SC 2016-17 Discussion of Books/Films/audio

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Re: SC 2016-17 Discussion of Books/Films/audio

Postby Soffía » Sun Jun 19, 2016 11:17 am

100 Icelandic classics. Not a bad place to start a Super Challenge!

http://eyjan.pressan.is/silfuregils/201 ... 00-baekur/
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Re: SC 2016-17 Discussion of Books/Films/audio

Postby kanewai » Mon Jul 11, 2016 9:37 pm

500 Page Benchmark

If we're on track (and if my math is right) we should have actually reached 10 books / 500 pages last week, but I didn't have time to post. Today we should be at 575 pages and 11.5 movies for a single challenge, 1150 pages and 23 movies for a double. So: how are you all doing?

Double Challenge: Romance Family
17 book, 20 films
deficit: 325 pages, 3 films

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This is the first of a quartet about the lives of two women from a poor and often violent neighborhood outside Naples. The girls are super bright, but one will marry and stay in the neighborhood and one will move out and seek higher education. It starts off as a normal coming-of-age story, but picks up power as the friend's lives diverge. I highly recommend it. And, surprisingly, the whole series is available in Italian on the kindle in the US.

In this passage a group of five friends, many who have never left the poor rione, visit an upper class neighborhood for the first time.

Fu come passare un confine. Mi ricordo un fitto passeggio e una sorta di umiliante diversità. Non guardavo i ragazzi, ma le ragazze, le signore: erano assolutamente diverse da noi. Sembravano aver respirato un’altra aria, aver mangiato altri cibi, essersi vestite su qualche altro pianeta, aver imparato a camminare su fili di vento. Ero a bocca aperta. Tanto più che mentre io mi sarei fermata per guardare con agio abiti, scarpe, il tipo di occhiali che portavano se portavano occhiali, loro passavano e sembrava che non mi vedessero. Non vedevano nessuno di noi cinque. Eravamo non percepibili. O ininteressanti. E anzi, se a volte lo sguardo cadeva su di noi, si giravano subito da un’altra parte come infastidite. Si guardavano solo tra di loro.

[It was like passing a barrier. I remember a packed passage and a sort of humiliating diversity. I don't look at the boys, but the girls, the women: they were absolutely different than us. They seem to have breathed an other air, to have eaten other food, to have been clothed on another planet, to have learned to follow another road on the strings of the wind. I was open-mouthed. The more that I would stop to look a the ease with which they dressed, their shoes, the types of glasses they wore if they wore glasses, they would pass and seem to not see me. They didn't see any of the five of us. We weren't perceptible. Or interesting. And even if, at times, their glance fell on us, they would turn immediately as if annoyed. They only looked among themselves. ]


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I'm about half way through the book, which means I'm half way through the whole series. This book starts of with a nice scandal, as the narrator discovers that some of the aristocrats have been leading secret gay lives. And then it slows, and their are seemingly hundreds of pages set in the various Paris salons. The salon passages are interesting for a bit, but in the end I get impatient with them. I want more sodomizing and gomorrhizing like the titles promises!

And then the narrator visits Balbec, and is haunted by the memories of his grandmother. It's one of the most beautiful extended passages I've read in any language. It's why I stick with Proust.

In this passage the narrator is in his hotel room, and remembers how he and his grandmother, in the next room, would communicate at night through taps on the wall:

Et je ne demandais rien de plus à Dieu, s’il existe un paradis, que d’y pouvoir frapper contre cette cloison les trois petits coups que ma grand’mère reconnaîtrait entre mille, et auxquels elle répondrait par ces autres coups qui voulaient dire : « Ne t’agite pas, petite souris, je comprends que tu es impatient, mais je vais venir », et qu’il me laissât rester avec elle toute l’éternité, qui ne serait pas trop longue pour nous deux.

[And I would demand nothing more of God, if a paradise exists, but to be able to knock against this partition three little taps, which my grand-mother would recognize out of thousands, and she would respond by others taps which would say: Be calm, little mouse, I understand that you are impatient, but I am going to come, and that he will let me rest with her for all of eternity, that this would not be two long for the two of us.]

And later in the same passage:

Et si elle faisait allusion à ce qu’elle avait souffert, je lui fermais la bouche avec mes baisers et je l’assurais qu’elle était maintenant guérie pour toujours. J’aurais voulu faire constater aux sceptiques que la mort est vraiment une maladie dont on revient. Seulement je ne trouvais plus chez ma grand’mère la riche spontanéité d’autrefois. Ses paroles n’étaient qu’une réponse affaiblie, docile, presque un simple écho de mes paroles ; elle n’était plus que le reflet de ma propre pensée.

[And if she made allusion to that which she has suffered, I would close her mouth with my kisses and assure her that now she would be cared for forever. I would have told the skeptics that death really is only a sickness from which we return. Only, I didn't find anymore in my grandmother the rich spontaneity like before. Her words where nothing but affable responses, docile, almost a simple echo of my words; she was nothing but the reflection of my own thoughts.]

And then the narrator locks himself in his hotel room and mopes around for the rest of the month. Ugh.

And then he discovers that his girlfriend has a secret lesbian lover. Yeay!


