Hidden Passages: Gothic Horror/Romance

After spending so much time referring to YouTube's auto-generated transcripts to try to decipher Russian (they are basically a timestamped listing of all the auto-generated subtitle text, I think, so they enable you to look back at the context of an entire phrase as opposed to just the handful of words visible on the screen at any one time), it dawned on me a couple of days ago that it is of course possible to read the transcripts of *English* text as well. Which is particularly useful in the case of videos which are basically a voiceover with marginally-related images screened for visual appeal, because it is possible simply to read the transcript and not bother to actually listen to the speaker at all, especially if the title appears to be clickbait :-p

It's the equivalent of playing the sound back at 6x speed, without the high-pitched gabbling effect :-) Of course the text isn't formatted into neat sentences and proper names are often weirdly mangled, but it makes it possible to skim through to the actual relevant content, if any, and/or go even faster in order to ascertain that there isn't any...

In Russian, ironically, reading the transcript is actually considerably *slower* than simply listening to the entire video. ( Read more... )

I've just come across the Romanian version of the film "Ma-ma", or the tale of the wolf and the five little goats (made as a tri-lingual production, from which I've seen clips in Russian of Boyarsky as the Wolf, and about half the film in its BBC English version); it is noticeably different not only in the soundtrack but in the lighting, timing and composition of each shot. So it's true that they really did re-shoot the film three different times on the same set, exactly as in the days of early sound films when stars like Anna May Wong or Buster Keaton were required to repeat their performances in multiple languages -- and apparently with different directorial choices to suit the target audience...! ( Read more... )

Since I now have another batch of real quinces (after making japonica jelly last week) I made a recipe from my Russian cookery book -- technically speaking now a Soviet cookery book, I suppose, since it takes it for granted that you will be interested in recipes from all the now independent parts of the Soviet Union!

Azerbaijani bozbash bears a probably not coincidental resemblance to Persian cookery and to lamb plov, ( Read more... )
(Similar recipe online: https://bestrecipes24.com/recipe/azerbaijani-style-lamb-bozbash-soup-with-chickpeas )

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"Little Gentlemen" is coming along quite nicely, although the style is in danger of becoming stilted and verbose -- not very Dumas!
I have now successfully introduced my young OC Venya (playing the 'Nat Blake' role, with Raoul taking on the role -- and vocabulary -- of the cheerful Tommy Bangs who introduces him to everyone and everything) into Athos's house, which is at least fifty per cent of the material envisaged, and am attempting to finish the scene in which Athos reads the accompanying letter (also establishing AU material). ( Read more... )

I have been given half a dozen tulips ("Plant from August onwards") which need to go into the ground as soon as possible and be planted 4 inches deep, which rules out most of my available pots, especially since I still have tomatoes in seven of the biggest of them. So I decided to empty out the wildflower trough as previously planned, even though the feathery thing there was still green and growing despite having been taken indoors last week to dry out -- it was definitely the right decision to start all over again with this, since after I had cut down all the top growth the remainder came out of the pot as a single tightly-packed ball of roots with almost no earth left between them! I ended up putting the whole mass into an empty compost bag to dry out and ideally break down a bit over the next few months, and then emptying all sorts of other pots as a result in order to put their earth (and the accompanying wildly jerking worms) into the now-empty trough around the tulip bulbs.

( Swan River daisies, rudbeckias and evening primrose )

( Rocket )

( Kale and basil retained )