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Super Challenge Update thread 2014-15 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3926 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes  Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 153 of 198 02 January 2015 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for letting us know that it's on Netflix! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4011 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 154 of 198 03 January 2015 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Having now completed 50 books and 50 films in French, I feel it is now really time for an update and review. I have given a (bit) more detailed summary in my log, too.
Books: My reading list included crime (e.g. Agatha Christie, Tess Gerritsen), childen’s literature (e.g. Harry Potter, Astrid Lindgren) and Sci Fi (e.g. Doctor Who). Many more books of these three genres are waiting on my shelves for 2015. Having noticed that many choose Harry Potter to start with, I would like to share with you that I personally did not see any difference in difficulty compared to bestsellers from Dan Brown, Tess Gerritsen or Robert Harris. Being a Potter fan myself, I will definitely continue with this series, but for those that do not feel overly attached to this genre, I can recommend those bestsellers as well. Compared to the last book read before the Super Challenge (Dan Brown’s ‚Inferno‘, which really was the first non-graded reader and non-children's book for me in French), I think my reading speed and easyness with French books really has increased. This has become a fun experience, not work. However, I faced huge difficulties when starting one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. Even after fiftysomething pages I couldn’t get a grip on the story arc. I believe this is due to the special idiolect of the Discworld novels, which include a vast amount of „creative vocabulary“. One of the main actors having a significant accent (which was made visible in many mis-spelled words) did not really help. I have decided to put the Discworld novels aside until I have reached a comfortable C-level in French. I am wondering if anyone faced similar difficulties? Films: I have mainly watched dubbed US series, mainly with French subtitles (e.g. Bones, Eureka, Monk, Glee). I believe my overall listening skills have improved from around 50 % to ca. 80 %. I am now watching ‚Grey’s Anatomy‘, which happens to be the first series I watched 20 months ago with nil comprehension. I am now comfortable to watch big parts without any subtitles; occasionally, when I did not get a grip on a specific scene, I would rewind and add subtitles temporarily. I don’t feel at ease with the medical stuff though, but would more or less accept this. With regard to easiness of comprehension, I would clearly rate the following TV series fro easy to difficult: Monk – Glee – Eureka – Gilmore Girls - Grey’s Anatomy – Bones. I can follow ‚Monk‘ without any subtitles, and have fun, whereas I still need to rewind with subs when watching ‚Bones'. Though I wanted to stick as closely as possible to the original idea of the Super Challenge, I added audio books to the „film“ part, since I am spending several hours a week on the motorway these days. Before the Super Challenge, I had never listened to any audio book in French, and really did not know what to expect. I started with ‚Le petit Nicolas‘, which was a very nice start for this exercise. Sometimes I would need to repeat up to three times to catch a story properly. Harry Potter turned out to be a bad choice, since the reader made huge effort in giving the key persons a unique way to talk (having a lisp, high-pitching voice). I would thus not recommend Harry Potter as an overall easy audio book. I am now listening to Dan Brown’s ‚Da Vinci Code‘, which I find far more easy to follow. Here, too, I see remarkable progress in my listening skills. While I still had difficulties with ‚Le petit Nicolas‘, I here hardly need to repeat, but can enjoy the story with ease. It though needs saying that I am familiar with the book. Not sure if I would be that comfortable with a new story. In conclusion, so far the Super Challenge has improved my French significantly, especially for the listening part. Thanks to Solfrid Cristin for this great idea. Edited by Suzie on 03 January 2015 at 12:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3829 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 155 of 198 05 January 2015 at 11:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, I subscribed last year to the Super Challenge but I unofficially dropped the
challenge quite soon. Meanwhile my goals and even some of the languages with which I subscribed are changed, so I'm abandoning it officially right now. Good luck and good study guys! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4671 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 156 of 198 08 January 2015 at 4:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Update Seven (November & December)
I've seen some interesting movies these past two months. I don't know if many were actually good, but they were definitely interesting. La sang de la vigne - I watched a couple more episodes of this show about wine and murder. It's enjoyable. 
Le temps qui reste. François Ozon. 2005 I saw this on my list, but couldn't remember at all what it was about. I had to look it up, and then it all came back: Romain is young and beautiful and has cancer. He's an ass to his boyfriend, sister, and mother, but confides in his grandmother because she is also close to death. I liked the movie, even though I forgot about it a week later. 
La france, Serge Bozon, 2007 It's WWI, and Camille's husband sends her a break-up letter from the front. She shaves her hair off, tapes up her breasts, and heads to the front to find him. She tags along with a troupe of guys who walk around a lot and occasionally break out into song. It's always the same song. A critic on Wikipedia calls this a "watered-down Brechtian alienation device." At least the film was pretty to look at. 
Vous n'avez encore rien vu. Alain Resnais, 2012 Resnais goes super-meta and presents three overlapping versions of Jean Anouilh's semi-mystical semi-ironic 1941 play about Eurydice and Orphée. I thought it was great. 
