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Super Challenge Registration/ Update 2012

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4483 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 521 of 656
24 August 2012 at 2:00pm | IP Logged 
UPDATE - Added Dutch Book Entries 12-14

Just finished the Hunger Games in Dutch, not having read or seen the story elsewhere before. On the one hand, I'm
ecstatic already to have reached a point where I can confidently and quickly read a popular novel in Dutch (this was
supposedly at the "teen" level?), not already knowing the story, and with close to 100% comprehension. On the
other hand, I was a little disappointed in the story. I guess I kept expecting it to go another way, but it did in fact
end up being pretty much what it seemed like at the start (trying not to give any spoilers in case someone else
hasn't read this tremendously popular story). I still may proceed to book 2 at some point to see what happens
there, as the story will pretty much have to go in a new direction now.

BOOKS (French)

5. ...

FILMS, ETC. (French)

9. ...

BOOKS (Dutch)

12-14. De Honger Spelen

FILMS, ETC. (Dutch)

14. ...

I am not entered in any Super Challenge for German, but I also am still reporting for my log:

BOOKS (German)

9. ...

FILMS, ETC. (German)

25. ...
1 person has voted this message useful



geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4483 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 522 of 656
24 August 2012 at 6:51pm | IP Logged 
UPDATE - Added French "Film" Entries 10-11

It seems I was not really ready for this audiobook. It was tempting, being quite short, but I didn't really know the story. Since my comprehension was a bit limited, it was hard to concentrate for long stretches. It was still a useful exercise, but I need to do some more reading first, and to try my next audiobook in French as something for which I have more context. It may be back to Jules Verne for the moment.

BOOKS (French)

5. ...

FILMS, ETC. (French)

10-11. La belle et la bête (audiobook)

BOOKS (Dutch)

14. ...

FILMS, ETC. (Dutch)

14. ...

I am not entered in any Super Challenge for German, but I also am still reporting for my log:

BOOKS (German)

9. ...

FILMS, ETC. (German)

25. ...
1 person has voted this message useful



patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4328 days ago

1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 523 of 656
24 August 2012 at 7:17pm | IP Logged 
Not reading any books at the moment, but my movie watching is moving along at a good pace:

-----------

MOVIES:

47. Invisible Frame (2009) & Cycling the Frame (1988). Two short art-docofilms, by Cynthia Beatt, with Tilda Swinton cycling around the the border of the Wall. The first filmed in 1988 gives a great sense of of not only the Wall, but also the normalicity around it; the second is a follow-up with many of the same shots filmed 21 years later, with a bigger budget, after Tilda Swinton had become a much bigger star. No German (hardly any spoken words at all - especially in the first), so I am not counting it towards the challenge, but worth checking out if you are interested in Berlin. 7/10.

42-47. Breaking Bad - Season 4 - 13 Episodes (2011). 9/10.

41. Hundestage (2001). A disturbing and bleak Austrian first feature by Ulrich Seidl exploring varying deviant and destructive (predominately sexual) relationships in a suburb in Vienna. I am not counting this one towards the challenge; I wasn't able to parse the Austrian properly, so ended up relying on subtitles. 8/10.

41. Sons of Norway - Sønner av Norge (2011). My first German-dubbed Norwegian film in the cimema. About the relationship of a father and son after the wife/mother dies. The boy gets into punk, and his hippy father joins in. I felt it left too much unexplored, with an ending that leaves a sense that the third act is missing, but interesting all the same. 5/10.

