No Connection to the World

I'm being reminded of when we moved house and had no internet for 2 months as we are currently having network issues. The biggest difference between then and now is that I have a 10GB per month phone plan, so tethering off my phone isn't so bad. So not having internet at home isn't that bad either.

I spent most of the day reading this great web comic called Scandinavia and the World, which personifies the countries of the world, focusing on the Scandinavian ones. I've mentioned a few times now how much I want to go to Sweden, but these comics are making me want to go to all of the Scandinavian countries. I love that the author adds notes at the bottom of the comic, explaining things for people who may not understand the stereotypes. I've learned so much about other countries just from these notes.

Apparently they like to put big rocks in noteworthy places in Denmark.

This one does a great job of doing a TL;DR on Brexit.

What the English equivalent of lady birds are in other countries. Or "It's all Greek to me".

I love it when Australia appears.

I felt like this one on language barriers was pretty eye-opening to me. I've always been like America: if I go to another country, I try to learn some of their native language because it seems rude to expect them to speak mine. But the author points out that this can be irritating for people from countries where they also speak English quite fluently, as they'd rather you just spoke English since it would be easier for both of you. Well, I guess that means I shouldn't try to learn Swedish!

I was talking with Michael about the whole "French people will act arrogant towards you if you only speak English, but if you at least try to speak French, they will be kind towards you" perception, and he said the reason why there's such a huge focus on French is that a lot of people in France are quite proud of their language. The French government bans the use of the English-based "e-mail" in official correspondence, suggesting people use the French word "courriel" instead. Which I think is a bit silly, as English has become the lingua franca in the technology world. But I do understand wanting to protect your heritage.

I find it so fascinating to find out what it's like for other people. Maybe it's all part of my secret quest to work out what people are thinking. It's also interesting to see the things that we take for granted. MrMoustache was telling us how he was out of chocolate and he wanted some. Pharmacist and I asked why he didn't just go and buy some. He said it was 2am, and nothing was open at that time. Sure, our local supermarket would be closed, and even all the shopping centres around, but if you drive far enough in Melbourne, you're bound to find a 24-hour petrol station, or 24-hour convenience store. It was one of the awesome things about being in Tokyo - there are 24-hour convenience stores everywhere.

I also never knew that Denmark and Sweden were "rivals" like how Australia and New Zealand joke about each other. Obligatory New Zealand loves sheep comic. Except I don't think we have quite the violent background that Denmark and Sweden do. Although history was one of my worst subjects. But I imagine not, as we did fight together in the ANZAC after all! Though MrMoustache told me about the "Underarm bowling incident of 1981". Someone at work plays on a cricket team, and whenever I want to make him laugh, I mention the underarm bowling incident, and we both start laughing uncontrollably. Being a Kiwi, MrMoustache doesn't find it nearly as funny.

I wonder if there's an Asian equivalent. I wish I knew enough about Asian culture to draw my own. Well, I'd probably need to be able to draw as well...

Orange Ya Glad I Exist?

It was Modduck who first introduced me to this cake. As a fellow allergic-to-dairy person, he and I often share dairy-free foods, and whenever one of us buys / makes a cake for work, we'll often make sure to have a dairy-free alternative for the other as well, which is really nice.

Le Petit Gâteau is where it's from, and the orange cake is really nice, despite being dairy and gluten free.

I never even knew I liked candied orange peel until I tried this cake. It's a bit pricey, at $8.90 for a slice, but I think it's definitely worth it.

I don't really know what else to say today, I'm mentally exhausted. Oh, good news, I finally have motivation to study French again (somewhat related to today's post, as the store has a French name - The Little Cake (Google translate says The Cupcake, but then offers le cupcake for a translation of that. I'm trying to rely less on Google translate, after the_boss made a bad-sounding comment to a French co-worker (accidentally!) due to a poor translation (although I don't know how much of that was also due to his poor pronunciation, and the fact that he likes to troll people))). Fortunately, she took it in her stride and just laughed. I have no idea what he was trying to say, but he kept insisting that "Google translate told me to say that!"

MrMoustache said he's going to go back to learning Greek, and since I like leaderboards, it motivates me to go back to learning French. He's currently level 7, and I'm only level 5, so I have a bit of catching up to do. Super Chris is my other target, but he's so far out of my league (7k exp to my 1k) that I'll keep my goals small for now.

It's been a while since I fired up Duolingo, and a lot seems to have changed since last time. One of the things that I looked forward to doing the most was translating texts into English. Unfortunately, I never got good enough at Italian to be able to start that, and the feature seems to be gone now. Plus, the app has a lot more ads than I remember, but I don't really mind, as the courses are free.

