If you enjoy watching movies and you don't sample the extensive variety of exceptionally good foreign movies available out there because of the sub-titles (and you might be amazed by how much you stop noticing them after just a short while), I hope I can be convincing enough to get you to give them a chance. You won't be disappointed.
I have been sick in bed most of the week and the one good thing about it was being able to watch a few streaming movies on Netflix. Netflix has a seemingly endless supply of what I call "new" foreign movies, because they are new to me. Can't say that about their English speaking or Hollywood movies. Once I started checking out their foreign movies I felt like I'd found a gold mine. Here are 2 I found this week I really enjoyed:
"Buddy," a comedy/drama/romance from Norway that came out in 2003 is about two irresponsible and slightly dangerous-living friends Kristoffer and Geir who hang billboards for a living. They move in with a guy named Stig Inge, who is the shy, stay-at-home type, in more ways than one, and they become fast friends. When Kristoffer's video diary ends up as a reality show on Norwegian national television, unedited secrets are aired and the notoriety that ensues threatens their relationships. It may sound formulaic, especially given that it's a "Buddy" film, but it is intelligently written, well acted with good subplots and, oh yeah, romance. Stig Inge is a character you won't forget. His name is kind of cool too. I'd recommend this movie to anybody who is willing to give foreign movies a chance.
Another good foreign movie I watched was "the Vanished Empire," from 2008. The movie is about 2 friends in Russia starting out in college during the 1970's. The plot and storyline were very good, but what was fascinating was to see what it looked like there and what it was like there during the times it was still the Soviet Republic. It was a real eye opener and I had to check while watching this movie to see if it really was a current movie because it is filmed with a look that appears genuinely as if it must have come from that time.
Follow this link for some good reviews of this movie:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/07/10/movies/10vanished.xlarge1.jpg
This is my 2nd blog figuring in the 6 Degrees and it's been quite an eye opener when trying to work it with foreign movies. What I thought would be easy (I mean, hey, what's the internet for anyway?) has become quite a challenge. Hopefully it's just because I'm not feeling well, but translations of some of the more obscure or old films were out of my scope, at least for the time being. So I throw my hands up with this one and compromise:
The director of The Vanished Empire, Karen Sjakhnazarov produced a movie that a Yevgeni Sidikhin appeared in which also starred Stig Henrik Hoff, who appeared in a movie that was directed by Morten Tyldum, who directed "Buddy."
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