like watching Stargate in Spanish dubs and Buffy in French dubs. I get an awful lot of eye-rolling from my husband for the "crap" I watch! Less-than-stellar is apparently relative. I guess I'm fine with Stargate and Buffy, since it's at least internally coherent. I do get a bit annoyed when things turn illogical: Two types of time-travel in one series, bad guys turning into good guys all of a sudden and of course evil twin brothers! Maybe I spent too much time with Mr Spock. His reaction to El internado would be:

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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Sat May 06, 2017 7:24 am

Fortheo wrote:Definitely a good sign! your log is giving me hope on my low motivation days


I do get those kinds of days too! I tend to just ditch all the proper study activities and stick to TL TV, comics and videogames then. Ironically I tend to get more hours in on low motivation days because it's all fun :D
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