40. Halbe Treppe (2002). A Dogma (or Dogma-like?) film set in the East German city of Frankfurt am Oder, by the director Andreas Dresen. Nice film, with very naturalistic acting. The bleakness of the urban enviroment is very well captured, but with enough light touches that things never become too oppressive. Liked the running gag with the Balkan music by the 17 Hippies. Winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlinale in 2002. 6/10.
1 person has voted this message useful



Anya
Pentaglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5588 days ago

636 posts - 708 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, FrenchC1, English, Italian, Spanish
Studies: German, Japanese, Hungarian, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin
Studies: Ancient Greek, Hindi

 
 Message 524 of 656
24 August 2012 at 7:59pm | IP Logged 
Update:Spanish 6%
Read 2/50 books
"Ines del alma mia"
"Oscar, agente secreto "
Lugones (short stories)


Watched 3.6/50 films
Tv
"Colloqualspanish:8-15"
1 person has voted this message useful



geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4483 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 525 of 656
26 August 2012 at 4:35pm | IP Logged 
UPDATE - Added Dutch Book Entries 15-19

So I just finished HP6, and while I didn't cry, I did feel an incredible urge to keep going with book 7 and follow
Harry and his friends further on their righteous quest, and also to continue puzzling over the whole Severus Snape
mystery, which I never really resolved when I read these in English...but that book isn't easy to get cheap in Dutch.
Hm. Well, I have other projects to work on for the moment, so maybe that'll go on hold for now. I'm tempted to
start up with Tolkien or George R. R. Martin in Dutch, but I'm going to try to stick to one thing at a time (well, one
or two things per language, maybe).

BOOKS (French)

5. ...

FILMS, ETC. (French)

11. ...

BOOKS (Dutch)

15-19. Harry Potter en de halfbloed prins

FILMS, ETC. (Dutch)

14. ...

I am not entered in any Super Challenge for German, but I also am still reporting for my log:

BOOKS (German)

9. ...

FILMS, ETC. (German)

25. ...
1 person has voted this message useful



Hekje
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4498 days ago

842 posts - 1330 votes 
Speaks: English*, Dutch
Studies: French, Indonesian

 
 Message 526 of 656
26 August 2012 at 4:43pm | IP Logged 
patrickwilken wrote:
Hekje wrote:
Reporting in for the full Super Challenge in Dutch.

Films and TV episodes (45 min+): 43 of 100


Isn't the unit for a film/tv 90mins?


Good question. I was referring to the first page of this thread, which states that anything shorter than 45
minutes is half a film, anything longer than 3 hours counts as two. It seemed from that first post that a film
between 45 minutes and 3 hours would then count as one. Am I out of date?

Edited by Hekje on 26 August 2012 at 4:44pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Kerrie
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Kerrie2
Joined 5190 days ago

1232 posts - 1740 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 527 of 656
26 August 2012 at 4:49pm | IP Logged 
I've been on a movie spree lately.

Spanish 29/100 movies now

Altiplano / High Plain - (from IMDb) "War photographer Grace, devastated after a violent incident in Iraq, renounces her profession. Her Belgian husband, Max, is a cataract surgeon working at an eye clinic in the high Andes of Peru. Nearby, the villagers of Turubamba succumb to illnesses caused by a mercury spill from a local mine. Saturnina, a young woman in Turubamba, loses her fiancé to the contamination. Ignorant of its true source, the villagers turn their rage on the foreign doctors, and in the ensuing riot Max is killed. Grace sets out on a journey of mourning to the place of Max's death. Saturnina takes drastic measures to protest against the endless violations towards her people and her land. Grace and Saturnina's destinies merge. ALTIPLANO is a lyrical and probing film about our divided but inextricably linked world."

Really good movie, amazing music.

XXY - (from IMDb) "This is the dramatic story of a intersexed 15-year-old. She lives with her parents, who have to cope with the challenges of her medical condition."

This was pretty good, too. Another coming-of-age story.

The Davinci Code - (from IMDb) "Symbologist Robert Langdon is thrown into a mysterious and bizarre murder. Alongside Langdon is the victims granddaughter and cryptologist Sophie Neveu, who with Robert discovers clues within Da Vinci's paintings. To further find the truth, Robert and Sophie travel from Paris to London, whilst crossing paths with allies and villains such as Sir Leigh Teabing and Silas. Wherever their path takes them, their discovery which is about to be revealed could shake the foundations of mankind."

