Part of an occasional series in which Spank The Monkey travels to foreign countries, watches films in unfamiliar languages, and then complains about not understanding them. This episode: The Netherlands, Christmas 2013.
Category Archives: Monoglot Movie Club
Monoglot Movie Club: What The Fox Said Next
Part of an occasional series in which Spank The Monkey travels to foreign countries, watches films in unfamiliar languages, and then complains about not understanding them. This episode: Norway, November 2013.
Continue reading Monoglot Movie Club: What The Fox Said Next
Monoglot Movie Club: The World, Under Construction
Part of an occasional series in which Spank The Monkey travels to foreign countries, watches films in unfamiliar languages, and then complains about not understanding them
Continue reading Monoglot Movie Club: The World, Under Construction
Monoglot Movie Club: Stockholm Syndrome
Part of an occasional series in which Spank The Monkey travels to foreign countries, watches films in unfamiliar languages, and then complains about not understanding them
“I’m a man on the move,” says Sir Les Patterson at the start of his book The Traveller’s Tool: “I wouldn’t have had two shits in the same toilet.” I can’t say that I get about as much as the Australian Cultural Attache, but from the path I’ve taken in previous Monoglot Movie Club articles – the Netherlands, Brazil, UAE, Japan, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Finland – you might have got the impression that I get to visit a country once and once only, before they chase me out of town and bar me from ever entering it again.
Happily, that’s not the case. To prove it, I went back to Sweden last month, in a return visit that had much warmer weather than my previous one in January (see illustration above). Back then, there was a sudden upsurge in interest in Swedish cinema, thanks to the Guldbagge film awards being announced: lots of local movies in theatres, many of them selling out. In the summer months, the Swedes appear to be watching all the same summer blockbusters as the rest of the world, but I still managed to catch a couple of bits of local product for your entertainment and my bewilderment. Continue reading Monoglot Movie Club: Stockholm Syndrome
Monoglot Movie Club: A Poor Second To Belgium
Part of an occasional series in which Spank The Monkey travels to foreign countries, watches films in unfamiliar languages, and then complains about not understanding them
You’re so sadly neglected
And often ignored
A poor second to Belgium
When going abroad
Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I quite want to be
– Monty Python, Finland
Quick! Name a famous Finnish film director. I’ll give you bonus points for lateral thinking if you said Renny Harlin, but arthouse cinema fans will probably have plumped for Aki Kaurismäki. Sadly, I didn’t get to see any of his movies on my recent visit to Helsinki, but it’s hard to avoid the man’s presence, particularly if you’re the sort of person that eats food. The Belated Birthday Girl and I kept ending up in restaurants that were either patronised by the director (the menu at Kosmos includes ‘Pike perch with Lobster Sauce and Crayfish Tails au Gratin à la Aki Kaurismäki’), or owned by him. Of the latter, Zetor is probably the best one to go for, with its tractor-heavy décor and its patriotic blueberry pie served in a tin mug, as seen above.
Still, you have to assume that Finnish cinema doesn’t begin and end with Kaurismäki. So I made it my mission, as ever, to track down a couple of the latest domestic releases, and attempt to watch them without the benefit of English subtitles. Good news for all you lovers of schadenfreude: one of these turned out to be Monoglot Movie Club’s first complete failure. Continue reading Monoglot Movie Club: A Poor Second To Belgium
Monoglot Movie Club: The Guldbagge Variations
Part of an occasional series in which Spank The Monkey travels to foreign countries, watches films in unfamiliar languages, and then complains about not understanding them
Sweden! Land of Bergman, Garbo and Abba The Movie. There are some countries where I struggle to find local films in the cinemas, but not here. Stockholm in January 2013 was packed full of ‘em: from the family-friendly fun of Sune i Grekland, to a theatrical outing for a Wallander that’ll probably be on BBC Four by 2014. All I needed was a way to filter out the good stuff from the bad.
