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Poll

I prefer...

...generally films to books
[ 2 ] (28.6%)
...generally books to films
[ 4 ] (57.1%)
...generally beer and then we'll see whatever else you may've got there
[ 1 ] (14.3%)

Total Members Voted: 7

Topic: Films and Books (Read 26249 times)

Re: Films and Books

Reply #50
One of my weekend reads resulting from perusing the OAPEN Library was Temptation in the Archives. I liked it. A lot.

The fashionable thing to do these days would probably be to write a graphic novel based on the epistolary contacts of the Huygens family. Heck, I’d read it. But Lisa Jardine shows that just plain good writing is more than enough to keep you glued to the pages in this page-turner essay collection about archival science. Yes, you read that right, and no, there’s no irony hidden between the lines. Download the open-access book right now (clickety-click) and read chapter 3: “Never Trust a Pirate: Christiaan Huygens’s Longitude Clocks.” You can thank me later.

[…]


Re: Films and Books

Reply #52
Heh.

Have you ever had to give up on a book because it was too difficult? Last year I mentioned that I wanted to read Pietr-le-Letton. I'd given up on it in 2015 because it was a touch too difficult. I should be able to read it much the same as a Dutch, English or German simple detective novel now.

That reminds me, I should get around to reading Pietr-le-Letton.

Probably the most challenging book I've since read is Memoirs d'Hadrien, and I'm currently reading La vie: mode d'emploi, which isn't exactly easy either. Last month I even read a French academic book on Herodus Atticus just for fun, but academic works are much easier than literature. Nevertheless I thought nothing in French was beyond my reach now. But I borrowed a nice 1912 copy of Là-bas (Down There) by Joris-Karl Huysmans and I had to give up on it after a twenty-some pages because its vocabulary was just beyond my ken. You just can't read if it feels like you have to look up 50 words every page. Perhaps I'll return to it someday.

Re: Films and Books

Reply #53
You just can't read if it feels like you have to look up 50 words every page
It turns reading irritantly slow.
A bit like video,I don't have the patience for so much time watching something that could have been said in just a paragraph.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Films and Books

Reply #54
Agreed. I occasionally watch or listen to a documentary while washing the dishes (usually I prefer a more relaxing silence) but otherwise who has the time for video?



Re: Films and Books

Reply #57
I'll read that with more time. For know, it seems to have the typical perfume of Northern ignorance.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Films and Books

Reply #58
Yet another bookmark reminder for myself: knihi.com contains pretty much everything ever written in Belarussian.

Re: Films and Books

Reply #59
you watch "Who Am I – Kein System ist sicher" ? film on hacker for lulz (prototype of real hacker group "lulz security" ) 

Re: Films and Books

Reply #60
The government of the republic of Estonia threw money at a host of culture project throughout the centennial celebrations (about a third year in a row now) and, in this broader context, the Tõde ja õigus movie got made. It is running now and a bunch of people have gone to see it and have praised it, even children. Very shockingly I caught flu this year, which has prevented me to go see it thus far, even though my definite plan was to see it asap.

Tõde ja õigus, translated into English as Truth and Justice, was originally a series of novels, written and published by the Estonian writer Anton Hansen Tammsaare starting in mid-1920's. Now, Tammsaare is the archetypal writer for Estonians and Tõde ja õigus is his most monumental work. The first volume is compulsory for every kid in school. In my opinion, it is forced on kids too early so they cannot appreciate. I personally near-hated the book, as did everyone else I knew back then.

So it is surprising to see that the modern generation of children like this movie version now. Must be a good movie. I must stop writing and go see it now this weekend because my flu has pretty much subsided.


Re: Films and Books

Reply #62
So I saw the Tõde ja õigus movie. As a minimum, it represents the novel well, but I think it works independently too, particularly for foreigners. It is a strong epic drama by itself. A Singaporean said after seeing it that it's very Shakespearean. I gues it is a compliment. Yay, Estonian Gone With The Wind has been born, finally.

The comparison is not too good. Most people take Gone With The Wind to be a romantic story, whereas I take it to be an epic panorama of an era. The Tõde ja õigus series (of novels - a pentalogy - the movie covers just the first part) is very much an epic panorama of eras over generations. And the movie does lots of good truth and justice to it, which is a pretty impressive achievement by itself. I thought I would find something to quibble over some things that got left out, but they had made all the right choices and the almost three-hour monster of a movie (longest Estonian movie ever) stays quite concise and focused, something that Estonian movies do not usually do. Applauds.


 

Re: Films and Books

Reply #64
I haven't seen Tenet yet, and wouldn't watch it on cinema anyway. Cinemas don't appeal to me, and neiither do the vast majority of movies around.

I liked the cinema concept I saw in Beijing. Instead of the regular multiplex with maybe a dozen or half-dozen screens playing a dozen or half-dozen current movies of marginal interest, it had a number of VIP-like rooms with a varying number of comfortable chairs (range 2-12), and you could pick from a couple hundred movies, mostly old (and, I suspect, unpaid for) with a home cinema setup.

Re: Films and Books

Reply #65
I liked the cinema concept I saw in Beijing. Instead of the regular multiplex with maybe a dozen or half-dozen screens playing a dozen or half-dozen current movies of marginal interest, it had a number of VIP-like rooms with a varying number of comfortable chairs (range 2-12), and you could pick from a couple hundred movies, mostly old (and, I suspect, unpaid for) with a home cinema setup.
Sounds like an enhanced concept of Japanese VHS borrowing shops where there were private watchrooms directly in the shop.

Re: Films and Books

Reply #66
Russian Roulette by Michael Isikoff and David Corn is a very good read, if you are interested in how global diplomacy works. I have read the first four chapters by now and it has been a tight fact-intense ride about recent events with lots of bearing on the present.

