Translation goes to the movies

I haven’t got round to seeing The Artist yet, but it’s definitely on my wish list. Who could have imagined that a film without colour or sound have such an impact? Watching a silent movie is like travelling to a foreign country. I remember I saw D.W. Griffith’s 1915 classic Birth of a Nation at home a few years ago, and I have to say that it felt rather strange. I couldn’t lose myself in the film. Actually I fell asleep, but it was rather late Dialogue is such an important part of a film; I really don’t care too much about special effects. Ben Hecht, Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond, William Goldman, Woody Allen, and the Coen brothers are the kind of people whose films have inspired me

But with the introduction of sound in 1927 something was also lost. Before that year cinema had a certain universal appeal. Cinema really caught on with immigrants whose mastery of the language was not enough to allow them to go to the theatre or read a book. There will probably never be another universal figure like Charlie Chaplin, whose humour could so easily cross borders – it was a similar experience watching Chaplin in New York, Paris or Tokyo Spoken language gets in the way. In those days all you had to do was translate the intertitles.

However after the first talkie, The Jazz Singer, countries had to choose which was the best way to render foreign films in their languages. The two rivals systems which emerged were dubbing and subtitling.. I have always been fascinated by this subject. And recently I have been reading David Bellos’s Is That a Fish in Year, an engaging look at the world of translation. In one chapter he talks about the translation of movies. That is what I’m going to be blogging about this week

Subtitling is the process of providing synchronised captions for film and television dialogue. Subtitles are typical in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Belgium,  Portugal,  Greece,  Israel  and throughout the Arab world.  The average moviegoer probably doesn’t give it too much though, but subtitling is a highly skilled form of translation. You are operating under a number of constraints. It is necessary to decide what dialogue is necessary, and what can be cut out so that it translates properly and fits on the screen in the time allotted. You are fundamentally restricted by the cognitive capabilities of the audience. Subtitles must generally compress all the information with a maximum of two lines around 35 characters for each one. The time available is generally between 0.5 and 1.5 seconds, depending on the speed at which the actors are speaking. Subtitles do not offer a translation of all the words spoken; they can offer only hope to offer a summary.

These constraints on film translation may well affect the makers of original movies, especially if they depend on foreign-language markets. They are very aware how little spoken language can actually be captured in the subtitles. Because of this they may voluntarily make their characters less garrulous so that the dialogue will fit more easily on the screen. There is even a name for this phenomenon – the “Bergman effect.” Bellos points out that the renowned Swedish director made two quite different kinds of films—jolly comedies with lots of words for the Swedish market and tight-lipped, moody dramas for international consumption.

In many countries, dubbing is preferred. Dubbing skills are much more widely used and appreciated in Spain, France Italy and Germany. Because the cost is greater it tends to be in languages with a large pool of speakers. The germanophone dubbing market (Germany,Austria and the German-speaking part of Switzerland) is the largest inEurope.Germanyhas the most foreign movie dubbing studios, both per capita and per square kilometre. Virtually all films, shows, television series and foreign soap operas are dubbed into German. Even the speaking parts of video games are dubbed.

There is an interesting political background to dubbing in Spain. On April 24 1941 Franco issued an order forbidding the projection of films in any language apart from Spanish. Dubbing was an essential tool for censorship; original voices had to be erased and access to foreign languages was out of the question. One of the most famous script changes was from Casablanca. “In 1936 he fought for the Republicans in Spain” had to go. And the Billy Wilder comedies The Apartment and Some Like It Hot were manipulated and substantially reshaped because of their supposed immorality.

Translators working on dubbing face a different set of limitations. The goal is to translate the speech in such a way that it matches the lip movements of the original speaker—measured in fractions of a second — no mean feat. They are, in the words of Bellos, “world-class gymnasts of words.“

In Eastern and Central Europe they have a variation on dubbing called lectoring. I remember being on holiday in Poland in 1994. We were at a hotel in Warsaw and they were showing Northern Exposure, the series about a doctor from New York working in Cicely,Alaska. I was shocked to hear a single voice speaking for all characters of both genders. And you could hear the original English-language sound clearly audible in the background. This is lectoring. The advantage of this system is that you can hear the original language. It is also much more economical than dubbing. There are some obvious disadvantages with this system. It must be quite confusing. How do you know which character is speaking? And I got the impression that the person doing the voice-over didn’t really capture the emotion very well.  Bellos explains out that this technique was used in the synagogues of Palestine some 2,500 years ago. Long before the Romans occupied the Holy Land, Biblical Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language among Jews. Aramaic interpreters would read out a translation of the words of the service sotto voce, just after or even simultaneously with the rabbi., who was speaking or chanting in Hebrew. The original was maintained because it was seen as a language of prestige. English has now become this language, a cultural asset and an object of desire.

