Saturday, February 10, 2007

El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) with Ivana Baquero, Doug Jones and Sergi López. I liked this movie quite a bit. I was actually kind of surprised with how relatively little of the fantasy world is seen in the movie, with most of it taking place during historical events. I wonder how much of a cultural subtext there is to the parallel stories in the film, aside from some of the more obvious allegories. The depiction of Franco's Spain was pretty powerful, as well; one tends to forget how brutal the regime actually was.
I liked the designs of the creatures they had in the story. Aside from the classical creatures like fauns and fairies, there was a really spooky looking thing that seemed to be inspired by Goya, survival horror video games and Aaahh!! Real Monsters.
I also got a chance to work on my Spanish listening skills, and to become reacquainted with Castillian Spanish. I like the sound a lot more than the Spanish I'm used to, though it does take a while to get used to all those thetas. I also felt pretty good about being able to spot out some of the discrepancies between the translations and what was actually said. And learning new vulgar phrases is always good.

Sometimes I wonder if Sweden is weird on purpose.

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