Моей душе покоя нет is a song from Служебный роман (Office Romance) performed by Alisa Freindlich and Andrey Myagkov. Note that, being a woman, Freindlich sings “Клянусь, я всё бы отдала” rather than (“original” masculine version) “Клянусь, что всё бы я отдал”.
| Robert Burns For the sake o’ Somebody | Роберт Бёрнс, перевод С.Я. Маршака Моей душе покоя нет |
My heart is sair — I darena tell — | Моей душе покоя нет, |
In 1998, I almost bought this album in Cologne’s famous and huge Saturn shop. After wandering through it for about two hours, I’ve assembled a large pile of CDs without which, I thought, I should never leave the building. But this is exactly what happened because the shop did not accept credit cards. According to Wikitravel, it still does not take them. Cursing quietly, I left my pile (containing the only copy of Chapter Three in the shop) at the counter N and rushed outside in search of an ATM. By the time I came back, the counter girl N was nowhere to be seen; ditto my collection. In the end, I managed to spend my Deutschmarks on something else.
For a few years after that, the CD was not available anywhere. Then the remastered edition appeared. For about three years, it was on my wishlist (that’s a hint, dear reader), I finally decided that enough is enough and gave it to myself as a well-deserved present. Which was nice.
Last Saturday, when I was contemplating which topic to choose for the 500th (that’s right) blog post here, Spanish television came with an answer. This movie.
It is refreshing to see such an intelligent and funny film whose protagonists, for a change, come in vastly different shapes: rellenit@s, gordit@s and, er, gord@s; group psychotherapy, love, death, sex (read the rest of clichés here), all this and more, beautiful Senegalese music and a song which I hoped never to hear again: Casi, casi by Raphael. The actors’ work — I don’t think I saw any of the cast before — is outstanding. I wish I knew Spanish better, or at the very least the subtitles to stay on screen longer than for a few milliseconds. That only means I have to watch it again some time.
This is another great band I learned about from Songlines. A mere four years later, I got the album. Strange (to say the least) and beautiful music. I don’t understand Khmer (the language most of the album is sung in), so I have to make the most of the priceless song titles: Woman in the Shoes, Tiger Phone Card, Integratron, Sober Driver... Best of all, the bonus track One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula.
It so happened that we went to see the first instalment of The Hobbit trilogy in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. In Spanish. In 3-D. It was fantastic.
Dr. Watson Arthur Dent Martin Freeman is a perfect Bilbo. (On the contrary, Elijah Wood was — still is — a horrible Frodo.) Gollum is as great as he was in The Lord of the Rings. I liked Sylvester McCoy as Radagast. But of course it is the dwarfs who make this movie.
If LotR had some humour in it, An Unexpected Journey is a full-blown comedy. You can’t really have a serious movie with heroes named Balin, Dwalin, Fíli, Kíli et cetera. I love the way Jackson pokes fun at his own epic: for example, Gandalf still bangs his head in Bilbo’s house. Elrond, Galadriel and Saruman all make unashamed cameo appearance in Riverdance Rivendell, the home of fine vegetarian cuisine.
Here are all the words you need to understand the movie in Spanish:
| acertijo | riddle |
| Bolsón | Baggins |
| enano | dwarf |
| Escudo de Roble | Oakenshield |
| espada | sword |
| mago | wizard |
| mi tesoro | my precious |
| setas | mushrooms |
Finally, the third dimension. Not that I expected much of it — I still believe that 3-D should be reserved for animated films only. In all live action movies I’ve seen so far the 3-D only makes things worse. The Hobbit is not an exception. Not only does it look unnatural (well, OK, I don’t know how natural goblins and dragons are, but at least realistic beings in realistic landscape should look realistic), also the scenes where the camera moves fast appear out of focus. I’m looking backward to the good old 2-D version.