Which is the best? Reading subtitles requires more cognitive effort when compared to dubbing. The dubbing process requires less compression of the message. It is less elitist; you tend to associate subtitling with the art house cinema.

Subtitling, on the other hand, has the feeling of being more authentic. The voice of an actor is such an important part of the performance. When that voice is hidden you are losing out on so much. Subtitling is also much faster and cheaper; dubbing can be up to fifteen times more expensive than subtitling due to its characteristics. Another problem with dubbing is what I call the Homer Simpson effect. This is when you are watching a moving drama and one of the actors open his mouth and you hear Springfield’s most famous resident. It is most distracting. The actor who does Homer  Simpson is one Carlos Ysbert, who also does Norm from Cheers, Tony Soprano from The Sopranos.  Obviously it would be impossible to have one dubbing actor for each Hollywood star. So, dubbing actors take on various roles. I found a list ranking the top Spanish dubbing actors. One of the hardest working must be Jordi Brau. Here is a list of the actors he dubs: Robin Williams, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage, Sean Penn and Dennis Quaid. Does this man ever sleep? Here are a few more examples:

José Luis Gil – Hugh Grant, Patrick Swayze.

Luis Posada  –  Johnny Depp, Leonardo Dicaprio and Jim Carrey.

Luis Porcar – Hugh Laurie, George Clooney, Chuck Norris.

Ricardo Solans  – Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Dustin Hoffman.

What’s my conclusion? I prefer to hear the original voices of the actors. I have become a big fan of the Swedish and Danish detective dramas that are all the rage at the moment. My wife is always surprised when I turn up the volume, but I like the feeling transported into another world. We are dealing with two different kinds of translation, and there trade-offs to be made. Each method involves the loss of something. Of course I should really learn those Scandinavian languages. That way I wouldn’t miss out on anything – provided that I reached level C2. Alas, life is too short. The great thing these days is that with the new technology there is a much greater variety of choices available to the public.

Robin Hood: a gay libertarian communist?

In the year of Our Lord 1191 when Richard, the Lion-Heart, set forth to drive the infidels from the Holy Land, he gave the Regency of his Kingdom to his trusted friend, Longchamps, instead of to his treacherous brother, Prince John. Bitterly resentful, John hoped for some disaster to befall Richard so that he, with the help of the Norman barons, might seize the throne for himself. And then on a luckless day for the Saxons…

From the opening titles of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

Merry Men: [singing] We’re men / We’re men in tights / We roam around the forest looking for fights / We’re men / We’re men in tights / We rob from the rich and give to the poor / That’s right! / We may look like sissies / But watch what you say / Or else we’ll put out your lights / We’re men / We’re men in tights / Always on guard / Defending the people’s rights / We’re men / Manly men! / We’re men in tights / Yes! / We roam around the forest looking for fights / We’re men / We’re men in tights / We rob from the rich and give to the poor / That’s right! / We may look like pansies / But don’t get us wrong / Or else we’ll put out your lights / We’re men / We’re men in tights / *Tight tights* / Always on guard / Defending the people’s rights / When you’re in a fix / Just call for the men in tights / We’re butch! From Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

 Whatever people think Robin Hood is, Robin Hood is. Thomas Hahn 

May has seen the release of the latest version of the Robin Hood legend starring Russell Crowe. I haven’t had the chance to see it yet but I have to admit that I have my doubts. My first reservation comes from what director Ridley Scott has said about the film and in particular his claims about its historical authenticity. Why can’t he just say that it’s an action movie? In a previous post about historical fiction I referred to a complaint by a historian about how a director would claim that everything on the set was an exact reproduction of the particular period but the characters would then open their mouths and say things that no one of that period would have come out with. There is a tendency to project our worldview onto these characters. In this film Robin is used as a critic of the atrocities of the crusades. I doubt that such moral qualms about violence against Muslims were felt in those days. And we learn that Robin Hood wasn’t just this outlaw who stole from the rich to give to the poor; he was also one of the key players in drafting the foundational document for civil liberties in the English-speaking world, the Magna Carta. In fact, the document that King John was forced to accept was prepared by the barons. But I have another complaint; I fear that all the romance, magic and joy are disappearing from movies. My benchmark is the 1938 classic with Errol Flynn prancing around in those tights. What a glorious celebration of the golden age of Hollywood that film was.