I wanted to see the movie because I've been thinking about reading this in Spanish for the Super Challenge. I really enjoyed the storyline, but as a movie, it could have been done better. (I know, the movie is in English. I watched it with Spanish audio, though. It was interesting listening to French accented Spanish.)

Italian 29/100 movies now

Peter Pan (Disney) - (from IMDb) "An adaptation of J. M. Barrie's story about a boy who never grew up. The three children of the Darling family receive a visit from Peter Pan, who takes them to Never Land, where an ongoing war between Peter's gang of rag-tag runaways and the evil Pirate Captain Hook is taking place.

I think most of us have seen this at some point, maybe decades ago for some of us. :-) It was interesting to watch in Italian, though. There is so much pirate talk that there were times I had no clue what they were saying!

Fists in the Pocket / I pugni in tasca - (from IMDb) "Alessandro, a young epileptic with paranoid inclinations, decides to relieve Augusto, the only sound brother, from the burden of a numerous family plagued with hereditary diseases. After a first aborted attempt, the dreadful series of accidents/murders is started by pushing the blind mother into a ravine. Then comes the turn of Leone, the idiotic brother. Will Alessandro be able to bring to completion his obsessive project?"

And you thought your family was dysfunctional? This was weird and bizarre and chilling, and left me rather perplexed. I'm not really exactly sure what to think about it.

Il Postino / The Postman - (from IMDb) "Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet, is exiled to a small island for political reasons. On the island, the unemployed son of a poor fisherman is hired as an extra postman due to the huge increase in mail that this causes. Il Postino is to hand-deliver the celebrity's mail to him. Though poorly educated, the postman learns to love poetry and eventually befriends Neruda. Struggling to grow and express himself more fully, he suddenly falls in love and needs Neruda's help and guidance more than ever."

This is a classic. Really great movie.

For anyone who has seen it, I have a question. Mario has a really strong accent, which was hard to me to understand at first. Is this a regional accent? It almost felt like the accent was being used to show he was in a lower socioeconomic class or less educated or something. I'm just curious about that, since I know that tv/film in the US often uses different accents or dialects to portray things like that.


More to come.. I have been busy watching movies this month. It started out with a Harry Potter (in Italian) marathon, then just turned into a multilingual hunt for really good movies. I've looked at a lot of "best of" lists to find good picks, and so far I keep getting good ones. To be honest, I was more worried about the movie part of the Super Challenge than the book part, because I love to read, but I've never been a big movie fan. I thought I would just watch all ten seasons of Stargate SG1 in all of my target languages, but I have been finding a lot of good movies. I'm surprised how much it has improved my listening comprehension for Italian and Spanish so far.

If anyone is looking for movie ideas, you might find some ideas on my Movies on Deck page here - most of this is Spanish, French, Italian, and German, but there are a few other things that looked interesting to me, and there are a few "best of" lists that might be worth checking out.
2 persons have voted this message useful



patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4328 days ago

1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 528 of 656
26 August 2012 at 7:57pm | IP Logged 
Hekje wrote:
patrickwilken wrote:
Hekje wrote:
Reporting in for the full Super Challenge in Dutch.

Films and TV episodes (45 min+): 43 of 100


Isn't the unit for a film/tv 90mins?


Good question. I was referring to the first page of this thread, which states that anything shorter than 45
minutes is half a film, anything longer than 3 hours counts as two. It seemed from that first post that a film
between 45 minutes and 3 hours would then count as one. Am I out of date?


I probably misread the rules, but I thought 45mins was half a film, therefore 90mins plus was a full film, but I can see now that I have misread the rules. I think with all the tv-series I have been watching 45 minutes per film would be too easy for me personally so I am going to stick to the 90minute/film level, but that's just me.


1 person has voted this message useful



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