By chance, I found that way on my first night in the country, as I turned on the telly to discover live coverage of the Guldbaggen, Sweden’s own film awards. (That golden bug thingy at the top of the page is the actual award itself.) Perfect! All I needed to do was grab the list of winners, pick the most interesting-looking ones, and get myself down to a cinema to see them. Unfortunately, everyone else in Stockholm appeared to be doing the same thing in the week after the Guldbaggen, with screenings of Swedish movies selling out all over the place. As a result, I couldn’t always see my first choice of film.
Continue reading Monoglot Movie Club: The Guldbagge Variations
Monoglot Movie Club: Stupid Sexy Flanders
by Spank The Monkey
Part of an occasional series in which Spank The Monkey travels to foreign countries, watches films in unfamiliar languages, and then complains about not understanding them
What could be more Christmassy than Brussels? I’m talking about the European city, of course, not the green bollocky things that take up space on the dinner plate which could be more usefully occupied by turkey. The markets, the gluhwein, the 25 metre high installation in the Grand Place that was referred to in some circles as Tree 2.0: a evening stroll through the streets in December will soon leave you with a warm festive glow. (Though that’s probably mainly the gluhwein.)
But inevitably, when The Belated Birthday Girl and I spent Christmas 2012 running round the key cities of northern Belgium, we took occasional breaks from the festivities to catch some of the local movies: two in Brussels, and one in Bruges (though not In Bruges). The locations are important – Monoglot Movie Club is all about celebrating the language problems you encounter with other nations’ domestic cinema, and we ended up with three entirely different sets of problems this time.
Monoglot Movie Club: Pining For The Fjords
Part of an occasional series in which Spank The Monkey travels to foreign countries, watches films in unfamiliar languages, and then complains about not understanding them
Like any regular business traveller, I have a checklist that I work through whenever I enter a new hotel. Does the room have tea and coffee making facilities? Is there enough soap in the shower? Are the tissues within arm’s reach of the bed? Once I’ve confirmed all those, it’s time to turn on the TV to get a quick overview of the local culture, in what I’ve only just realised is a smaller-scale and cheaper version of what I regularly do here in Monoglot Movie Club.
On my first night in Oslo, I was already slightly on edge after I discovered that my hotel failed on all three points on the checklist. And then I started watching the TV. Of the 13 channels available in my room, all of them bar one were showing English language programmes with subtitles. By the time I’d found out that the most interesting thing on telly that week was a subtitled episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, I had to wonder: if there’s so little Norwegian language material on television, what must Norway’s cinemas be like?
Monoglot Movie Club: Japanese Screens
Part of an occasional series in which Spank The Monkey travels to foreign countries, watches films in unfamiliar languages, and then complains about not understanding them
I’m full of Asahi in a Tokyo restaurant, and I’m drunkenly attempting to explain the concept of Monoglot Movie Club to one of The Belated Birthday Girl’s Japanese mates. If Miki is pretending to be interested, she’s doing it incredibly well, to the extent that she asks me a question I’ve never been asked before: “If you don’t understand the language, how do you choose which films to see?”
Regular readers will know that most of the time, that isn’t a problem. In the last few countries I’ve visited, it’s actually been a struggle to find one or two local films to watch. Japan, however, is another story. Their film industry is as busy as ever, although you’ll find many people – myself included – are concerned at just how much of their production slate is taken up with remakes, adaptations and sequels. During the two weeks I spent there on holiday, there were over a dozen Japanese films in cinemas vying for a spot in this article. And really, the procedure’s the same as it would be back home: start with the trailer.
Monoglot Movie Club: LOLs of Arabia
Part of an occasional series in which Spank The Monkey travels to foreign countries, watches films in unfamiliar languages, and then complains about not understanding them
Some countries make this job easy. When I’m travelling, I usually have to rely on a combination of Google Movies and individual cinema websites to get a decent idea of what local films are playing. Time Out Abu Dhabi, however, does all the work for you: its film listings allow for filtering by cinema, genre and language. So all I need to do is ask the site to show me the places and times where Arabic language films are being shown, and I’m home and dry.
Unfortunately, that’s where they stop making this job easy.
MostlyFilm 