Movie: Hunger (2008)

Sometimes, when I want to get into a certain topic that I am interested in (or at least should be for university), I like to start getting into it by watching a documentary or video adaption about/of the topic. This is also what I did when I had started researching about the Irishman Bobby Sands for my culture essay for English class. I felt that the political issues that surrounded his actions were a bit hard to understand. So I hoped that I would get the grasp of a basic image about these when I would be watching a movie or documentary about it.

The most recent and popular adaption of Bobby Sands' hunger strike in 1981 is the movie "Hunger" (2008), directed by Steve McQueen. It describes the hunger strikes in an unpolitical way, showing pain and fear on both sides (in this case: by both the guards and the hunger strikers) equally with using only a few words throughout the whole movie. McQueen rather focuses on delivering the right atmosphere by using strong images. A good example for such are the scenes in which fully-armed guards and naked prisoners fight each other brutally, both trying to gain control over the other. In contrast, a dialogue of 20 minutes between Bobby Sands (portrayed by Michael Fassbender) and a priest is shown in the middle of the movie, which, by the way, was filmed in one single take without changing the perspective of the camera. It is the exact opposite of the first third of the movie and mostly consists of skirmish between these two. The last third of the movie is showing the process of Sands' turning more and more into skin and bones, by using again strong and depressing images, this time ones of a broken man. The movie ends with Sands' death, not showing the aftermath and political consequences.


In my opinion, "Hunger" is not only the best adaption of the Irish hunger strikes, it is also an outstanding movie in general. The movie does not go for the heartstrings, but sticks to simply showing strong and disturbing images. Every further spoken word would be one too much, because the uncommented pictures speak for themselves. Even the dialogue between Sands and the priest requires to look at the picture itself and not focusing what they actually say, rather focusing on what they do not say. Creating an atmosphere and emotions in this quite theatrical way is what really astonished and touched me about this movie. It might not have cleared the fog about the political background in my head, but it left me incredibly impressed.

Learning Languages Online - Busuu

We all know that learning a new language is not as easy as it seems. Studying a language at university might be one of the most effective ways to do that, however, there are of course many more ways to accomplish that. People want to learn languages faster, easier and without much effort. For those, books like "Learn Russian in 30 Days!" or "Becoming the Master of the Spanish Language in less than 14 Days!" are written and published, although most of these look more promising than they are in reality.

And then there is Buusu. I heard about it in a commercial on television and they instantly got my curiosity. Basically, it's a community connects native speakers with language learners. People can share their texts or audio recordings and get these corrected by native speakers.

I have tested it for about a week with Russian as my learning target as an additional exercise to university. As soon as I had signed up, I had access to several lessons relating to basic topics such as family or emotions. For each lesson, I could choose between watching a slide-show of pictures with topic-related vocabulary on them, reading and writing dialogues and -- most exciting -- chatting with native speakers.

Unfortunately, it is the most basic thing about this community that had disappointed me: their lessons, which are supposed to take you step by step to a higher language level, are translated by and therefore dependent on the online dictionary PONS. Their dependence on PONS is one of the major reasons why their computer-generated lessons are hardly helpful, because the vocabulary is often taken out of context, often providing a wrong translation.

I decided to take the opportunity to interact with native speakers instead. When I had shared a little introduction text with my Russian knowledge from university, I almost instantly got several suggestions and corrections on my text which were incredibly helpful. In the end, I had even found a tandem-partner who wants to study German while being a Russian native-speaker.

All in all, Busuu might not be the place to learn a new language starting by zero, but definitely the right place to find language-interested people from around the world who are very happy to help you on your way of learning their native language.

