Category Archives: The Devil’s Details

Short posts about those weird little things that get stuck in my head.

The Devil’s Details: Bryan Singer the Giant Slayer

jtgs10I’m rather looking forward to Jack the Giant Slayer. It’s my kind of movie – epic fantasy, more CGI than live action, and a plot that’s frankly just an excuse for two hours of visual excess. I thought it might be a remake of Jack the Giant Killer from back in 1962, which Little Satis and I watched a while back. It isn’t, really; it’s as different from the original fairytale as the first movie was.

In all of this, I honestly never gave a second thought to the cast and crew, and certainly not the director. Didn’t really know who Bryan Singer was – I’d heard his name somewhere, but couldn’t really associate it with anything. But, for some reason, he really, really wants me to know that he directed it:

jtgs10

I can’t recall ever seeing this on a movie poster before. I get the whole “from the director of” ploy: if you liked that, then you’ll love this. I remember this vividly from the previews of 10,000 B.C.; all I really saw was “from the director of Independence Day“. I recall wondering what on earth the two movies had to do with each other, and why the director made any difference. But, the big difference was that it was never pointed out who that director was (some dude called Roland Emmerich). Frankly, I didn’t care; even if the two were related in some way, it didn’t matter much to me who the director was – I knew it wasn’t Steven Spielberg or Ridley Scott.

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10000bc-poster1So why is it so important to Bryan Singer that we know he directed the movie? And of all things, why point out he’s the director of X-Men? Why not The Usual Suspects? That would tell me this guy is a masterful director. (Of course, it would also tell me Jack the Giant Slayer was a mind-bending crime flick with an ending twist to rival The Sixth Sense.)

Is it just me, or does this seem just a tad self-congratulatory? Have you ever seen this before?

The Devil’s Details: I’ve Seen That Minotaur Before

I am admittedly a bit of a technology geek. Not that I’m into coding and all that mess – I just like my toys. Life would be impossible without my iPhone, and very, very difficult without my iPad.

The truth is, though, that whilst I do read, check news, and sometimes even work on these devices, I actually end up mostly just playing games on them. Kind of sad, right?

One of the games that has sucked my time more than others is a thing called Infinity Blade. It’s honestly a pretty basic, boring game: you are a knight, you fight your way through hordes of demons to reach the God King, and try to defeat him. If you don’t, you go back to the beginning. If you do…you go back to the beginning. The main draw of Infinity Blade is that, for a mobile device like an iPhone, the graphics are actually pretty decent.

However, that’s really besides the point. One of the enemies in Infinity Blade is a ghastly creature called a Rookbane, who sports a scary horse head and wields an unpleasant-looking sword:

Rookbane from Infinity Blade. Kind of creepy.

Rookbane from Infinity Blade. Kind of creepy.

The other day, Little Satis and I were watching Time Bandits for the first time. There’s a scene where the little boy Kevin inadvertently helps Agamemnon defeat a minotaur in ancient Greece:

Minotaur from Time Bandits. Also kind of creepy.

Minotaur from Time Bandits. Also kind of creepy.

Is it just me, or is the resemblance uncanny?

 

The Devil’s Details: I Can Tell Where You’re From

GERMANY88888Whenever reading in your native language (be it English, French or Bengali), you rarely take heed of the specific grammatical and syntactical idiosyncrasies of your mother tongue. However, once you start learning another language, it becomes immediately obvious that there is a plethora of linguistic subtleties that are extremely difficult to master.

What often happens (especially early on) is that you attempt to apply your native tongue’s sentence structure to this new language, often resulting in amusing results:

Kann ich ein Plätzchen haben, bitte?

Can I a cookie have, please?

Even more interesting, however, are the figures of speech and idioms that are simply unique to your language:

J’ai une pêche d’enfer.

I have a peach from hell.

Where this really gets interesting, however, is that when you read text written by a non-native, not only do you pick up on the phrases that just don’t quite translate, but given the syntax and specific choice of wording you can actually start to identify what their native language actually is. I was reading an article the other day written in English, with no reference at all to who wrote it or where they were from. However, as I continued to read, I became convinced that this was someone from Eastern Europe – possible the Czech Republic or Hungary.

Of course, I haven’t been able to substantiate this, but it’s funny how certain things show through, no matter how hard you try to homogenize yourself.