movies can teach you

Today I would like to start with something which is not directly connected with any particular movie or series but - for my point of view - is very useful: learning languages by watching movies.

So, this is one of my favourite ways of learning a language:  foreing movies. At the beginning it can be diffucult - plenty of new words, expressions and you don't have time to check their meanings. Even if you are trying to look for the translations and you begin to understand what's going on, the movie may become just a type of lesson, not a pleasant entertainment any more.

But it is not a reason to discourage! I can give you one piece of advice: start with movies that you have already watched with subtitles or - like I did - a tv series which you know and which you've seen many times. Then there will be no need to check the words because the plot is familiar, you roughly know the dialogues so you can just watch and learn new expressions whose equivalent in your own language you've just known.

My "private english teacher" is a series Friends. I know all the episodes, I can quote the dialogues so I watch it without any subtitles. It's a big pleasure to learn english with my favourite characters (for example with Ross and his sophisticated language).

But Friends is a topic for another day :)

To sum up, try to combine the pleasant with the useful and watch movies without a translation. Listen to actors, not to voice-over :)

maybe the foto is beside the point, but it's always good to see a piece of Friends :)

maybe it is strange, but I like it

It’s been a long time since I’ve written my last post, but I’m back with a bunch of ideas. Today, I’ll face a TV series again.

July 2016 was one of the best moments for science fiction and horror lovers – it was a release date of the first season of Stranger things created by Matt and Ross Duffer, known as The Duffer Brothers. I must admit that I wasn’t so enthusiastic about it, because it is not one of my favourite type of movie. I’ve never enjoyed horrors, on the contrary, I’m rather afraid of them. However, taken into account all the opinions of my friends or just film critics, I finally decided to watch at least one episode – Everybody watches it, so I have to watch it too! Even though it could finish with insomnia or nightmares... I didn’t know yet, that it was one of my the most baseless fears.

I started watching the first episode while ironing (to combine the pleasant with the useful, yes...), with my younger sister. I must admit, that I didn’t even know who is starring in this series, so I was glad to see Winona Ryder, who I’ve loved since I first time saw her in Beetle Juice. After a few minutes I realised, that I wouldn’t be able to iron and watch at the same time – the plot was just too interesting to share the attention with something else. I felt like completely enchanted and surprised with the story, with the idea of combination of a science fiction plot with some almost magical scenes and of course with great young actors. 

Each of these qualities made me watch all the season in nearly one day. What is more, my younger sister was watching with me all the time, so I would like to notice, that it is not a production aimed at any target audience. 

So, I would like to encourage everybody who is scared of watching this series - there is nothing to be afraid of! Maybe there are some qualities of horror, but at the same time it's worth to overcame the fear and enjoy this excellent production :)

Stranger things, dir. The Duffer Brothers, 2016

something in polish

All the members of my family love watching films and series together, especcially polish, old ones. There are many movies, which we know by heart, we can quote dialogues and watch it milion times, for example Co mi zrobisz, jak mnie złapiesz, Miś, Żółty szalik, Psy, Szczęśliwego Nowego Jorku and many many others. It may seem strange, because most of my friends doesn't like those films or just doesn't know them. 

Anyway, the most important place in our familiar movie preferences belongs to two tv series: Czterej Pancerni i Pies and Daleko od szosy. The first one was produced in 1966, so is coeval with my mum! Furthermore I think it's the first series which I've ever watched in my life. When my parents were young Czterej Pancerni was on of the few tv series, so they have good memories connected with it. Anyway, for my point of view, that series has a special, magic charm - it's easy to see the artificiality of many scenes, not the best quality and some people claim that this series doesn't present the truth about the relations between polish and russian army (it's important to remember, that this is only a series, so it's a fiction!), but at the same time I like to watch it. The dialogues are often very funny, all the characters are different and we can easily become attached to them. I know that this is only an old, polish series which describes the adventures of four soldiers (and the dog!) but I really like it. 