I clowns. Federico Fellini. 1970 More meta-narration, this time from Fellini. It's a pseudo-documentary about the dying art of professional clowns. I kept thinking about this season of American Horror Story (Freakshow), and how the series could have used some of Fellini's magic. Of course, Fellini's clowns don't go on killing sprees during Tupperware parties like in AHS, so the American series might have the edge. I Clowns was fun for three quarters of the movie, and then there was a twenty-minute slapstick scene with all the characters that just bored me. At the end of the day, clowns are scarier than funny. Fellini clowns: 
American Horror Story clowns: 
Uomini contro, Francesco Rosi, 1970. An anti-war film where the bad guys are the arrogant officers. I totally agreed with this film's politics, but it was laid on a bit thick. You never really learned much about the individual soldiers, but learned a lot about the stupidity of the generals. 
Milano calibro 9. Fernando Di Leo. 1972 Gangster flic. It was kind of fun to watch, even though the acting was awful and the direction comical. It's the kind of movie where the gangsters tie three people up in a cave and blow them up with dynamite, like something out of Bugs Bunny and Road Runner. 
 
I don't even have to look it up to know that Tarantino watched this movie and loved it. Edited by kanewai on 08 January 2015 at 4:44am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5018 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 157 of 198 16 January 2015 at 12:27am | IP Logged | ||
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I've just completed my 100th film in French so I thought it would be a good time to do an update and so some links to the various films & audiobooks which I've listened to.
I started with some films I already had and which had sub-titles. The taxi series by Luc Besson. Taxi is about a speeding taxi driver and a cop who can't drive and have to join forces to capture the bad guys. Taxi 1 
Taxi 2 
and I watched Taxi 3 & 4 as well before moving on to Valérian and Laureline all 40 episodes. A wonderful cartoon and a great comic book series too. 
An interesting short film I watched a couple of times on YouTUbe called Just Friends and then Les Rois Mages a comedy about 3 wise men. 
From a comedy to a series about gangsters. Sandra Paoli (Hélène Fillières), is propelled to the head of a powerful mafia clan. She becomes a respected, but also hated, woman in a world of men, murder and criminality. Backed up by her brother, she learns how to assert herself in a very violent world. Mafiosa, Le Clan 
Moving back to comedy I watched Les Visiteurs, the story of a violent French knight and his squire brought into the modern world by magic. 
Then a lot of time well spent learning about history with Les Lundis de l'histoire then back to films with Une Semaine Sur Deux. A nice feel good movie. 
Then a film called Bambou, overall rating for Bambou is: mediocre - watchable, but not unless you have something better to do. A few more miscellanious best not to be repeated films and audiobooks, and then: Engrenages (or Spirals on Netflix) Well worth watching! 
Then Hero Corps a comedy about superheros. 
and then a lot of time with Braquo 
Other honourable mentions are: Venus in fur Rebellion la verite si je men's l'empire des loups depression et potes amour micmacs to name a few. Sorry for the long post, I promise to only do it every 100 films. :) 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 3789 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 158 of 198 17 January 2015 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Kanewi and rdearman for these great French TV and Film recommendations! Looks like you both
have made some great selections! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4671 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 159 of 198 27 January 2015 at 4:50am | IP Logged | ||
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January Update
French Books: 43.3 French Movies: 66 Italian Books: 35.3 Italian Movies: 42.9 I finally have some Italian books to discuss! Il gattopardo (Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, 1958) - A story set in the dying days of the Sicilian aristocracy during the Risorgimento. This was a strange book to read in the original. I read it once in English, and thought it was just ok. Then I saw Luchino Visconti's 1963 movie, and absolutely loved it. I re-read the book a few years later, still in English, and loved the book this time too ... though maybe I loved it more because I was remembering Visconti's film. I was excited to read it in Italian - it was my first attempt at serious literature. And while parts of it were beautiful, parts were really awful. Poorly written, with tortured metaphors and big dose of misogyny (he is outright mean to the female characters at the end). In English I think I just skimmed over those parts, and focused on what was great. But I read slowly in Italian, and there was no skimming over the bad parts. I also know more about 19th century history now, and - by most accounts - the Sicilian nobility were the bad guys during the revolution, keeping the island in a feudal state while the rest of Europe tried to modernize. It was a bit strange to read an account where they were the noble heroes. I'd still recommend this book, though it's a rare case where I'd say: watch the movie first. Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (Giorgio Bassani, 1962) - The story of a handful of young people in Ferrara during the rise of fascism. Right at the beginning we learn that most of the Jewish characters died in the camps ... and then we flash back to the 1930's, and the novel focuses on the unrequited love of the narrator for the aristocratic Micòl Finzi-Contini. It's heartbreaking and wonderful and you should all read it. I read the last 100 pages without using the dictionary much, or needing to check in with the English translation. This is a first. Next up: Il nome della rosa (Umberto Eco, 1980). I'm worried that this might be beyond my level, but I'm impatient and want to give it a try. I have it on my kindle, and have a pdf trilingual text (Italian, Spanish, English) to help me if I get stuck. I put it on Google Drive if anyone wants to join me: Il nome della rosa Podcasts I've added two new podcasts to my rotation: Terre à terre is an environmental and science podcast on France culture. It covers a lot of topics that I don't see in the English press. This week they interviewed refugees from Corsica who experienced the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl - I never knew that a radioactive cloud passed over the island, or that the European governments covered it up. Hollywood Party - Il Cinema alla Radio - This is just fun: hour long episodes that recount famous classic movies. It's a mix of clips and narration, combined with a few asides about the movie itself. I don't think I would understand much normally, but if I'm familiar with the movie I can follow along on and off. This weekend I learned all my zombie-fighting words with La note dei morti viventi (Night of the Living Dead). I hate watching dubbed movies, but listening to them is fine. Also, Italian actresses have the best B-movie screams. 