The other stupid thing I did today was decide to replace the lenses in my glasses instead of getting new ones. So now I'm without glasses for up to two and a half weeks. All because I didn't like any of the frames they had in the store. #firstWorldProblems

I think there's just too much happening at the moment, and my brain is too tired to process anything properly. A sad thing happened this morning. I injured my foot on my run. It wasn't even very far, only 3kms in. I iced it in the morning, and it's feeling better now, but it's already psyching me out for Sunday, and A said the hardest part of running is getting past the mental block. I don't think I'll go to barre tomorrow, just going to stretch and stretch and stretch until Sunday. The cake was a much needed morale booster.

One Hundred

Once again, I've hit the 100 posts in a row streak! A said I should post about something special, but today was just a regular work day. I had an interesting conversation at lunch about language.

Michael mentioned that when he first came to Australia, he found the word "arvo" (as in "afternoon") strange. I do remember being in primary school when I first heard that word, and Elise told me it was short for afternoon. Though I've never used it myself, I've never really thought about it either, and when I hear "arvo", I just think "afternoon", similar to how an Italian speaking person might hear "arriverderci" and think "goodbye" (not the word as such, but the sentiment). Michael thought that the way that Australians shorten words like that is a sign of laziness, but I disagreed, saying it's more a sign of closeness, similar to using tu (informal "you") compared to using vous (formal "you") in French.

(Side note: As I only knew about tu at the time, when I was starting conversations with people through the Hello Talk app, one of the people I spoke to corrected me saying that as we had just met, I should be using vous. But he said that in this case, he was happy for me to be using tu with him. So I started thinking about when you transition - do you formally ask someone (I read the phrase is On peut se tutoyer? but some people are replying that it is not used very often)? Is it like having that "boyfriend / girlfriend" conversation when dating someone? Do you become tu-official on Facebook? I don't remember ever having this conversation with Michael, but I started using tu with him as I didn't know any better at the time. He uses tu in return, so I guess it's OK.

Side side note: One of the other people I was speaking to specifically told me to use tu, as vous made him feel old (he was 19 according to his profile). Maybe it differs based on region? The first person was from Morocco, and the second person was from France. Some of the answers online say it's different in Belgium compared to France and also Canada.)

Back to Australian-English. So Michael commented that it seems like most Australians must be friendly if everyone seems to use "arvo". I think on the whole, most Australians are friendly by default. Even in formal office situations, at least in my experience, there hasn't been a lot of stiff formality. It probably helps that our CIO used to wear shorts on hot days, and was a huge advocate of casual days.

I've noticed that the trend for me is to be pretty casual with people I first meet, and it's only with people I don't like, or if the situation is incredibly formal (e.g. an interview), that I will be formal. I just find it makes it so much easier to get things done when you don't have a layer of formality over everything. That doesn't apply to everything, of course, and if someone is formal towards me, I will adjust and do the same in return, but my default stance is to be casual with people.

I wonder if it blurs the boundary between acquaintances and friends - without an obvious language change like that, how do you know when you are close enough to someone to become their friend?

Actually, I have no idea how that happened with any of my current friends. I wonder if there was a friendship activation point. It's not something that I distinctly remember. I thought maybe becoming Facebook friends is something, but I have a bunch of people that I met through conferences, or other events that I wouldn't really call friends.

Maybe for me, it's the email address point.

I currently have four email addresses that I regularly use: my personal email, my professional email, my friendly spam email, and my junk email.

My close friends have my personal email, complete with embarrassing moniker.

My professional email was initially created just for the purpose of sending out resumes, but when people at work have asked for my email address, I felt reluctant to give them my personal email address, so I started giving out this one instead.

However, I've found that there are some people who I don't really have much of a desire to keep in touch with. So I've started giving out my friendly spam email address to co-workers. It's my friendly spam email address because my actual junk email address has the word "junk" in it, and that's pretty embarrassing to say to someone's face.

It does get a bit awkward, when someone transitions from professional to close friend, especially if they meet a friend from another category and said friend organises something via email. Though maybe only creepy stalkers like me actually look at the email addresses in the To: field.

Penny Pincher (Radin!) Review

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5253294/

Went to see this last night, the last movie on my list of movies to see as part of the 2017 Alliance Française French Film Festival. Not long after the movie started, I was laughing so hard. A nice refreshing change after the past couple of weeks.

The movie starts with an unborn François Gautier, his mother stressing at their unpaid bills, and his father surrounded by crap he bought from catalogues. His mother makes a desperate wish that her son doesn't end up like his father.

Cut a montage of François growing up, and being incredibly stingy, including using a sample condom from 1964 when he lost his virginity. As an adult, he is hated by his neighbours, co-workers and people who end up behind him in the grocery line, due to his penny-pinching ways. He dodges co-workers who try to collect money for a going away gift, and relies on streetlamps to provide lighting for his home. He often gets stomach cramps due to eating food that has long since expired, like tomato sauce from 2006, and his best friend seems to be his banker.  He is never shown as particularly mean-spirited, just incredibly miserly.

