I went to see Paul Taylor again, wrote two pieces (a book review for the Baltimore Sun and a record review for the Wall Street Journal), and had a Portuguese brunch with Chicha, who is visiting New York this weekend and turns out to be v. cool. I showed her a photo of Our Girl but didn’t disclose my shockingly beautiful co-blogger’s name, meaning that the Chicha lives to blog another day.
I thought that would do me, but the urge to blog proved irresistible, so here I am. Briefly. Tomorrow I’ll be spending the entire day and evening working on You-Know-What.
In the meantime, here are some interesting letters I’ve been meaning to post:
– “A note on subtitles: I recently purchased the DVD of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, a beloved favorite film (curious, because I really don’t like any of his other films–my other personal favorites–Ikiru, Vertigo, Rules of the Game, Citizen Kane, Double Indemnity–are by directors that have many films to their credit that I like). While viewing the other night, I noticed that there was a new translation in the subtitles. Some dialog and interior monologues, untranslated in the VHS, were now translated. And some translations had been altered–sometimes for the better–sometimes not, I thought. But what really got me was that some lines, including one of the great lines, are now untranslated in the new version. Marian, the trapeze artist, is musing at a rock club and Bruno Ganz, the angel infatuated with her, is nearby. She thinks about how good she feels and speculates that (this is from my rough memory of the VHS) that