Back in Action

(Source)

After feeling très misérable for the better part of a week, I decided to extend the weekend into Monday, for the sleep that was in it. I'm glad I did, though I will, no doubt, regret the loss of a day off sometime down the road, I really needed that extra day of stay in bed and let the body heal itself. Which it does if the damage isn't too severe. No doubt my blogging brother-in-arms, the Naval Air Cowman can tell tales of such things. (Which he often does.)

So here it is, Monday evening and whilst I'm not fully mission capable just yet, I'm effective enough to get my job done. I'm also past the sharing stage of this rhinovirus encounter so I won't be infecting any co-workers with same. No doubt they would return the favor.

As I often do when down for maintenance, I like to peruse the Internet for things of interest, news items, bon mots, and other tidbits. I am finding more and more that the number of complete idiots with access to the Internet is growing by leaps and bounds. There is little civility that I can see and an absolute dearth of manners.

Those who lean towards what is often described as the "Left" are perhaps the worst. Back in the day they would best be described as "sore losers." On the gripping hand, their are many on the so-called "Right" who seem to epitomize the term "bad winners." No side has a claim to absolute truth, most wouldn't recognize it if it walked up to them and bit them in the ass.

Just sayin'.

Some time back I indicated that an upcoming movie, T-34, had piqued my interest. It looked a bit over the top, but entertaining. Here's the trailer -

I noted over the weekend that the film was available on Amazon Prime, so I watched it. There were some historical inaccuracies (of course, even Russian Hollywood, or whatever they call it there, tends to sacrifice accuracy for story, sometimes it's just crappy research that does the filmmakers in) but overall it was most entertaining. I did have one majoe headache with the version I watched.

It was dubbed over in English, and not very well I'm afraid.

I have been watching a lot of Russian TV shows and films on the Second World War (or the Great Patriotic Was as they call it) and I'm starting to get the rhythm of the Russian language. Dubbing T-34 in English hurt my enjoyment of the film. Why do that Amazon? Why? I'm sure there is a Russian version with subtitles. (Just like the trailer above.)

I like watching a movie in its original language, with subtitles if possible. Wasn't always the case in Korea. Oddest film I ever went to there was a really over the top Chinese kung fu action film, in Chinese. It did have subtitles though. Korean subtitles. So I wasn't really able to follow the plot. But as it was an action film, the plot wasn't that important though I did get the gist of it.

Dubbing a film into English is not preferred but is acceptable if it isn't totally screwed up. Which was the case with another film on Amazon Prime titled Ambushed. Based on an actual event during the wars after the break up of Yugoslavia, the original title of the film (in Croatian) is Broj 55, or Number 55 - the number of the house where the action takes place.

Film looked interesting, so I decided to watch it. About twenty minutes in I couldn't take it anymore and had to switch it off. The dubbing on the film was horrendous. The voice acting sucked and the dubbing sounded like a bunch of "actors" of limited talent reading their lines inside a sound booth. No background noise, no ambient noise at all. They even had one character, who is apparently a backwoods kind of Croatian guy, speaking with an American hillbilly accent. A bad American hillbilly accent.

Sucks when people ruin things like that. I mean I get not wanting to have to read subtitles, it does distract you from the action on the screen, but hey, at least do a decent job of it.

If anyone knows where I can get this movie in the original language, let me know. It does look interesting.

That's all for now, it's back to work for me on Tuesday. Enjoy your day.