A girl shows up, claiming to be his daughter (well, what do you expect when you're using a condom from 1964, and a sample one at that?) and the usual comedy-turn-your-world-upside-down thing starts to happen. Not only that, but he falls for fellow orchestra musician Valérie, whose crazy allergies result in a first date that is not within his budget.

The movie has a lot of the common tropes (e.g. lie blown out of proportion - though in his defense, François never tells the lie, he just goes along with it when others do), but I do like that it also subverts a lot of tropes. François never gives up his miserly ways due to the "power of love", which is something I liked. Also, there were no obvious idiot ball moments. There was one scene where François reads a message that causes him to believe his daughter isn't who she says she is, but rather than go off in a huff, he goes to confront her and isn't just given the whole, "It's not what it looks like!" excuse, but they actually explain what happened.

For sure, this is a lowbrow comedy, but I really enjoyed it, and was laughing most of the way through. Though there were some awkward moments when I seemed to have read the subtitles faster than everyone else, and burst out laughing before the punchline had been said and was the only one laughing. I'm pretty sure the man next to me thought I was crazy, as he left almost as soon as the credits started rolling, which meant he missed the stinger.

The style of the movie is also what I like - witty dialogue, cutaway jokes, callouts to other movies, trope subversion. It was also funny to hear Vivaldi's Spring played at double speed. If I could get it in Australia, it'd probably be something I put on to cheer myself up. As far as the practicing French part went... it went pretty badly. There were some moments where I could translate some of the sentences, but I was laughing too much to focus on what they were saying.

I don't know if it's just the topic, but the movie made me really reflect on the way I've lived my life. I definitely tend towards the miserly side, though I've gotten a lot better. This past month has been interesting with the $400 a month challenge. I actually ended up exceeding $400, but not by much, and the month is almost over.

Things I did this month that I probably wouldn't otherwise have done:

• Arnold classic
• French film festival
• had lunch with so many different people
• Zero latency

I don't regret any of them, and I think my life feels richer for having done it.

As much as it is a chore writing a blog post every day, and even though my writing is getting stale, I feel like I am growing a lot as a person - which is an odd thing to say given how old I am, but I think it's true. My mum told my sister that she'll never become a great writer unless she has a great life to draw inspiration from. I feel like I write better when I'm feeling sad, but I'm not always going to be sad, and I can't rely on that to inspire me. 

The other benefit to doing more things is that I don't feel so awkward talking to people anymore. My most dreaded question at work used to be, "What are you doing this weekend?" to which I'd usually reply that I didn't have much planned, as that seemed better than telling the whole truth (just gaming). That would usually result in an awkward trip down the lift. Now, when people ask, I feel like I have something to contribute to the conversation. I still get called weird, but I don't think that's ever going to end. I actually invited D's mother to come to the French film festival with me, and he said, "What, you think I'm going to ask my mum to go on a date with some random girl from work?" I don't know where he got the date part from, but he's always calling me weird, so I've decided to just embrace it. Although to be honest, it was a bluff, as there was no way his mother was going to come with me to see a movie.

The Spanish film festival starts up soon, and I'm pretty excited about that. I also want to start my own mini-movie club (although it'll probably be just me and the blog), reviewing different movies from SBS on Demand. The plan is to do one a month, though I guess I'll see how busy I am. The first one I want to do is Be Kind, Rewind (SBS on demand link, IMDB link). It sounds like my kind of movie. Description from IMDB:

Two bumbling store clerks inadvertently erase the footage from all of the tapes in their video rental store. In order to keep the business running, they re-shoot every film in the store with their own camera, with a budget of zero dollars.

Mozart's Sister (Nannerl, La Soeur de Mozart) Reivew

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1653911/

This wasn't on my original list of movies I wanted to see, but I saw a trailer for it during one of the other movies I went to see, and I really wanted to see it.

It follows the travels of the Mozart family - the most famous being Wolfgang Mozart, child prodigy performer and composer, but the story focuses on his older sister, a talented performer in her own right, Maria Anna (nicknamed Nannerl) Mozart, who is quite close to her brother, and during the movie, they compose music together. The Mozart family travel around Europe performing for various noble people. In this fictional story, Nannerl dresses as a boy to deliver a letter on behalf of her friend Princess Louise of France, and meets the recently-widowed Dauphin (Prince of France). Her musical ability enchants him, and he commissions her to compose something for him.

Nannerl's father is against the idea of her playing the violin or composing music, as he sees those things as unsuitable for women. He calls her music a "mess of notes lumped together", though in private, he does tell his wife he thinks she has talent. Nannerl finishes her song in private, and the Dauphin is enchanted once again, inviting her to meet him for a private audience. During this second meeting, she reveals that she is actually a girl, and he asks her to get changed into her normal clothes, and spend the afternoon with him as a girl.

