films – don't confuse the narrator

u-certificate

garden gnomes (Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs) on shop shelf

Having found this tiny Snow White amongst a veritable army of dwarfs in a local store, I was going to call this post “size matters”.

I’d probably have gone on to talk about the poor thing slaving away to cook and clean simply because she was terrified of the monsters she lived with. But perhaps female subjugation isn’t a very nice subject to treat so superficially, so I did a quick search on trivia associated with the film to see what else I could write.

Over on IMDB, I found that the certification of the original Disney film was controversial: although The British Board of Film Censors gave the film an A-certificate because they thought the enchanted forest and the witch were too frightening for younger audiences, most local authorities overrode the censor’s decision and gave the film a U-certificate.

In fact, it seems as if the censors knew what they were talking about and many of the young audiences wet themselves in fear. I can only wonder what would have happened if the dwarfs had been giants.

sound and sense

In the post Sound Reasoning, I talked about how in Spanish each letter corresponds to a single sound. This must make it hard for a Spaniard to visualise the spelling of a word when he hears it spoken in English, and therefore must make comprehension more difficult.

It does, however, add to the pleasure of watching films in English with amateur Spanish subtitles. I admire the guys who attempt what is clearly a task beyond their capabilities. They gather up their inadequate grammar and try and create meaning from sound alone.
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pc or not pc

The local cinema is showing Polanski’s The Ghost Writer and this is the poster advertising the film:

You’ll notice that the title has been translated into Spanish as El Escritor – The Writer. I wonder whether that’s because the word used for a “ghost writer” is negro.
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using language

I hadn’t realised that the library in Navarredonda was following a long and honourable Spanish tradition with their sign listing their rules and regulations for behaviour.

Still, the tile in the photograph was spotted embedded in the wall outside a bar in Pedro Bernardo and does seem to be a genuine antique.

Presumably, though, the residents don’t want visitors to think that they are quite so stuck in the past as a ban on blasphemy and the image of a pony parked in the bull ring might lead you to believe. At least, I assume that’s why they felt the need to add the small explanatory tile that reads, “curiosidad antigua”.
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subtitles and subtexts

There’s been plenty of talk about the latest Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law. Downey himself caused some of the controversy with his comments on The Letterman Show in December. (Currently on YouTube: part 1 and part 2.)

The discussion (half way through part 2) touched on the relationship between Holmes and Watson. After a brief bantering exchange, Downey says: “Why don’t we observe the clip and let the audience decide if he just happens to be a very butch homosexual. Which there are many. And I’m proud to know certain of them.”
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