What can we say about the real Robin Hood? Dressed in his traditional Lincoln green, Robin’s habitat was Sherwood Forrest, the wild wood, a place where a totally different code of honour operates. It is simply not possible to locate the historical Robin Hood with any certainty. There are many potential candidates for the inspiration behind Robin Hood. One of them lived in the thirteenth century, a man called Robert Hod, whose lands were confiscated when he failed to show up for a court appearance, thus making him an outlaw. It was a perilous existence; if they were caught they would be hanged without trial. The first descriptions of Robin Hood portray him more as a kind of loveable rogue. It was only later that the idea of a man fighting tyranny became popular.  

What draws me and many other people to Robin Hood is his Protean nature. As the Thomas Hahn quote above says he can be anything you want him to be. Thus Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm sees Robin Hood within the tradition of the social bandit, aided by the downtrodden peasants. These bandits were admired, protected and helped by the ordinary people because of the way they flouted authority and defended the interests of the folk masses against their elite oppressors. However he can also be claimed by those on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Thus Tea party supporters emphasise the anti-tax strand. I found a piece from the free-market  Austrian economists at the Ludwig von Mises Institute:

As so much in legends, the historical truth isn’t what matters. Instead it is the legendary deeds of Robin Hood that excite us. The man who challenged the state, who dared to take what the rotten government claimed to own, the man who not only did these deeds himself, but also recruited others to help him and in doing so, gained the trust and affection of his people. It’s a legend that will never lose its appeal.

But there are many other unanswered questions about this legendary figure. Was he gay?  An academic Stephen Knight from the University of Wales outed Robin Hood in a paper with the suggestive title “The Forest Queen”. Knight based his case on certain 14th-century ballads, the earliest known accounts of the hero’s deeds. He cites the homoerotic imagery of arrows, quivers, and swords. For Knight Maid Marian never existed and was only added to cover up the activities of Robin and his Merry men. It has caused heated debate. I think that to argue about the sexual orientation of a character from folklore is the modern equivalent to the medieval debate about how many angels could sit on the head of a pin?

And Robin Hood is still present today and not only at the cinema.  He has the honour of having the airport at Doncaster named after him. In 2007, the University of Nottingham offered an MA course on the subject of Robin Hood. And in an ironic twist he even has a tax named after him .I am referring to the new tax on banks being proposed which is popularly known as The Robin Hood tax. Robin Hood and King Arthur are undoubtedly England’s most enduring legendary figures. In fact, they go beyond England’s borders – they belong to the world.

Robin Hood movie trivia

Here is some trivia I found on the IMDB and other internet sources:

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

This film was a truly international production. It featured an Australian (Flynn) a Hungarian director  (Michael Curtiz), an English star (Basil Rathbone). The score was by  a Czech (Erich Wolfgang Korngold); the art direction was by a German (Carl Jules Weyl) And the photography by an Italian (Sol Polito).

The film plays very fancifully with real history. Even the opening titles are full of inaccuracies.

Despite his flamboyant performance as Robin Hood, Errol Flynn privately professed that he found the role a boring one.

Although shot on location in California, indigenous English plants were added and the grass was painted to give a greener, more English look.

At 28, Errol Flynn was the youngest actor to play Robin Hood.

Prince John could not write out a warrant for Robin Hood’s arrest because he was illiterate; he “signed” the Magna Carta by putting his seal on it. And the Duke turned King Richard over to his own ruler, and it was this king who asked for the ransom on Richard’s life, not the Duke.

All the sword fighting scenes show the characters using one-handed swords. At this time, swords were two-handed swords, the necessary refinements in steel making that allowed lighter, more maneuverable swords had not been developed.

Walt Disney’s Robin Hood (1973)

Originally, Friar Tuck was to be a pig, but was changed to a badger to avoid insulting religious sensibilities.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)

Kevin Costner had originally hired a coach to help him learn to speak English with an “English” accent. He had too much trouble learning it though, fired the coach, and decided not to do it.

