Request regarding Amelie & Brotherhood of the Wolf commentaries (1 Viewer)

[PaulP]

Having loved the US 2-disc version of Amelie and having the Canadian 3-disc version of Brotherhood of the Wolf already in the mail, one thing still bothers me. The commentaries. Not so much the Amelie one, as we do get Jeunet's English version. I just hope someone has enough time and good will to help out poor people who only know 3 words of French and try transcribing/translating the commentaries on these 2 releases. I realize this is a very tough job, but I think not only I would love to have such a file that I could read along with the French commentaries. Perhaps even PayPal donations can be made...

 

[Juan C Toro]

Paul:

The task you are asking for is one that not even the studio releasing the DVD had the will to undertake...

For Amelie, I have both the Miramax and the Canadian Special Edition. You are indeed making the right assumption regarding the French commentary: both English and French commentaries are quite similar.

The French one, is the same that appears in the European version, and the Canadian Special Edition, and it was recorded before the English one. They are very similar in content, and even both of them start with the same warning: that he is going to ruin the movie by revealing all its secrets.... So if you listened to the English commentary, you pretty much got the idea.

As for Brotherhood of the Wolf, I will save myself some money and buy the American version, which does not include the commentaries. Although 8 minutes shorter that the Canadian Special Edition, the American version is supposed to have a superior video transfer, since they crammed too many audio tracks in the SE, compromising the video quality.

Lastly, Paul, since you are such a big fan of these two movies, and probably French cinema in general, I would certainly recommend making the effort of learning some French. You will have the luxury of not having to sit thru very bad subtitling (Amelie's are so bad, shortened and bad translated, that if Miramax had any sense of decency, should do it again and replace all the existing copies). If you spoke French, you could also enjoy the great commentary by director Mathieu Kasovitz - Amelie's Nino Quincampoix ("comme la rue"), in his movie The Crimson Rivers.... And so many other great films...

A bientot!

 

[GregoryP]

If you have a DVD-ROM in your computer, you can use a program called DVDSubber http://www.dvdsubber.com/ to get subtitles for the commentaries. I am in the process of figuring out how to use it myself.
Gregory

 

[PaulP]

If you have a DVD-ROM in your computer, you can use a program called DVDSubber http://www.dvdsubber.com/ to get subtitles for the commentaries.

But where would i get these subtitles for the commentaries?

 

[Jeff Kleist]

DVDSubber has links to sites with scripts

They've had a script up for the French disc of BOTW forever.

 

[PaulP]

They've had a script up for the French disc of BOTW forever.

Can't find it? Where on the site?

 

[Adam_WM]

It never occured to me that something would be "lost" in the subtitle translations. For example, in Abre Los Ojos, the script just seemed really lacking when subtitled in English. Of course, I just realized, we probably lost quite a bit in the translation.

 

[Juan C Toro]

Adam:

About losing stuff in a subtitling translation: There is already a thread here about how bad the subtitling for Amelie is, so I am not going to start one.

But for instance, the narrator speaks quite fast in this movie, and the subtitling cannot keep up with him, so they just trim the subtitles to the main idea... but many things are lost... take my word for it. Not only this, but things are sometimes translated wrong. Case in point: when Amelie goes to the fair to see Nino for the first time, she ask the lady at the ticket boot for him. She answers that he is not "off work" until a certain time. But the subtitles says he "will not be at work" until that certain time. She buys the ticket and goes in to "see" Nino doing this homage to "Alien Resurrection", another Jeunet film. Obviously this makes no sense to the person reading subtitles: If he wasn't there, why would Amelie buy a ticket? And who was that guy in the costume? And obviously it was Nino, as we see him leaving work.. . Just a simple example.

I speak Spanish and French, and get by with Italian and Portuguese... and this is a problem that I see all the time in foreign movies.... They always short change you with the dialogs...

JC