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I thought a swashbuckler would be a good first novel for Spanish. Sadly, this book wasn't the right choice for me. There wasn't enough action, the characters were all a bit dull, and most of the book was page after page of exposition. Maybe if my Spanish were better I could appreciate the actual language, but I'm still at the point where I'm learning to follow a basic story. Since I wasn't invested in the story I found that I was going through chapters without really focusing on them, or even understanding it, and eventually put the book aside at the 70% mark. I switched to Harry Potter y las reliquias de la morte, which is written at the perfect level for me.
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Re: SC 2016-17 Discussion of Books/Films/audio

Postby kanewai » Mon Jul 11, 2016 10:15 pm

I've been enjoying tv shows far more than movies lately, even in English. I haven't seen any 'must-see' shows so far this challenge, but most were good. There was only one that I've quit.


Kaboul Kitchen is definitely worth a watch - it's sitcom set in a French restaurant in Kabul in 2005. I have to remind myself that this is not set in present day Kabul. Ten years ago there was a lot of international aid flowing into Kabul, and it really looked like the civil war would be over; that ex-pat party has certainly ended.



A brother and sister fight for control of a Mexican soccer club after their father passes away in Club de Cuervos (Netflix). This season was inconsistent. There were a few truly great moments (the last game of one of the senior players, the introduction of a pansexual bad boy superstar from Barcelona and the jealousy of the previous bad boy from Argentina), and a lot of good ones, but there were too many plot points that were repeated over and over. Season 2 comes out in November, and I'll probably check it out - though I won't be rushing.



The Columbian telenovela Pablo Escobar, El Patrón del Mal is finally on Netflix. It's excellent, but it also moves at a telenovela's pace. I'm taking a break after ten episodes, but I'll get back to watching it soon.



I wanted to like El internado laguna negra (The Black Lagoon Boarding School), but I only made it three episodes. In those three episodes I swear students went out to the forbidden graveyard for secret meetings at midnight at least seven or eight times. Add to that the fact that most of the staff and the students all looked the same age, and I reached a point where I couldn't suspend belief any more.
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Re: SC 2016-17 Discussion of Books/Films/audio

Postby tomgosse » Sun Aug 14, 2016 10:46 pm

The Fifth Element

I purchased this DVD which has a French soundtrack and French sub-titles besides the original English soundtrack. First, let me say that I really like this movie. It is what is now called a popcorn movie. Lots of action, light dialog, and humor.

Now to the French soundtrack: It differs from the French sub-titles in a lot of places. An example: a character says, "Désolé" and the caption reads, "Pardon." I was wondering if the soundtrack were translated by separate people. Or maybe one was translated for Québec and the other for France. Any way, a good movie.
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Re: SC 2016-17 Discussion of Books/Films/audio

Postby Cavesa » Sun Aug 14, 2016 11:13 pm

tomgosse wrote:Now to the French soundtrack: It differs from the French sub-titles in a lot of places. An example: a character says, "Désolé" and the caption reads, "Pardon." I was wondering if the soundtrack were translated by separate people. Or maybe one was translated for Québec and the other for France. Any way, a good movie.

I think usually the subtitles and the dubbing are two separate works. One is making the subtitles from the movie. The other is making the dubbing script from the movie or its script, with changes to fit the speaking pace. They may be even made by different translators or at different times, or you can have more dubbing versions even for one language (without any French-Quebec matters interfering, sometimes time is the only difference). For "normal" people-customers, it doesn't matter whether the two match, so the creators don't care (and leave a lot of space for better quality fan subtitles to fill). Even the subtitles for people with a hearing condition don't need to match the dubbing precisely, or the original for the matter. Actually I've even seen Czech subtitles for the hard of hearing that didn't match the original Czech tv series at all and really sucked, so absolutely everything is possible.

How far am I? Not much
(Family-Romance maintenance (without Italian): 30 books, 14 movies)
Italian 7 books and 14 films
Germanhaven't started. But I will. Soon.
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Re: SC 2016-17 Discussion of Books/Films/audio

Postby Cavesa » Sun Aug 14, 2016 11:16 pm

Is participant called Tamarindj around? I am sorry to bring the bad news but the movie "Zamok v oblakoch" was most probably in Slovak, not Czech.
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Re: SC 2016-17 Discussion of Books/Films/audio

Postby tomgosse » Mon Aug 15, 2016 2:36 pm

DVD Haul

Here are the DVD's that I purchased for the SC 2016-2017 Super Challenge. They should keep me busy for a while.
dvds (640x360).jpg
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Re: SC 2016-17 Discussion of Books/Films/audio

Postby tomgosse » Mon Aug 22, 2016 12:36 pm

I found a decent history channel on YouTube: L'Ombre D'un Doute. I watched this documentary on King Edouard VIII last night.

EDIT: It seems that this channel was removed for copyright violations. :(
Last edited by tomgosse on Tue Oct 04, 2016 11:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: SC 2016-17 Discussion of Books/Films/audio

Postby rdearman » Mon Aug 22, 2016 4:20 pm

tomgosse wrote:I found a decent history channel on YouTube: L'Ombre D'un Doute. I watched this documentary on King Edouard VIII last night.

Thanks! That should help the SC stats. :)
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Re: SC 2016-17 Discussion of Books/Films/audio

Postby zhuzilu » Mon Oct 03, 2016 2:51 pm

tomgosse wrote:I found a decent history channel on YouTube: L'Ombre D'un Doute. I watched this documentary on King Edouard VIII last night.


I saw the link a few days ago, and the channel looked amazing. I was back to check the videos deeply and maybe watch a couple, but the channel has been deleted... So sad, hope I could find them somewhere else...
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