Album Rating: 4.2

Gonna be dipping into the dub to see if it works better for an extremely cheap gag I have lined up for the Sputroyale vid, but hmm interested and not entirely surprised to hear that - normally I have zero issue with Ghibli's subs (and would watch stuff like Kiki/Spirited Away with Japanese captions), but Porco was an awkward case where I couldn't follow his dialect fast enough to watch it unseen without awkward pauses, but often ended up reconstructing the English subs in my head without realising it. Some of em really hit the spot, but a lot of them felt like they'd been sandpapered. Could imagine the dub landing better given the setting

Album Rating: 4.0

In the land of dubs, certainly no one does or has ever done it as well as Ghibli (add'l shoutouts to Billy Crystal in HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE and Phil Hartman in KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE), but as a self-appointed cinema purist, no matter the quality of the dub and/or the studio/producer's direct promotion of it, it always feels a tiny bit disingenuous not to experience a film in its native language. It's an easier pill to swallow for animated films because the characters aren't real and thus we have no real expectation of how they would/should sound (live action films with dubs shouldn't even exist, tbh), but even in great dubs I feel that certain inflections and intonations of the native language can get lost in translation a bit, though the difference can be difficult to pinpoint because one is obviously more comfortable making inferences on the dub of a language they fully grasp.



It created this weird internal dilemma back when I was rummaging through Miyazaki's filmog which caused me to essentially watch each of his films twice - a task that might sound wonderful for most but given my largely lukewarm reaction to most of his stuff, was more a dutiful service for me. (I do not actively dislike his films for the most part, but I am also not enamored enough by them to warrant back-to-back viewings; the two big exceptions here are PORCO and, to a much lesser extent, LUPIN THE THIRD.

Album Rating: 4.2

"even in great dubs I feel that certain inflections and intonations of the native language can get lost in translation a bit"

fr, though good dubs and subs should find other areas to add character. Skimmed a bit of the Porco dub and mmm yes, definitely hits the spot - I think what I found awkward about the sub (particularly in Porco, but also to a lesser degree in Howl) is that there's such clear disjuncture between the language and setting from the start -- Porco's Japanese gruffness feels like a stand-in for Italian gruffness no matter how you approach it, so exchanging that for an American gruffness (which is at once culturally closer *and* provides us bois with greater access to the intonation/semantic unity of his lines) hardly feels like a loss at all. I'd never watch a dub for something that as specifically Japanese as The Wind Rises or Spirited Away, but if Ghibli are making use of their cultural passport, I think the characters get a little extra leeway

"live action films with dubs shouldn't even exist, tbh"

On a personal preference level agreed with this 100%, but it's interesting how different international markets have different skews towards subs or dubs, so I guess the studios gotta cater to them audience expectations. Learnt on my subtitling course last year that Netflix have been v proactive (and surprisingly successful) in trying to popularising dubs in the Anglosphere despite the market favouring subs, which is odd and ig good for the industry as long as they don't slack off on subs

Album Rating: 4.0

Caveat that films with hilariously bad English-langue dubs add a certain inimitable, homely charm to them, surpassing even the campy irony and becoming something of a cornerstone of the subgenres therein. Most Italian filmmakers were guilty of this at some point throughout the fifties, sixties, seventies, and it used to drive me up a goddamn wall but once I started to embrace it (simply because I had no other choice), it essentially turned into an expectation, almost like a meta-text that reinforces a lot of said film's production hurdles and/or cultural normalcies. Not sure Leone's DOLLARS trilogy, e.g., would be as strangely charismatic without every single character's lips *except* for the one English native (Clint) completely disjointed from the actual words you're hearing. Like, it's not even remotely close. (Though it did get a little better as the trilogy went on.) Not limited to spaghetti Westerners, either, of course - even canonical darlings like 8 1/2 "suffer" from this "problem" but have endured and attained certified greatness in spite of it. Or perhaps... because of it ???

Album Rating: 4.2

lol 8 1/2 having an English dub is not something that had ever crossed my mind (however unsurprising it is) and I do not know how to deal with this information. wonder which Fellini suffers the least from it - Amarcord places little enough weight on any given character that it could probs weather a bad dub?

Album Rating: 4.0

Whoops, forgive the lack of clarity in my post - I was referring to dubbing in general, though I did specify "English-language" in the first sentence because I specifically had FISTFUL OF DOLLARS et al in mind, in which all characters are dubbed in English for the official American release(s) of the films. 8 1/2 on the other hand is still spoken in Italian, but the voices are clearly dubbed post-production. (There may exist an English language dub but I've not seen it lol.) Even more hilarious in that case because the words being spoken and the characters' lip movements should theoretically match - significantly more so than characters speaking in Italian but having English over-dubbing them - and yet it is so often hilariously misaligned that you almost get the sense it truly is bad on purpose because no one could be this oblivious to mediocre workmanship.



So yeah, my b, my post should read as a criticism of bad dubs in general, not just English dubs over a non-native script. I do wonder, though, why it's a quirk that seems to plague certain Italian filmmakers more than others, almost characteristically so. Leone and Fellini are the biggest examples along with Argento, but - and it's been quite a while since I've seen most of these films so I could be misremembering - I don't recall having such reservations about nearly anything by, like, Rossellini or Antonioni or Pasolini...

Album Rating: 4.2

"8 1/2 on the other hand is still spoken in Italian, but the voices are clearly dubbed post-production."

yeah my bad, I half wondered if you were referring to this - agree that it's part of the charm (esp from a production process perspective, as iirc either that or La Dolce Vita or both weren't fully scripted while they were shooting?)

Album Rating: 4.3

could i call tunic shoegaze in public

Album Rating: 4.3

Nice Irma write-up tectac! I fell in love with it last year, one of those "why the fuck don't they show this at film school?" things. It's so painfully relatable from an indie production standpoint and like you said, there's so much nuance to pick at under the surface

Is that from your letterboxd? (;

Album Rating: 4.0

Thanks, neek. Indeed it is. Alas, having watched a total of maybe seven or eight films over the last two years (!), I can only point wistfully back at all the writing and analyses I once did. Too much "life" stuff happening at the moment - work, kids, other hobbies, etc. Not enough hours in the day. Eventually I'll dive back into reviewing films but I don't seem to be in a hurry to do so.



I did revisit IRMA VEP sometime in 2021 but didn't write any additional thoughts on it. It was after the newly released Criterion edition came out and I can say that the updated print is fantastic. It was announced/released the same month as HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT, my most favorite film of all time. It was a good month for Criterion releases.

Album Rating: 4.0

Calling Sonic Youth shoegaze is illegal



I’ll okay “noise pop” for Tunic

Album Rating: 4.2

Tunic has a load in common with shoegaze and SY were one of the biggest antecedents to shoegaze along with Cocteau Twins and the Jesus and Mary supermkt, not a weird call at all

Yeah Shields is a huge Bad Moon Rising fan.

Album Rating: 4.2

yeah + You Never Should could have snuck onto any SY album from EVOL to this as a secret highlight

Album Rating: 4.3

this freaking rules

Album Rating: 3.5

Mildred Pierce is so cool but too damn short

Album Rating: 4.0

the song or the movie?

Album Rating: 3.5

The song but perhaps both xD

Album Rating: 3.5

the movie isn't very cool :[

Album Rating: 4.0

The movie has great cinematography but yea its kinda mid