At the wedding, Tuck says “I now pronounce you husband and wife”. “Husband” wasn’t used until very late in the 20th century.

The Sheriff uses the word ‘thugs’ although this word isn’t commonly used until the British Imperial rule in India some 500 years later.

Robin and Marian (1976)

Golden Delicious apples (in windows during last scene) did not exist in 13th century England.

Robin Hood 2010

The production had planned to recreate the Tower of London in Caernarfon, North Wales but later decided on doing the tower digitally.

At 45 Russell Crowe is the oldest actor to have played Robin Hood in a movie. Sean Connery was nearly 45 when he played a veteran Robin Hood in Robin and Marian (1976).

Eileen Atkins replaced Vanessa Redgrave, who dropped out, after the accidental death of her daughter Natasha Richardson.

During an interview with Mark Lawson Crowe stormed out when Lawson accused him of having giving the hero an Irish accent.

Mark Lawson: The accent that you’ve given him, there are hints to me of Irish, but what… were you thinking in those terms?

Russell Crowe: ‘You’ve got dead ears mate, you’ve seriously got dead ears, if you think that’s an Irish accent.’

Lawson: ‘Hints of, I thought…’

Crowe (interrupting): ‘B*******.’ (Crowe then talks about his portrayal of Robin Hood before coming back to the accent issue)

Crowe: ‘I’m a little dumbfounded you could possibly find any Irish in that character, that’s kind of ridiculous anyway, but it’s your show.’

Lawson: ‘So you’re… well, I am just asking… so you’re going for northern English?’

Crowe: ‘No, I was going for an Italian, yeah, missed it? (Laughs) F*** me!

(The actor then refuses to answer a question about whether he had not wanted to deliver some of his most famous lines in Gladiator)

Crowe: ‘I don’t get the Irish thing by the way. I don’t get it at all.’

(He finishes the interview, waving his cigarette and walking out).

Movie title translations

Here are how some famous English language movies were allegedly translated in other countries:

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me – Austin Powers: The Spy Who Treated Me Nicely (Singapore)

Babe – The Happy Dumpling-To-Be Who Talks And Solves Agricultural Problems (China)

 Being John Malkovich –  Malkovich’s Hole (Japan)

Boogie Nights – His Great Device Makes Him Famous (China)

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind – If You Leave Me, I Delete You (Italy)

Free Willy -  A Very Powerful Whale Runs To Heaven (China)

Fried Green Tomatoes -The Secret Is In The Sauce (France)

Grease – Vaseline (Argentina)

Home Alone - Mom, I Missed The Plane (France)

Little Miss Sunshine - A Family on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Portugal)

Nixon – The Big Liar (China)

Once Upon a Time in the West – The Harmonica Avenger (Finland)

Pretty Woman – I Will Marry a Prostitute to Save Money (China)

The Full Monty – Six Naked Pigs (China)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – Two Glorious Scoundrels (Germany)

The Matrix - The Young People Who Traverse Dimensions While Wearing Sunglasses (France)

This is Spinal Tap  - Help! We’re in the Pop Business (Norway)

The 10 most historically inaccurate movies

Last year The Times did this list about blunders in historical movies :

1 U-571, 2000

Rather cynically, American screenwriter David Ayer depicted American rather than British naval officers capturing the first Enigma machine, “in order to drive the movie for an American audience.” The first Enigma machine was in fact seized by officers from HMS Bulldog in 1941 and by the time the USA joined the war later that year, Britain had cracked the code. The post-release furore led Tony Blair, Prime Minister at the time, to agree that it was “an affront to the memories” of those involved and Bill Clinton, then US President, to write a letter emphasising the film’s fictional nature. In 2006, Ayer told the BBC he had come to regret the alteration: “Both my grandparents were officers in World War II, and I would be personally offended if somebody distorted their achievements.”

2 Braveheart, 1995

Not only was the Scottish hero William Wallace gruesomely executed in 1305, having been captured by the English at Falkirk, but seven centuries later his memory was exhumed, smeared with blue face paint and mutilated by Mel Gibson. Wallace was not the poor villager the film depicts, but a landowner and minor knight. The litany of fibs extends from Wallace’s love interest (Queen Isabella would have been about two-years-old at the time) to his kilt – a garment not developed for another three centuries. The historian Sharon L. Krossa likens it to “a film about Colonial America showing the colonial men wearing 20th century business suits.”

