The weather here has been so crummy I haven't had anything new to write because I haven't been doing anything, aside from going to work and coming home. They cancelled the annual Lemon Festival last weekend and postponed it to this weekend due to the weather, but this weekend's forecast is unfortunately even worse - a low of 9 and rainy. 9 degrees - thats 48.2 F! Unheard of. It's almost June, and the weather here feels more like a rainy March. It's a little depressing. There are days where it's warm and sunny sporadically, like this Wednesday, but overall, it's more then a little bit of a bummer weather wise.
Due to all of these mean jokes Mother Nature is playing, and to a better internet connection, I've started renting movies on Itunes and watching them in Italian to help me practice. I'm still pretty convinced my Italian is pitiful, though others often comment that after so little time it's actually quite good. The "so little time" part is what gets me - I've lived here, in 3 days, officially for 2 years (ok, not quite officially, but more or less). I think that in 2 years one should be able to learn a language reasonably fluently, but I guess Italian people know how darn complicated their language is, and are taking sympathy on me.
What I find interesting about Italian films, which I never realized until the other day, is that they are not subtitled in Italian, but done with voice overs. And in these voice overs, the actors are usually all Italian. Which explains why so many Italians don't pick up on the fact that certain actors and actresses are not, in fact, American. Orlando Bloom is English? Kiera Knightly? My co-workers were floored the other day, and after watching some recent movies in Italian, you can see why. An italian accent is an italian accent, and in a flim like Django, it can take you about 30 minutes to realize one of the actors is actually supposed to be german in the film.
Also interesting - the more famous actors, like Al Pacino grade actors, have the same voice over actor in every film, so their voice is standard. Others will work as multiple actors. I thought this was confusing, and also more evidence why we should watch American films at home in english then just put subtitles on. There is no substitute in this world for the voice of Samuel L. Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Jeremy Irons, Christopher Walken...to name a few.
I attribute this as the reason why anyone who speaks english as a mother language is referred to as "American", and anyone with a twinge of an accent is "Australian". Poor New Zealand, South Africa, England, Ireland and so forth. Imagine watching Crocodile Dundee and not knowing what an Australian accent sounds like?
The irony is that I've never been a movie buff. I'm too restless. I can sit through a TV show, but a movie usually loses my attention after about an hour. Who knew it would take a rainy and cool spring in the Italian Riviera to get me to catch up on American cinema from the past 15 years?
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