Shadow's DVD reccomendations- "Letters from Iwo Jima"

[shadowknows69]

Although I still have a little "subtitle fatigue" from viewing a film that's 99% in Japanese, this movie actually exceeds it's companion piece "Flags of our Fathers". Hard to believe "Dirty Harry" has become one of the best directors of all time but Eastwood made an amazing piece of work here.
Rent it rent it rent it.
S

[Kagemusha]

1. I could tell it'd be better from the preview on the "Flags" DVD.

I need to get this movie. I'll probably be able to understand 90% of it without the subtitles anyway so it'll be an odd effect, though not a bad one. (Watching Kill Bill pt. 1 was an experience for me too.)

[shadowknows69]

2. Actually you'd be a good person to ask this question then

Because this movie actually inspired me to want to learn an asian (oriental? Not sure which is un-PC here sorry) language. It's something I've been thinking about for a while actually. Do you know how similar the various languages are at all? and which would be the easiest and hardest to learn.

[Kagemusha]

3. Yeah, my baby, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese are super-hard.

Korean is easier for someone to learn for people who know languages other than English; going directly to Korean from English-only is rougher. Though it's possible. The writing system is rigorously phonetic, and therefore logical, and also unified, so it's a hell of a lot easier overall.

I don't really know about the others but, getting a broad understanding of Japanese and Chinese (the hardest parts of it anyway) is broadly acknowledged to be quite hard. Like, harder than Russian. If only by a little.

[shadowknows69]

5. I can't believe the speed at which the japanese speak

Spanish is the same way but I took four years of that so I can catch a lot. My heads never been good at second languages. I could probably become pretty fluent in spanish given my long time ago training in it but for some reason I'm feeling it might be more useful to know Chinese eventually.

[SpiralHawk]

4. Subtitle supremeo: Volver by Pedro Almovodar

Great film -- all of his are, especially Talk to Her.

Viva Pedro !

At any rate, in Volver they really do the subtitles well -- so easy to read.

With my two years of high school spanish (studied several centuries ago), I could still understand much of the dialogue.

Volver is a superb film -- drenched in rich, impressing colors...

[shadowknows69]

6. Pan's Labyrinth was suprisingly easy for me

I was happy to see I retained a lot more spanish from high school than I thought I had. Still can't speak it to save my life but I understand about 55% of any given conversation.

[LostinVA]

7. Excellent -- and I agree that it's better than "FOOF"

[shadowknows69]

8. Which was great in its own respect

But it was a brave thing of Eastwood to make this movie. It makes you work out stuff in your gut. You care about these characters. You find yourself rooting for them and then have to remember that the (intentionally I'm sure) faceless enemy they face are our own brave fighting men that died on that island too. I'd love to hear some WWII vets feedback on this film.

[shadowknows69]

9. As long as were on recent war movies

don't forget "Downfall". bring hankies to all of these.