Spanish Bonus: It's not a super-challenge language for me, but I finally started watching Gran Hotel. It seems like everyone else is, and I didn't want to miss out on the fun!  Edited by kanewai on 27 January 2015 at 4:58am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4671 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 160 of 198 18 July 2015 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Update 9: Italian Movies (the good)
I can't believe I haven't updated since January. Grab some popcorn, kids ... this is going to be a long series of posts. Things were looking rough for awhile with my Super Challenge. By the end of May I was 20 hours behind in Italian movies, 785 pages behind in reading, and 685 pages behind in French reading. Worse, I didn't even have a good source for foreign movies. I'd pretty much ran through the good stuff on Netflix and Criterion, and had a long run of movies that I just hated. Podcasts weren't helping. My comprehension isn't strong enough for them to be useful. I use the Podclub podcasts (aimed for the A2/B1 level), but they are only 12 to 15 minutes each. Then I tried a 2-week trial of Fandor, which has an amazing collection of underground, independent, and cult films. I spent two weeks bingeing on Cinecittà films, and ended up subscribing. Someone posted a link to a site that offers 8% off a new subscription. I can't find it now; the search function keeps crashing on me today. Hopefully someone else can find it. I'd highly recommend checking this site out, especially if you're looking for more edgy fare than what Netflix and Hulu offers. On to the movies: La città sconvolta: caccia spietata ai rapitori. (Kidnap Syndicate) Fernando Di Leo, 1975. This is a classic 1970's poliziesco, an Italian genre of detective story. There are hardboiled cops, square-jawed heroes, moral dilemmas, a good dose of violence, and lots of overacting. In La città gangsters kidnap two young boys, one rich and one poor. The rich man's father won't pay the ransom. Things go wrong, and the second half of the movie is a revenge thriller. 
I cannibali. Liliana Cavani, 1970 A fascist government leaves the bodies of rebels lying in the street. Britt Ekland is a radical flower-child Antigone who defies the government by secretly burying the corpses. It's all kinds of trippy hippy dippy; it works better as camp than drama. 
La strada. Federico Fellini, 1954. Giulietta Masina is sold to the circus, and becomes the property of Zampano the Great - an abusive travelling strongman. I love Fellini's movies from this period, and this is one of his classics. 
L'età di Cosimo de' Medici: L'esilio di Cosimo. Roberto Rossellini. 1972. The first part of a trilogy on the Age of the Medici. Beautiful to look at, detailed, and well researched - but as engaging as watching a Congressional debate. i.e.: horribly, painfully boring. I wanted to love this, but it felt too much like homework. 
Giulietta degli spiriti. Federico Fellini. 1965 Boring Giulietta gets caught up in the fabulous life of her neighbor, who helps her find the strength to leave her cheating husband. More awesomeness from Fellini. 
Cronica de un amore. Michelangelo Antonioni. 1950 Antonioni's first film. A rich man hires a detective to learn more about his new trophy wife - and uncovers darker secrets than he was expecting. A solid noir. 
I vinti. Michelangelo Antonioni. 1953 Antonioni's second film: three shorts about the trouble with kids today. The acting isn't great, but each story is interesting enough that it holds our attention. 
Bellissima. Luchino Visconti. 1952 Anna Magnani is an elemental force of nature who is determined that her child gets a shot at stardom. 
Django. Sergio Corbucci. 1966 Italy's version of the wild west, with an incredible soundtrack. Total fun. I've tried to watch Cinecittà films before, but the dubbing was always so awful that I quit. Fandor releases their films in the original Italian. Yeay for them. 
La decima vittima. Elio Petri. 1965 This is the movie that convinced me to subscribe to Fandor. After World War VI the government decides to channel people's violence into The Big Game. Each person plays ten rounds: five as a hunter, five as the victim. Anyone who survives ten rounds wins one million dollars. Ursula Andress is on her tenth and final round. Marcello Mastroianni is her target. Awesomeness ensues. Score by Piero Piccioni. It's a pop-art masterpiece. 
La corona di ferro. Alessandro Blasetti. 1941 A big fat fantasy-adventure, and one of the precursors to the sword and sandal epics. There are no shades of grey in this world: good is good, evil is evil, and when an Italian Tarzan arrives in the kingdom to lead the slaves in a revolt you know exactly who the good guys and the bad guys are. This one could use some restoration work. The subtitles are bad, but this worked for me: I could follow the actual spoken Italian, and the subtitles offered just enough information that I never got lost. 
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