Nannerl's parents are not happy that she spent the night out alone instead of rehearsing for their performance, even if it was with the Dauphin. After they perform for the royal court, they set off for Vienna and Nannerl writes to the Dauphin saying she's sorry she can't say goodbye. However, during the journey, Nannerl asks her mother if she can continue to work in Paris, saying she can make a living teaching music. She feels that Wolfgang can draw in crowds without her, and that she is becoming a burden on her father.

On her return to Paris, she receives a letter from the Dauphin asking her to write another piece of music. She tries to get into music school, but is ridiculed, saying she would be better off going to the painting faculty and becoming a model instead. So she dresses as a boy once again, and attends classes. She sends her latest piece to the Dauphin, who once again asks her to meet. He surprises her by having the royal orchestra play her music, and allowing her the opportunity to play with them. He further surprises her by introducing her to his new fiancée, at which Nannerl is understandably upset. He later writes her a letter saying he doesn't love his new fiancée, and that he is only marrying her because his father says it must be so. He says that even though he loves her, he doesn't want the same reputation his father has, of sleeping with lots of women outside his marriage.

He invites Nannerl to meet again, though requests that she dresses as a boy. He has her play the harpsichord as he talks to his fiancée on the bed. He then kicks the fiancée out, and has Nannerl kiss him. Then he grows angry at her for being the devil and seducing him, and kicks her out, too.

Nannerl goes to join her family once more. The movie ends saying that she never composed another piece of music again, and ended up marrying a man who already had five children, because her father wanted her to. Her first son was given to her father, who tried to train him as another prodigy, but failed. She died poor, blind and alone, with her life's mission being to collate the works of her brother.

Wikipedia disputes the last part, saying that she was frugal, not poor, though it does say that while there have been references to her compositions in letters between her and Wolfgang, none of them have survived.

It has been a while since a movie has had such an emotional impact on me. I don't know if I'm still reeling from the blow of Grad Daniel leaving, but I walked out of the movie feeling really sad. I guess at the time, it was a normal thing for women to be told that they can't do something just because they're a woman, so watching it from the perspective of someone in today's world makes it feel a bit bizarre. But the movie quickly transports you into the 1763, and while you can see Nannerl's frustration, you begin to understand why she's so powerless. Despite this, she really does try, and you were rooting for her the entire time. I liked that unlike the typical girl dresses as a boy movies, she never set out to purposely deceive. The only reason she dressed as a boy in the first place was because she needed to deliver a letter for her friend and unknown women weren't allowed in the presence of the Dauphin.

She was quite quick to confess, rather than try to pull off the whole being in two places at one time thing - the reason she confessed was because the Dauphin invited her to see a "talented young musical prodigy and his sister with a divine singing voice", and she told him that she was the sister.

Luther told me that a lot of movies try to go for the punch-in-the-guts sad ending, as it's the cheapest and easiest way to have an emotional impact on your audience. While this movie did have that at the end, I think the part that was touching about it was seeing Nannerl grow and fall in love during the movie. It wasn't one of those "we meet and now we're desperately in love, nothing can separate us" kind of loves, you could see her being happy to see him, and seeing that he was happy to see her. Even though they barely had any screentime together, you could see her pining for him through her music, while also seeing her want to break free of the confines of being a girl.

I really enjoyed the movie. The music was lovely, and I don't really care about costumes or scenery, but it was also nice, with some of it actually being filmed in the Palace of Versailles. Even though it sort of made Wolfgang out to be the bad guy, in the sense that Nannerl was always in his shadow, it really didn't feel like that. You could tell that she loved him, and while she was frustrated, she ultimately knew that it wasn't his fault that things were the way that they were.

In terms of watching this to practice French, I understood a surprising amount of this movie. Not nearly enough to watch without the subtitles, but there were a lot of words and sentences that I recognised. It was a little hard, because the characters spoke so quickly - or at least they spoke at what I assume is a normal speed, but I could process the words after the fact, which meant I was always a little behind, and when I got too far behind, I just went back to reading the subtitles only.

Slack Bay (Ma Loute) Review

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4726636/

If I had to summarise this movie in 25 words or less, I'd only need 3: "What just happened?" I'd like to preface this review by saying that I'm normally pretty good at following what goes on during a movie. If I'm watching with another person, I might say something like, "Why did she just do that?!" in exasperation, but I can keep track of the plot and the characters pretty easily. Despite that, I spent nearly the entire movie thinking to myself, "What just happened?"

The reason why I thought it would be like Hot Fuzz is because it is described as being set in a small beachside town where tourists mysteriously disappear. Incompetent police officers begin to investigate. That's about where the similarity ends.