3 10,000 BC, 2008

This tale of a mammoth hunter travelling across the prehistoric globe to rescue his bride, features some surprising revelations. Were sabre-tooth tigers bull-sized? Could man train Woolly Mammoths to help build pyramids? Did we invent sailing boats so early? Unfortunately the answer to all these questions is no. In fact, the filmmakers incorporated so many animals then extinct, or yet to evolve, and so many future technologies and geographical impossibilities that Archaeology magazine was compelled to review – and pan it: “Unsurprisingly, this tribe is starving, but it is hard to have sympathy for them because any culture that tries to hunt mammoths with a net gets what it deserves.”

4 The Patriot, 2000

Gibson (rugby) tackles history again with his turn as an honest farmer drawn into the American Revolutionary War, which historian David Hackett Fischer claimed in the New York Times “is to history as Godzilla was to biology.” Crimes erroneously attributed to British soldiers include immolating villagers inside their church, an atrocity actually committed a century and a half later by Nazis in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane. Meanwhile the director Spike Lee complained that the film “dodged around, skirted about or completely ignored slavery.” There is also strong evidence that Francis Marion, the basis for Gibson’s character, was a slave-owning serial rapist who murdered Cherokee Indians for fun.

5 Pearl Harbour, 2001

The protagonists of Pearl Harbour, George Welch and Kenneth M. Taylor, are based on two real-life US Army Air Corps Second Lieutenants, but the film weaves such a wildly inaccurate account of their love lives and sky-swooping exploits, that the cinematic incarnations have been rendered fictional. Before his death in 2006 Taylor told his son he thought the movie was “over-sensationalized and distorted.” The film’s villains fare no better than its heroes – the Japanese are reduced to a war-hungry stereotype that even in 1967 embarrassed TV bosses enough to mask it in latex and it call Klingon before broadcast.

6 Apocalypto, 2006

If you thought it strange that Apocalypto’s Mayans ransack a village of their own people for sacrificial victims and slaves, your suspicion was justified. Maya expert Zachary Hruby told the National Geographic that there is no evidence of this behaviour, “Captives appear to have been taken during war.” In fact, the brutality of Mayan life is exaggerated throughout the film. The kidnapped villagers are supposedly hunters living deep in the jungle, when they would probably have been farmers living on manicured land, and they are murdered in mass sacrifices, an Aztec practice. The ubiquitous Gibson produced and directed the film.

7 Amadeus, 1984

Some years after Mozart’s death in 1791, a rumour circulated in Vienna that Antonio Salieri, court composer to Emperor Joseph II, had plotted the Austrian’s death – an assertion upon which Amadeus is based. But if Salieri was murderously jealous of Mozart he gave little clue to it. His contemporary Anselm Hüttenbrenner claimed that Salieri spoke of the prodigy “with exceptional respect,” and Mozart’s widow Constanze trusted the Italian enough to ask him to tutor her son. It is possible that Salieri was wary of usurpation by the young genius, but the rumoured vitriol was probably propaganda fabricated as part of the rivalry between Italian and German schools of music.

8 Gladiator, 2000

Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus is a coward who lusts after his sister Lucilla and murders his father, Marcus Araelius. In reality Commodus’s accession ended Pax Romana, two centuries of peace and minimal expansion by the empire and he has been described as a capricious show-off. But his father probably died of smallpox and far from falling in love with Lucilla, Commodus had her murdered after her involvement in an assassination attempt upon him. Ultimately, he was strangled in the bathtub by the wrestler Narcissus after twelve years of rule, not as the film asserts, while a new emperor, in a gladiatorial arena at the hands of Maximus – a fictional general based on Narcissus.

9 Young Victoria, 2009

Prince Albert really did prove his devotion to the pregnant Queen Victoria by bundling her into the well of a carriage during an assassination attempt, but he did not absorb the bullet this film dealt him. The gunman either missed or the pistol jammed, but the royal couple escaped unscathed. Screenwriter Julian Fellowes insisted that accuracy was paramount in his script, but that the alteration was necessary to show Albert’s deed to be “the act of bravery and selflessness that it was.” According to the News of the World, the present Queen was not amused by his decision.

