Movies, Movies, Movies

I knew that Ragtag had a small movie rental attachment, but I went there for the first time last night with Zahra and Allan and realized it was the same place that Mayumi went twice a week last year for her neverending supply of movies. It only cost a dollar to set up a rental account, but still we agreed it would be smarter to put the account in Zahra or my name, since Allan will be going back home soon. In the end, though, only Allan had proper ID - Zahra and I just carried our Mizzou ID's. Fail.

The selection was reasonably good. Not huge (by American standards ;)) but sufficient, and well tailored to the interests of college students. Zahra and I made pact after pact to watch various movies next semester. We're planning on Monty Python, a bunch of Indian films, a random selection of hollywood movies that only one or the other of us has seen, a few of the Scandinavian movies, the Miyazaki collection, and maybe even I, Claudius.

With Allan, Amy, and Esther leaving next semester, I think our Spring will be less crazy and fun. But it can still be nice. Maybe a nice intellectual time. :) Zahra has promised to teach me Hindi while I teach her Spanish. And we have all these movies.

The movie bonanza started with Ponyo. They were supposed to be showing Ponyo for free in Memorial Union last night, and so Amanda, Zahra, Allan and I went to see it. Unfortunately there was some sort of mix up with the rights, so we watched Howl's Moving Castle instead. That was fine - I hadn't seen the English dub of it yet, and I actually thought it was brilliant. Unusually, Studio Ghibli dubs are normally so good that I barely even care whether it's in English or Japanese, in fact, I'd like to watch both. Afterwards, though, Allan and I were talking and he was angry that I still hadn't seen Nausicaa, so that was the first movie we rented from Rag Tag.

Watching it I realized that it was the first movie I'd watched in Japanese since my trip to Japan. And wow, I understood so much of it. I would have understood less if it hadn't been for the subtitles, but it was like, the subtitles gave me an idea of what to listen for, and I continually noted the differences between what was actually said and what the subtitles said. On at least three occasions, for example, I realized that the subtitles read, "I've never ____ed before!", while a more accurate translation might have been "It's the first time I ____!". Things like that. I was pleased to be engaged in the language, however far I might have been from understanding it without the subtitles.

This made me think - I'm going to watch a lot of German movies next semester. My dad gave me the advice of listening to radio. It's good advice, it's probably very useful. But radio is just about the most difficult listening exercise there is, because the quality isn't brilliant and there are no visual cues. If I listen to the German radio, I do understand quite a bit. But a lot of times, the words I miss are the important and interesting ones - and exactly the ones that visual cues often teach you in movies or real life. And it's hard for me to continue paying attention for very long when I'm not understanding it. Listening in the car would probably be good, but I don't drive that much... Anyway, maybe for now I should listen to Spanish radio, while I'm still on the level of movies in German and Norwegian. But getting to the point where I don't need subtitles. :D That is, if I'm 100% engaged and willing to use some guesswork...

It sounds like all I do is sit around and study languages! That's so far from the truth. This semester I've probably spent an average of 10 minutes a day actively studying language. Lame, I know. But just living inside the world teaches a lot too. :P And next semester I'll be enrolled in fun language courses again.