So the audience finds out why the people are disappearing probably 15 minutes into the movie, which is probably the first big "What just happened?" moment. The rest of the movie is spent watching the investigators bumble towards the truth, and watching the various characters and their little side plots. There is twist after twist, and the movie seems like it's just going to create one mystery after another, until about halfway through, you get a nice little breather for a touching romantic sub-plot. But not long after you've caught your breath, you are hit with another "What just happened?" moment.

I would like to add that maybe some of the humour was lost on me because of the cultural difference. There was a group of people that seemed to laugh at parts of the movie that nobody else laughed at, but it might also have been because they were drunk, so it's hard to tell. Also, some of the humour leaned towards the slapstick side, which isn't really my preferred style of humour, though some of it I did find funny.

The pacing was actually really good. I saw some people leaving during the movie, and I can kinda understand why, as it does not stop to explain anything, so you just need to leave your questions behind and go along for the ride. I enjoyed it, as it felt really engaging having so many mysteries, as it kept me interested in the movie, but there were short comedic breaks between each punch, which is why I thought the pacing is good.

I don't know any of the actors, so I don't know if they're famous or anything, but I thought the casting was pretty good. The town locals had a very hillbilly look about them, and were quite distinct from the posh tourists.

I enjoyed the movie, even though I left it feeling a bit like this:

And judging by the comments of the people around me, I wasn't the only one. Actually, after I left the cinema, I burst out laughing, but it was a pretty evil, Joker-esque kind of laugh. I couldn't stop myself. I was doubled over on the footpath laughing. I don't even know why.

If you are looking for a deep mystery-thriller / comedy movie, this is not for you. If you are the kind of person who doesn't like things that don't make sense, or plot threads that are left hanging, this movie is definitely not for you. If you are looking for a light, feel-good comedy, this movie is not for you. If you'd like to see a movie that is difficult to place in a box, that defies a lot of the typical tropes, has an off-beat sense of humour, a little bit of gore / nudity, and 122 minutes of minutes of crazy, I'd recommend this film. Would I watch it again, maybe to see if a second viewing helped answer questions (I doubt it), but I definitely wouldn't watch it a third time. Do I regret watching it? Not at all.

Oh, I should add that from a practicing French perspective, it's probably not the best. There's a lot of "bogan" / hillbilly talk, and quite a lot of the characters have mumbled / slurred speech, where even other characters aren't able to understand them.

With reference to film techniques, one of the other points I picked up from Every Frame a Painting is that sometimes emotion is better conveyed through facial expressions rather than speech. I think the romance sub-plot had very few actual lines exchanged between the characters, and a lot of it was done through glances, but you still got the impression that they were falling for each other. Other little things, like the posh characters not wanting to interact with the "lowly" characters was conveyed pretty well through small gestures, like waving at someone to avoid having to shake their hand, or pointed glances to say, "How dare you try and serve me food from my right side?!"

This movie does very little hand-holding, which actually made it seem shorter than it actually was. I didn't expect the credits rolling at all - though to be fair, that's also because my mind was still trying to process what had just happened in the last 2 hours.

Will start the spoiler-filled review under this line...
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Turn back now if you don't want to be spoiled.























Last chance.

































There were so many unresolved plot points.

Thread #1: The first big punch is the fact that the tourists are disappearing because they are being killed and eaten by the Brufort family (Ma Loute's family). This is never resolved. They don't seem to get caught, and Ma Loute seems to have some weird cannibalistic urge, as a couple of times in the movie, he seemed to growl: the first time he did it, he ran off, presumably to avoid killing Billie. The second time, he ended up biting a girl who wasn't introduced. Is the family full of cannibals? The other members didn't seem to have the problem, although it looked like there was a huge gap between Ma Loute and his three younger brothers, so maybe they haven't manifested yet, and maybe his parents have learned to control it. Is the growling just an indication of his sexual desire, as the first time, it looked like he and Billie were going to go at it, and the second time, he had his head between that unnamed girl's boobs?

Thread #2: Was Billie physically a male or female? At the start, I felt so confused, but I thought, OK, maybe this is some artsy French thing, it's probably not important to the plot and they're trying to make a point, so I'm just going to roll with it. But then characters started commenting on it and it became relevant to the plot. Inspector Machin specifically said he was a "lad that's a lass" (didn't hear what he said in French, one of his character's traits is that he seems to mumble everything). Billie is first shown dressed as a girl with long hair, and she was with her two female cousins (who are always referred to as girls, and always seen in dresses), and that is how she looks when she meets Ma Loute. But when Billie's uncle arrives, he is dressed as a boy with short hair, and I can't remember if it was the uncle, or the guy who owns the house (Billie's other uncle) that comments, "Ah, Billie is a boy again!"

Ma Loute says to Billie, "Are you dressed as a boy?" to which he replies, "Of course". After Ma Loute transports him across the bay, he gives Ma Loute a kiss on the cheek, and they exchange a moment.