 

10 Marie Antoinette 2006

In her stylised biopic of Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola sidelined the simmering politics of the French Revolution to focus exclusively on costumes and cakes. But while Marie lost her head for taking a similar stance, she might have lost it sooner had she propagated the film’s assertion that it took the queen a decade to conceive because Louis XVI was afraid of sex. The delay was almost certainly medical and in 2002 the historian Simone Bertière ascertained from royal correspondence that it was probably Louis’ “bracquemart assez considérable” mismatched with Marie’s “l’étroitesse du chemin” that blighted their love life. Perhaps too indelicate for Kirsten Dunst to explain between mouthfuls of macaroon.

Films featuring extraterrestrials: a list

Here is a list of my favourite films featuring extraterrestrials. I realise the list is rather idiosyncratic. For example, I haven’t included any of the Star Wars series and I have probably forgotten some others. Anyway, here it is:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968
2. Abbott and Costello Go to Mars 1953
3. Alien 1979
4. Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977
5. Contact 1997
6. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 1982
7. Forbidden Planet 1956
8. Independence Day 1996
9. Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956
10. Mars Attacks! 1996
11. Men in Black 1997
12. Plan 9 from Outer Space 1959
13. Solaris 1972
14. Starship Troopers 1997
15. The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951
16. Total Recall 1990
17. The War of the Worlds 1953
18. War of the Worlds 2005
19. Within the Rock 1996
20. The X Files 1998

Movies about art

Here is a list of movies about art:

 

Andrei Rublev

Basquiat

Camille Claudel

Caravaggio

Carrington

Frida

Girl With a Pearl Earring

Goya’s Ghost

Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon

Lust for Life

Modigliani

Pollock

Surviving Picasso

The Agony and the Ecstasy

The Lovers on the Bridge.

Vincent & Theo

Bad movie reviews

The other day the Guardian had a piece about bad movie reviews which featured such barbs: “There are inflatable toys that are livelier than Stone, but how can you tell the difference? Basic Instinct 2 is not an erotic thriller. It’s taxidermy.“ and this one for Striptease: “Not funny enough, or dramatic enough, or sexy enough, or bad enough, to qualify as entertainment in any category.” I had a look on the web and I found some more:

 

 

Patch Adams made me want to spray the screen with Lysol. This movie is shameless. It’s not merely a tearjerker. It extracts tears individually by liposuction, without anaesthesia. Roger Ebert, Patch Adams

 

 

I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it. Roger Ebert, North

 

 

There is something hoary and semaphoric in the actors’ gestures, as if they were meant to be viewed from a distance; the Phantom, for example, keeps swishing his cloak to one side at random intervals, like Batman getting rid of a bad smell. “Touch me, trust me, savour each sensation,” he demands. Would you mind awfully if I don’t? Anthony Lane, The Phantom of the Opera

 

Mark Steven Johnson’s insufferably precious “reduction” of John Irving’s popular 1989 novel “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” might be described as the movie equivalent of a piece of stale angel food cake. Bite into it, and what you’ll find is a nearly flavourless mixture of air and sugar and more sugar and a texture so parched that a mouthful is almost impossible to swallow without risk of choking. Stephen Holden, Simon Birch

 

Should we mind that forty million readers—or, to use the technical term, “lemmings”—have followed one another over the cliff of this long and laughable text? I am aware of the argument that, if a tale has enough grip, one can for a while forget, if not forgive, the crumbling coarseness of the style; otherwise, why would I still read “The Day of the Jackal” once a year? With “The Da Vinci Code,” there can be no such excuse.

The movie is baloney; the movie is an accurate representation of the book; therefore, the book is also baloney, although it takes even longer to consume.”

“Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people, except at Columbia Pictures, where the power lunches won’t even be half-started. The Catholic Church has nothing to fear from this film. It is not just tripe. It is self-evident, spirit-lowering tripe that could not conceivably cause a single member of the flock to turn aside from the faith. Anthony Lane, The Da Vinci Code

 

“Go tell the Spartans, passer-by, that here, by Spartan law, we lie.” So reads the ditty Simonides wrote about the Battle of Thermopylae, where, around 480 BC, Sparta’s King Leonidas led a force of only 300 in a suicidal defence against a Persian army perhaps a thousand times bigger. Their brave stand has been the subject of poems, novels, and films – the latest being 300, Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the 1998 graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley. In short, 300 is a perfect combination of moral wrong-headedness and inept filmmaking. On any level beyond the pictorial, Snyder makes clunky Cecil B. DeMille epics like The Ten Commandments look positively deft. It presents itself as an instructive case study in nobility and bravery, but the only lesson I came away with was, “When in doubt … kill the hunchback.”

