jencat | Amelie, again (Reply)

Of course it's up there with my top films of all time ever, but I'm watching the sublime Amelie on tv again right now, and kinda wishing i could be bothered to get up and put the DVD on instead...

It's not the fact that the tv version has loads of adverts - it's the frickin' subtitles. I've seen this film a hell of a lot on dvd - to the point where i can remember most of the dialogue - and for some strange reason, the tv version uses different english subtitles (what I think are the region 1 version, from what I can figure from wiki?).

Not just different, but worse. Much, much worse... There's a chance they may be closer to the actual French dialogue in some cases, but they really don't read as well as the original. The tv version also veer from what you can hear being spoken at times, too, though, so it's not even a better translation... The Madeleine Wells/Wallace name change from the dialogue (which you can hear) in the original version may not be an exact translation but it's slightly more... charming? poetic? Certainly more comforting, when i'm watching my cinematic equivalent of chocolate, to read the words I keep expecting to see.

Not as bad, apparently, as the US dvd subtitle replacement on Let the Right One In (have no clue about the UK version; I saw the original festival version last year and wasn't quite won over enough to want to see it again), but still, they jar as you watch it.

Odd, that Amelie should be on tonight - today I took a trip back to my old uni at Canterbury, along with the campus cinema where I first saw it (and walked out on a buzzy high, of course) along with one of my old housemates. It's changed, of course, in the eight years since we left (and now I do feel godawfully old, saying that) - mostly new buildings, including a whole new college called Woolf (woohoo, finally they name one after a girl!), and a slightly new menu in our old college tex-mex cafe. But there were still the dessert nachos, thankfully :o)

Odd, too, that last night was the final ep of the Amelie-inspired Pushing Daisies over here...

gah. It had to go, though, given the complete lack of options for the Ned/Chuck storyline. Yay, our OTP get together in the pilot ep, but everything else you ever do to them will feel like you're just being mean. Turns out there are only so many directions for that to go in, sadly, and it just turned out to have kinda a limited shelf-life after all.

Still, we got a proper final ep, with a great deal of tacked on tying up of loose ends, and some weird zooming around over water that was straight out of The Matrix Reloaded. Aw, still, the Darling Mermaid Darlings got their groove back and went on tour (and got their daughter/niece back from the dead), Emerson's daughter found him (in a seriously dramatic reversal from last week..!), Olive got...Hell, I can't remember what Olive got. The Taxidermist? And Ned and Chuck got to stand on the aunts' doorstep clutching wine and flowers for what felt like days.

It was an ending.. probably more of an ending than Dead Like Me originally got; certainly not as satisfying as Jay's Travis-soundtracked end scene in Wonderfalls though. Ah, Jay.. still my favourite Bryan Fuller character (now i just have to work out who has my dvd of that and demand it back with menaces...hmmm).

And speaking of endings... poor Dan just met his maker (so very literally) in Lost. What with those parents, it's amazing he turned out the normal, well-adjusted... oh hell, he was still our adorable time-travelling geek. And he spent three years mourning Charlotte that we didn't see anything of, but he still came back and told her to go... I have no luck with shipping this year at all, as it turns out. Still in mourning myself, over here, thanks all the same.

And the last Sarah Connor ep showed up too, and it was fantastic, and kinda heartbreaking that we'll probably never see what happens next... It's fairly clear we're now roaming any one of a million alternate futures (to quote the Salvation trailer, this certainly isn't the one his mother told him about - there's now no photo of her for him to give Kyle, so how in hell is this all going to work out?!). But so, so good to see Derek again, and lordy, John's face when he saw Cameron again, only to realise that she was, in fact, still Allison (did he even know about Allison? I can't remember when he was around in that ep.). Kyle.. doesn't look enough like Kyle to convince and it keeps annoying me. Just waiting to see what Anton Yelchin manages in Salvation now, cos I'm not sure we've seen anything of him really in the trailers (pretty much the Christian and Sam Show, those trailers..).

But the idea, of seeing what happens next if John manages to bullshit his way out of that little situation, and what the hell the Weaverbot is going to do now she's in the human base, but not necessarily out to harm them... Plus what is Sarah going to do now she's chosen to stay behind (she's seen that future in her head for far too long to ever go there in person) - I guess ganging up with Ellison to look after poor little Savannah is out of the question? It would be so very amusing if Savannah turned out to be more signficant that we've been lead to believe, too... The show apparently works in a future where Kate Connor never exists, too - so it's always been outside the T3 (thank god) and Salvation timelines...