Then the next time we see her, she's dressed as a girl with long hair. She passes the inspectors, and Machin comments that it's definitely a lad dressed as a lass, but the other inspector looks uncertain and is convinced either that she's a girl after all, or that it's an entirely different person. Ma Loute says, "Ah, it's my pretty Billie".

Billie's mum arrives at the house (which belongs to her brother), and calls Billie "Mon Billie", indicating that he's a boy. The subtitles translate it as "My son Billie".

However, Ma Loute continues to treat Billie as though she's a girl. All the other characters look at Billie strangely. Oh, but Ma Loute's younger brothers say, "Elle est belle" (she is beautiful, the male equivalent being "Il est beau").

During the procession scene, Ma Loute says to Billie, "My love", and I'm 90% sure I heard him say "mon amour", which I thought indicated that Ma Loute knew that she was a he, but I just looked it up, and because amour begins with a vowel, "mon" which is the masculine possessive, is used for both males and females.

Billie goes to meet Ma  Loute again, this time dressed as a boy with long hair (which we find out is a wig, although you could kinda tell that from previous scenes as you could see the shaved head underneath, but this scene made it explicit). The inspector sees him again, and comments that he's dressed as a boy again to which she replies, "I'm a girl dressed as a boy."

But when Ma Loute carries her across the river, he says in surprise, "You have balls?! You conned me!" and drops her. So I kinda feel like that answers the question of whether Billie is a boy or a girl, but after that, it is never mentioned again, and perhaps hinted that he is a hermaphrodite (maybe I'm reading too much into it) - though Ma Loute does dump him. Here's the bit that got me though: the person that plays Billie is female. I guess that doesn't really mean anything in itself.

Thread #3: Why are people flying into the air?! While looking for her brother, who has gone missing, Isabelle walks out onto a cliff that overlooks the sea, and has a great view. Then we see her view changing, and see that she's actually flying into the air. After it ends, it almost looks like it was her imagination, as she's back where she started, overlooking the sea, but the reactions from the inspectors and André confirm that she actually was flying. Her flying isn't mentioned again, but we see Aude flying when she discovers the Billie has gone missing, and she runs down the steps, with none of  her feet actually touching the steps. Then right at the end Inspector Machin floats into the air, the "foreshadowing" being that he felt bloated earlier, and he was so invested in this investigation that he took off into the air. The very last part of the movie features the characters chasing him, because he's floating away, only for him to be saved because another officer shot 3 bullets into him which caused him to deflate, complete with the balloon fart-y sound. The movie ends not long after that, so all of the flying is never completely explained, though one character claims it was the Virgin Mary.

Thread #4: What is with Aude and André and the entire Van Peteghem family? OK, if you haven't seen the movie, it opens with André and Isabelle travelling to their holiday home in Calais, with their two daughters Blanche and Gaby, and their niece Billie. Then Isabelle's brother, Christian, drops by, and André seems to refer to him as his cousin, but also his brother-in-law. At first I wrote off, as André seems a bit slow on the uptake. Then André's sister, Aude, also joins them, and we find out she is Billie's mother. There is no mention of Billie's father until halfway through the movie when Aude and André are talking and she says she doesn't know who the father is. It seems like it's a typical case of teen pregnancy gone wrong, only we find out the reason why she doesn't know who the father is is because it could be either her brother, André, or their father!

The inspectors comment on the weird fact that André refers to Christian as his brother-in-law sometimes, and his cousin other times, and André explains that it's because he married Christian's sister, who is also his first cousin, once removed. And he explains that that's just the way things are in when you're from the North. Christian also seems a bit slow on the uptake, and so this kinda explains things, but just raises so many more questions.

Anyway, I sort of think that the discussion with Aude and André hints that maybe Billie is a hermaphrodite as Aude says, "What did the union of our blood create?" And none of the Van Peteghems seem to find Billie's constant gender changes odd, though it might just be that they've had 15 (?) years to get used to it.

Thread #5: What is with the cannibalism and what happened to the murder investigation?! So we discover that the Bruforts are cannibals, and you see all the kids eating raw human meat. The investigators are hot on their trail. When Christian, Billie and Aude go missing, there's a big search with a heap of officers. But then the three of them are found (because Ma Loute let them go) and suddenly everyone is celebrating and that's the end? What happened to the fat parasol lady? How did Ma Loute / his dad kidnap the nudist woman without her dog attacking them, and during the one minute the inspectors looked away to give her some privacy? How did their neighbours never comment on the fact that the Bruforts had blood all over their faces, and were eating the carcasses in plain sight?!

Thread #6: Which brings me to the previously mentioned unnamed girl. She sees them eating the humans, and even comes to talk to Ma Loute while his face is covered in blood. He asks if she wants him to eat her, which technically could have been a sexual comment, but she just walks off. She does not partake in the cannibalism. Is she their sister? It would explain the large age gap between Ma Loute and the next brother. But then she's also seen cuddling Ma Loute and it's implied that after he dumps Billie, he goes back to her. I guess given the other stuff that has happened in this movie, you can't really rule out incest.