Tasty Search Engines and Asparagus

I can't remember how I stumbled upon Yummly.com. But what I know is that it was a good thing, because it makes life in the kitchen so much easier. Why, you ask? Because this page is a search engine dedicated to food. You type in one random ingredient and it delights you with the most delicious recipes from other pages around the world. As soon as you've typed in your ingredient, you can limit the results by choosing further ingredients or ingredients that should be avoided, choose which holiday the recipe should suit, which taste it should have (e.g. salty or spicy), which allergies you have or which diet you stick to, which techniques should be used (e.g. stir-fried or baked), which cuisine it derives from and even more.

I tested it a while ago when I had bought a bunch of asparagus. I had never prepared asparagus before, so I was pleased when I found this recipe for oven-roasted asparagus. It is really simple as it mostly consists of washing, cutting and putting the asparagus into the oven, however, the result was a very tasty snack. And, furthermore, I learned some new vocabulary from this recipe:

to lop off (to chop/cut off)
to pat something dry (to hit lightly -- e.g. with a cloth -- until it's dry)
to drizzle, e.g. with oil (to moisten)
Don't skimp! (Don't use too less!)

I am very happy that there is a search engine for recipes, because I usually tend to buy food without thinking of how to prepare them afterwards. So this is definitely a good way to avoid throwing away food because it gets bad before you think of what to do with it and it most certainly helps finding new recipes and techniques.

Movie: Soldaat van Oranje

Yesterday night I chose to watch a DVD that has been hiding unwatched in my shelf for far too long: Soldaat van Oranje (engl.: Soldier of Orange) - a Dutch film from 1977. It portraits the life of six Dutch college students and the paths they follow during the Nazi occupation of Holland during WWII. The film is based on the autobiography of Dutch war hero Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema (portrayed by Rutger Hauer). It is, until today, one of the most successful and known Dutch movies. Although it is set in the dark times of the World War and follows a serious storyline, it is mostly not gloomy or depressing - sometimes, the movie even makes you laugh.



On a more linguistic side, it was also interesting to follow the switches between languages. Obviously, most of the time they spoke Dutch, but also German when talking to Nazis and English when they cooperated with the British government. 

Nonetheless, I enjoyed watching Soldaat van Oranje, especially because they managed to lighten up such a serious topic in a very charming way.

Movie: Pontypool - Radio Zombie

Last week, I was just casually browsing the web and listening to the radio. However, when I switched the channel, I wasn't greeted by friendly radio hosts nor was I pleased with music: people on the radio were panicking about other people repeating single words over and over again, and how infectious this behavior was. Luckily, I was able to tell: this is not live radio, this must be a radio drama!

And I was right. In fact, FM4 broadcasted the radio drama version of the movie Pontypool, which is not your usual zombie flick. I personally think that Pontypool has a very philosophical and theatrical plot. To put it briefly -- beware of reading further if you want to watch or hear it!: it's about a virus that is spread through the English language. Various words are infected, which are repeated endlessly by the victims without having themselves under control. In the end, they feel forced to eat everything that produces English words: other human-beings as well as radios.

In the movie and in the radio play, we get to know of that event in a radio station, which is the main setting of the movie. During their broadcast, they get strange calls from their correspondent outside the studio, describing infected people and how he fears for his life. At one point it seems that the host and a radio technician are the last sane survivors in this town, when they realize how to save oneself from the infection: people just have to stop actually understanding these words.


The fact itself that a language or rather words are infected and that you have to alienate their meaning is just mind-blowing. I think that's such an intelligent thought and nothing you would expect in a horror movie.

The plot of Pontypool is only partly based on the book "Pontypool Changes Everything". As far as I've read in the book reviews, the virus itself is already present in the book and the radio host is only a minor character. Basically, the movie only borrows the idea of the virus itself, while the book deals with the results. I haven't read it yet, but it is definitely on my list. I'm very curious how the virus is described and if I can expect full pages with one repeated word.

If you want to listen to the radio drama yourself, you can do it on the BBC website right here. Strangely, although the drama consists of the audio of the movie itself, they have different endings. However, I still can't decide whether I prefer the movie over the radio drama or not. I'm just fascinated by the idea itself, in case you haven't noticed it yet.