Daleko od szosy. The second favourite series of my family and personally my favourite polish series EVER. Moreover, the main role played by Krzysztof Stroiński, for me is one of the best played role in a history of polish movie. That series is so authentic, so genuine, describes the reality of Poland in the late seventies. The main character - Leszek - is an ordinary person, who has a lot of ideas and dreams but unfortunately has a few opportunities for fulfilling them. He is full of energy, has an enormous internal force, is confident and graceful. His naturalness and ingenuity make that it's not possible to don't like him. 

It's one of the few characters which I like so much. I like him much more than any of so famous and popular hollywood characters.

So, I encourage to watch it, on my family's recommendation :) 

                                                           Daleko od szosy (dir. Zbigniew Chmielewski)

"I am the one who knocks"

It's a time for TV series!

It was something about 3 years ago. I was writing my BA thesis and I was getting bored and exhausted. So, I decided to watch some movie. Scrolling through facebook, I saw that one of my friends had added some photo taken from TV series Breaking Bad. I must admit, although everyone was talking about this series, up to that moment I had never seen it. Thus I thought - "I have to make it up now. I'll watch only one episode to check if it's really as good as everybody claims". But it wasn't so easy. I watched one episode, then second, third... And before I knew it, it was the middle of the night, I was in the middle of the season and I didn't want to finish watching. I don't remember whether I saw all the first season in one night, but I'm sure, that I watched all series, all 5 seasons in somehing about 2 weeks (at the same time I had to write my thesis...). 

I've fallen in love with Breakin Bad and I'm still in love. Then I watched the other great TV series like Narcos, Mr Robot etc., but anyone was better that Breaking Bad (from my point of view). Maybe I'm not objective because I have a lot of good memories connected with watching that series. But I don't mind, I love it. I don't want to narrate that series, it's a kind of "must-see". The only thing I want you to pay attention is soundtrack. Amazing, perfectly harmonised with plot, surprising. I highly, highly recommend :)

                                                        Breaking Bad, (created by Vince Gilligan)

when the lights are out

I must confess - I'm not good at watching horrors. Generally I'm afraid of many things - of being alone at home, of darkness, of some strange sounds in a house (which are strange only for me of course) and many others. So it's obvious that after I wached some horror film I usually get petrified. Anyway, sometimes I watch horrors (but only with someone). Some of them scaried me, I couldn't sleep at night (for example The Conjuring or Sinister), some made me laugh (The Grudge). Some horrors for my point of view shouln't be classify as a horror. I think about movies where there are no ghosts, no haunted house, no unidentified sounds, no paranormal things but only "bad" people (for example a man with a saw). That's not a horror, it'a a thriller!
However there is a group of films, a type of horror films which I never watch, which I can't watch at all - horrors with ghosts which appear only in the darkness and are connected with sleeping. This kind of plot is for me the worst: it's a combination of ghosts (and that means strange voices, sounds), of darkness, of night and sometimes of being alone. So, for me - the scariest things in the world! Therefore I've never watched any part of Paranormal activity, I've seen only a trailer and it was enought for me. This conception of non professional camera, the illusion of probability, and the fact that all these scary things are going on while you're sleeping - after watching it I think I wouldn't sleep for a year...
Beeing conscious of my antipathy of this type of movies, one day my sister asked me to go to the cinema and watch Lights Out. This movie on website filmweb.pl is described: "The woman is haunted by a ghost which appears after the lights are out". All the things I fear about in one movie, great... I love my sister and I agreed to go with her. Ok, I started to watch. I maybe in first 5 minutes apeared the ghost, it's shadow was visible after a woman had turned the lights off. And it was the last scene I sow. I closed my eyes and until the film didn't finished I opened them only 3 or 4 times... My sister was narrating me what was going on. It's funny, I know, I went to the cinema and didn't watch the movie. But I knew, that if I watched all these scary scenes, I wouldn't definitely sleep and even I wouldn't be alone after dark. My sister laughed at me but I was proud of me that I survived : )

This is the only photo connected with Lights Out which I'm not afraid of : )

                                                             Lights Out, (dir. David F. Sandberg)