Even now, having processed the movie a bit more, I have no idea what I just watched.

Nuit Au Cinéma

The Alliance Française French Film Festival is on at the moment, and in Melbourne, runs until the 30th of March. Auto got me into the Every Frame a Painting YouTube channel and I've been thinking a lot about my own movie making. Obviously, a lot of my movies have been influenced by Hollywood, and to some degree, Hong Kong cinema, but I think there's still a lot to be learned. I definitely don't have the big budgets that professional film makers do, and my actors aren't really actors, just my conscripted co-workers. Still, maybe one day I'll have the time to make my own movies with people who actually want to be in them.

Until that day, all I can really do is learn as much as I can. When a co-worker told me that the French Film Festival was on, I thought it might be good to see some of the techniques used by other directors. There were so many movies I wanted to see, including the one about French cinema, but I decided to limit myself to four, as I still have my own movie to finish by next Wednesday!

D came with me to buy the tickets, as he wanted to go for a little walk after lunch, and when he realised I was buying single tickets for each film, he said, "Are you seeing these movies by yourself?" I replied that I was, and the cashier said, "It's the best way to see movies." I explained that I didn't know anyone who would want to see French movies with me, so I'm seeing them alone (not that there's anything wrong with seeing movies alone, I've done it before and I'll happily do it again). He said he could ask his mum to watch them with me as she likes "weird movies with subtitles".

I had originally intended for my latest movie to be a "foreign movie" with Japanese dialogue for the main character, and subtitles. One of my biggest gripes about movies and TV shows is when they dumb it down for the audience, but I'm wondering if maybe it is a good idea in this case as I know subtitles can be particularly polarising for people.

Anyway, back to the movies I'll be seeing. I'll write up reviews of them as I go, but here's why I picked the ones that I did:

Slack Bay (Ma Loute) - The description of the movie made it sound like Hot Fuzz, which is one of my favourite movies. I actually initially filtered the list of movies for comedies, because at the time, I really felt like watching something funny, so this was the one that I chose.

Planetarium - I pretty much only chose this movie because Natalie Portman is in it.

Polina (Polina, Danser sa vie) - Admittedly, I first looked at this movie because it was partly in Russian, but I've always enjoyed watching the ballet, and it says it features a cast of professional dancers, and it's described as having a world-renowned choreographer, so I'm sure it'll be beautiful to watch. Plus, it's right after the Arnold Classic, so I'll probably be super inspired to work out after both of them.

Penny Pincher! (Radin!) - Another comedy. As soon as I saw the title, I felt like it was something I could related to. As I've mentioned before, I feel a bit like my frugal nature has stopped me from really living life, and even though I don't feel like I've missed out, I have a lingering feeling that one day, I'm going to wish I had done more with my life. With the main character of this movie breaking into a sweat when he thinks about spending money, and the plot being how he overcomes that, I feel like it's a timely movie to watch.

There were also other film festivals previously that I missed out on and I'm sad about, like the Serbian Film Festival, and the Polish film festival. Will try to keep an eye out for them this year.

Other positive news, I'm halfway through the month, and I'm already at $236.80. Lookin' good.

Lost in Translation

I came across an interesting question on the French Stack Exchange site today: What languages are perceived as classy or fancy to French speakers? (the original title was "What do the French do when they need a French word?" which I thought was funnier, but less clear what the meaning of the question was).

The gist of the question is that when English speakers want to sound fancy or posh, they will often throw in some French phrases, one of the examples is choosing to say au contraire rather than on the contrary, but what do French people do when they want to do the same? My initial assumption was that they'd simply do the opposite, and throw in some English phrases, but according to the answers, that doesn't seem to be the case. Some answers proposed German, Italian or Latin, but the general feeling is that they don't seem to do it. One answer proposes a historical reason why this might be the case: in the 17th - 19th centuries, French was often spoken by nobility, even in the Russian, German and Scandanavian courts, so it makes sense that being able to speak French was seen as a sign of power or wealth.

I actually feel pretty embarrassed speaking French to non-French speakers for that reason, because I feel like I sound a bit too tryhard. A few my former co-workers know that I'm learning French, and so when a French developer visited the team from London, they were trying to get me to speak with him. I really wanted to practice with him, but I didn't want to practice in front of everyone else, so I ended up hiding behind my monitors the entire time he was there.