Go tell the Spartans, indeed. Tell them to go fuck themselves. LA City Beat,  300

 

 

Like ‘Tootsie,’ only without the drag. Or the class. Or the laughs. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry 

 

 

There are good movies. There are bad movies. There are movies so bad they’re good (though, strangely, not the reverse). And once in a while there is a movie so bad that it takes you to a place beyond good and evil and abandons you there, shivering and alone. Watching The Love Guru (Paramount Pictures) is a spiritual experience of a sort, but not the sort that its creator and star, Mike Myers, intended. This tale of a guru who brings joy to all who meet him is the most joy-draining 88 minutes I’ve ever spent outside a hospital waiting room. In the course of those long minutes, Myers leads you on a journey deep inside himself, to the source from whence his comedy springs—and it’s about as much fun as a tour of someone’s large intestine. Dana Stevens, The Love Guru

Movie Monologues #6

 

The Boiler Room written by Ben Young

             An excellent film which takes a look at the world of “boiler room” (seedy, dishonourable, and often fraudulent) brokerage firms.

 

Jim Young (Ben Affleck) Okay, here’s the deal, I’m not here to waste your time. Okay, I certainly hope you’re not here to waste mine, so I’m gonna keep this short. Become an employee of this firm, you will make your first million within 3 years. Okay, I’m gonna repeat that, you will make a million dollars, within three years of your first day of employment at J.T. Marlin. There’s no question as to whether you become a millionaire working here. The only question is, how many times over. You think I’m joking….I am not joking. I am a millionaire. It’s a weird thing to hear, right? Lemme tell ya, its a weird thing to say: I am a fucking millionaire. And guess how old I am…27, you know what that makes me here? A fucking senior citizen. This firm is entirely comprised of people your age, not mine. Lucky for me, I happen to be very fucking good at my job or I’d be out of one. You guys are the new blood. You are the future swinging dicks of this firm. Now you all look money hungry and that’s good. Anybody who tells you that money is the root of all evil, doesn’t fucking have any. They say money can’t buy happiness. Look at the fucking smile on my face! Ear to ear baby! You want details, fine. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What’s up? (he slides his keys across the long boardroom table) I have a ridiculous house at the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, I am liquid. So now you know what’s possible, let me tell you what’s required. You are required to work your fucking ass off at this firm. We want winners here, not pikers. A piker walks at the bell. A Piker asks how much vacation time you get in the first year. Vacation time? People come to work at this firm for one reason, to become filthy rich, that’s it. We’re not here to make friends, we’re not saving the fucking manatees here guys. You want vacation time, go teach third grade at a public school.

Okay, first three months at the firm are as a trainee, you’ll make 150 dollars a week. After you’ve done training, you take the series seven, you pass that, you become a junior broker and you’re opening accounts for your team leader. You open forty accounts you start working for yourself, the sky’s the limit. A word or two about being a trainee, your friends, parents, other brokers, they’re gonna give you shit about it, it’s true, a 150 a week, that’s not a lot of money. Pay them no mind. You need to learn this business and this is the time to to do it.

            Once you pass the test, none of that’s gonna matter. Your friends are shit. You tell em you made 25 grand last month they’re not gonna fucking believe you. Fuck them! Fuck ‘em! Parents don’t like the life you lead. Fuck your mom and dad. See how it feels when you’re making their fucking Lexus payments. Now go home and think about it. Think about whether or not this is really for you. If you decide that it isn’t, listen, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. This is not for everyone. But if you really want this, you call me on Monday and we’ll talk. Just don’t waste my fucking time……Okay, that’s it.

Philosophical Movies: a list

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Barton Fink

Being John Malkovich

Brazil

Contact

Crimes and Misdemeanors

Dogma

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Existenz

Fahrenheit 451

Fight Club

Gattaca

Groundhog Day

I, Robot

K-Pax

Last Year at Marienbad

Memento

Minority Report

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

My Dinner with Andre

On the Beach

Swimmer

Open Your Eyes (aka Abre Los Ojos)

Pi: Faith in Chaos

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Solaris 

Stalker

The Man With Two Brains

The Matrix

The Seventh Seal

The Trial

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Total Recall

Waking Life

Wild Strawberries

Zelig