It's particularly nice that the authors remember everything the way I do :) Not only are they aware of Estonia's existence, they also know its geopolitical position and exactly when I thought "Ok, now you have the opportunity to mention what happened in Estonia at the time, because it's perfectly illustrative," they did just that!

Re: Films and Books

Reply #67
Russian Roulette by Michael Isikoff and David Corn is a very good read, if you are interested in how global diplomacy works.
It kept its grip and drive to the end, even though it had a few bumps along the way. Nothing wrong, just a few signs of rushing.

The focus is the Hillary vs. Donald presidential campaign with its Russian meddling. Plenty of contacts between Trump (or his entourage) and Russians are disclosed. Some of them have always been out there in the open, e.g. https://youtu.be/iuZUNjFsgS8?t=205 This video was made in Russia. The main dude in the video is the son of a Russian-Azerbaijani oligarch. So, of course Trump has been to Russia (already prior to his presidency), held a beauty pageant there, wanted to get a Trump Tower up in Moscow (even when campaigning for presidency), worships Putin (according to his tweets), his sons and son-in-laws had shared messages while meeting Russian diplomats and spies etc.

Useless to deny that USA gave a full term to a treasonous president who right now refuses to leave office. At least the intelligence service knew that he was treasonous before he took office, but failed to react and act properly. If USA pulls through this, it may speak of the strength of American institutions - or of such inert stagnation that the collapse follows after a considerable delay.

Re: Films and Books

Reply #68
Just finished watching The Serpent series about real-life serial killer of (mostly) hippies in Bangkok and elsewhere in South-East Asia. It was very likeable, good production design, well directed, well plotted, no overly promiscuous sex scenes, and tossing the timeline around made it more interesting than it otherwise would have been. Amazing to see how high crimes were accomplished with low tech at the time.[1] So let's see what negatives I can find.

- The Indian/Nepali scenes do not feature any Indian languages while otherwise there was a good mix of languages (extensive English and French, some Dutch and Thai)
- Wristwatches, while possibly authentic to the era, are occasionally way too prominent a la product placement
- Some signs of rushing, possibly because the director, while having a good pacing for self-contained scenes, had little grasp of interim exposition and parallel events. This was particularly noticeable in the last episode that tried to cram in absolutely all of the rest of the history and background of the main villain and other characters involved that had not been shown yet. This last point is particularly regrettable because in the earlier episodes there was repetition (to a good effect - I happened to enjoy a lot seeing earlier scenes again from a new angle or with an added tonal flavour), so reduced repition could have possibly avoided later rushing, but for a better artistic result all of the rushed material could have been simply omitted and repetition could have been used consistently.

Overall, this is mere quibble, because my foremost preference is to get informed and that's what I got out of it.
Well, modern high tech is technically often far more trivially abusable, so this is not really saying much.

Re: Films and Books

Reply #69
Det stora pensionsrånet is a reportage (as in investigative journalism) on a scandal in the Swedish pension system. I usually dislike when real-life people are made into thriller-book characters with narrow roles appropriate to the thriller genre. And I dislike it here also.

I approach all books, including belle-lettres, with the purpose of getting informed, of learning something. This approach is fully justified when I see the subtitle miljardsvindeln i Falcon Funds, a well-publicised real-life scandal. So please don't start the story with a series of background descriptions of minor cast, some side character involved in this way, someone else involved in that way, when we do not know yet the main characters and what exactly they were involved in, when we do not know yet what the larger story is.

However, once I got past this silly beginning and once the overall setting and stakes became clear, I did get well informed about the stupid ways Swedish bureaucratic thinking and doing operates. And exactly how the scam was pulled off. A very brutal and ruthless scam, mind you, and quite shocking how unprepared Swedish bureaucracy was for it. In fact the state pension institution can be deemed complicit by way of astonishing incompetence in setting up their funds platform. The happy detective-story ending (spoiler!: the criminals get caught) is arrived at some dumb luck of the authorities. The heroes of the story are mostly just doing the job they are getting paid for, as distinguished from the all-too-common state official getting paid for putting on a thin pretension of doing something.

On the good side: Well researched events and explaining the technical concepts in a proper way to the general public. And if you are into the thriller genre, you may like the manner of the story-telling already from the first pages.

PS. I read this one for work/job, not for myself.

Re: Films and Books

Reply #70
Sergei Guriev recommended Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro in his latest (or perhaps penultimate) livestream. The little book club of my colleagues at work took it on.

I'm halfway through now and I guess I can recommend it too, even though I don't know what the final turn will be. The only other work I know from Kazuo Ishiguro is The Remains of the Day (the movie, not the book) and judging from that, no sharp turns are expected.

Klara and the Sun qualifies as science fiction. The first-person narrator Klara is an "artificial friend," preoccupied and constantly concerned with serving its human. In this sense the novel is similar with the main theme of The Remains of the Day. Also similar is the class society and the focus on mannerisms and etiquette.

But I'm expecting a science-fictiony turn in Klara and the Sun. Perhaps artificial intelligence sinking into abuse mode while failing to sense anything out of the ordinary?

As said, I'm only halfway through. Hope I did not spoil anything for anyone. Really lovely piece of literature it is.

Re: Films and Books

Reply #71
But I'm expecting a science-fictiony turn in Klara and the Sun. Perhaps artificial intelligence sinking into abuse mode while failing to sense anything out of the ordinary?
It was a different twist. Probably better, because it was something I did not expect.

I have a relatively minor discontentment about it, but let me stay silent about it. I am rather happy that great humanist fiction continues in 21st century.