Anyway, that's not the part I found most fascinating. One of the answers goes into some of the difficulties that translators can face when trying to translate things like movies. The example given is a movie where two people are escaping from a POW camp in Germany. One is able to speak French and German, and the other only English. They seem like they're able to make it past the German guard, but when the guard says, "Good luck" in English, and the Englishman replies, "Thanks", there's a bit of an uh-oh moment, because English wasn't commonly spoken in Germany at the time, so he is exposed as a foreigner. To do the reverse, and have the guard say "Bonne chance" and the person reply "merci" wouldn't have nearly the same effect.





SPOILERS FOR THE GAME OF THRONES TV SHOW COMING UP....









TURN BACK NOW.





LAST CHANCE.







EH.... I GUESS BY THIS POINT YOU DON'T CARE.







That reminded me of a post I saw on reddit, asking about how Hodor's name got translated in other languages, since season 6, episode 5 of the TV series revealed that the reason he always says "Hodor" is because Bran warged into him in the past and he could hear Meera saying, "Hold the door" in the future. The answer can be found on the Movies Stack Exchange site, but I'll paste it again here in case you're too lazy to visit it:

• German: "Halt das Tor!" whereas Tor is better translates to gate than to door. This actually works well for "Hodor".
• French: As pradyot commented "Qu'ils n'aillent pas au-dehors!" becomes "Pas au-dehors!" and then "Hodor".
• Russian: "затвори ход" ("close the passage") which transitions to "hodor" in quite a strange and unusual way. Word "ход" here closer to "hatchway" than "door".
• Spanish: "Aguanta el portón" (Not Ocluye el corredor) in Spain the word door "puerta" was replaced with main/front door "portón" in order for an easier transition to Hodor.
• Spanish (Latin America): "Déjalo cerrado". A strange way to say "keep it closed", also needs some imagination to make it work.
• Turkish: "Orada dur!" which means "Stand there!". It is not dubbed but subtitled. It evolves as: "Orada dur! -> Ordadur! -> Hordor! -> Hodor!". Our interpreter guy, esekherif, translated it that way and I think this is the closest that Turkish language can possibly get.
• Japanese: "ホーダー" [Ho-da-] which is a transliteration of "Hodor", coming from the English "Hold the Door". Interestingly in Japanese, door is pronounced ドア (doa) which if transliterated as such would make the name a lot closer to the English pronunciation. In Japanese, "hold the door" would be ドアを持って (doa wo motte) which would have more chance of making his name something like ドアモ (Doamo) in a purely Japanese version.
• Brazilian Portuguese: "Segure a porta" ("Hold the door") -> "a por-" -> "Hodor"
• Italian: First shown in English with italian subtitles (literal), then in Italian with integral translation after one week. Translators decided for a little addition to maintain the original meaning and then make the "Hodor" works: "Blocca la porta, trova un modo!" (Hold the door, find a way!) -> trova un modo -> rov...odo.. -> hodor
• Danish: "Hold døren!" (subtitles, literal translation, no attempt to preserve alliteration).
• Swedish: "Håll dörren!" (subtitles, literal translation, no attempt to preserve alliteration).
• Norwegian: "Hold døra!" (subtitles, literal translation, no attempt to preserve alliteration).
• Finnish: "Pitele ovea!" (subtitles, literal translation, no attempt to preserve alliteration).
• Serbian: "Hodi, dobro drži vrata!" ("Come on, hold the door tightly...")... then "Hodi... dobro..." ("Come on... tightly..."), then just "hodor...". Alliteration was preserved as much as possible, while it's obviously not the best way to say it.
• Czech: “Drž vrata! Honem!” (“Hold the gate! Quick!”), where the evolution to Hodor is quite a stretch…
• Greek:"Κράτα την πόρτα!". It sounds nothing like Hodor, so from one point on they used greek letters to write "Hold The Door" (Χολντ δε ντορ) which eventually became "Χόντορ". This is a common practice in Greek and it's called Greekglish.
• Hungarian: The meaning was changed "Holtodig óvd!" (Defend him till your death!), but the sound works more or less: Holt-óv > Ho-tó > Hodor

MrFodder asked his Chinese co-workers, who said that in the *cough* unofficial *cough* Chinese version they just had a subtitled version, with the English audio, so they got the gist of it from what the characters were saying.

(This post goes into more detail in how the name transformed in certain languages, and how it didn't really transform in others: http://www.livinglanguage.com/blog/2016/05/25/sosten-la-puerta-game-of-thrones-and-challenge-translation/)

I guess it's just one of those things you tend to take for granted unless you tend to watch foreign movies or read foreign books. One that I thought was particularly funny is in the English translation of the Erast Fandorin novel The Winter Queen (originally written in Russian), some characters are mentioned playing "American Roulette", which involves taking a revolver, putting a bullet in a random chamber, spinning it, pointing it at your head and pulling the trigger...

The Russian developer at work who originally put me onto his novels asked me whether there are other differences, so I guess I should start making a list. He speaks fluent English (though with a somewhat thick Russian accent), but he read all the books in Russian.