On the watching front, we watched the Lucio Fulci film "The Psychic" last night. Ronin Flix/Scorpion Releasing has put out a nice new Blu ray edition of that one, after the Severin released DVD had been out of print for quite a while. Glad I've finally learned to not shell out money for out of print boutique label releases. It seems that these labels are not only flourishing but seem to be increasing in number as well. Just wait a few months, and another label will pick up the rights and issue an even better edition! Anyhoo....
"The Psychic" was released in Italy as "Sette Note in Nero," or "Seven Notes in Black" (thank you, Duolingo!), although for some reason the screen title is "Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes." The movie is a thriller with some horror elements in it, although for folks who are accustomed to certain Fulci movies' gooiness, it might seem disappointing. Michelle and I liked it quite a bit. Michelle loves the stylish set piece films, and this one was loaded with that. There was clearly a budget in play here. The synopsis is: the main character, played by Jennifer O'Neill (Hermie's objet de desir in "Summer of '42"), is clairvoyant and begins having visions of what she thinks is a past murder at her new husband's country manor. I thought the movie was perfectly paced and had (rare for these Italian movies) a decent English dub job. For most of these Italian genre movies, I watch with the English dub on, as you see most of the actors, regardless of nationality, speaking in English anyway. I like the mouth movements to match, even if some dubs are fairly atrocious. Not the case with this one. Four stars! Here's the only thing I can find on YouTube directly connected to the movie (it ain't a trailer):
I mentioned Duolingo earlier. That's something I discovered last year and have been consistently using since August. It's an app designed to teach other languages, and I've bought into it completely. And by that, I mean I bought the Plus version, so I have all features enabled. I began with Italian, trying to learn some Italian before our Italian trip in October. And I needed something to while aways some time during the Hickoids' August tour, and Duolingo certainly fit that bill. Unfortunately, I don't think I used it as I should have before going to Italy; I still didn't have many basic skills in Italian by the time we went on the trip....things like counting and basic phrases used in travel. If I were to start in Duolingo today, I would have done it a little differently; there aren't any real helpful instructions with the app itself, although I believe there is a helpful Wikia page.
But now, Duolingo has reached epic proportions in my life. I've decided to brush up on Spanish and French with it, and have added Czech, German, and Japanese to the languages I'm attempting to learn. I've gotten all crazy go nuts with it. Plus, as one of the Duolingo advertising phrases reads, "15 minutes on Duolingo will have you learning another language. What can 15 minutes on social media do for you?" I like that thought.
There are apparently other language-learning apps out there. I can't compare them, as this is the only one I've used. Plus, I bought the dee-luxe version, so I'll be staying with this. At least, for the next eight months or so. You have a few different learning methods in Duolingo, all included in the lessons. You have straight translation from the foreign language to English, there is English to the foreign language, there are speaking exercises (although this one is a bit wobbly; I know for a fact I've butchered some pronunciations and still pass muster), and there are exercises where you transcribe spoken words. The listening and speaking exercises can be temporarily turned off if you aren't in a place where you can use those options - that's a nice feature. There are also pre-tests you can use to place out of some basic lessons; I used that for Spanish and French. I got a bandmate using it for Spanish, and he's stayed with it, too. We'll see how I do with Czech and Japanese, which are both fairly daunting. Czech has nothing even remotely close to English or a Latin root to work from, so that's a crazy one. I feel like I'm picking some of it up, but it's a crawl at best. Japanese I just started last week, and that one begins with Hiragana....yes, symbols. Oh, boy. Well, we'll see.
And tomorrow, it's back to the day job. It will be interestng, to say the least, to see how that goes. First of all, I wonder if I'll even be able to log on to our system. After five weeks, who knows what will have taken place. I'm going into the office, and my shift starts after all my work compadres, so they will have tried before I do. I'll know at 9:30 am tomorrow. I figure all projects will be scrapped and started again; maybe not the material already built, but the demands will have changed. Hoo boy. Thanks, gubbimint. And then we might have to go through all this again in three weeks. I love being a football. Good thing I have drumming and other interests.
Oh, one more thing. I finally, after looking at them for six months or so, bought a cassette to mp3 converter and have begun converting my old cassette tapes to digital copies. Unfortunately, most of the transfers I've done so far have a fair amount of machine noise bleeding in. Some more than others. It seems that's going to come with the territory, although I did upgrade the transfer the cable to minimize the noise somewhat. So far, I've managed to transfer most of the Lather stuff I have with some success. (Lather was a three-piece band I was in from April of '92 to October of '93). I have unearthed a healthy stack of tapes to do this to and suspect I'll be doing a lot of this next week, when I'm working at home again. I can just run this stuff in the background while I figure out whatever the hell it is our crippled work organization is supposed to be doing now.
I have now run out of topics for this session. Stay pretty!
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