Movie Roundup

Here's an amusing story about British translators complaining about the outsourcing of their craft to cheapo translators overseas. Naturally, they give numerous examples of idiotic translations, such as "she died in a freak rugby accident" being translated into "she died in a rugby match for people with deformities." Frankly, I'm amazed that Guillermo Del Toro confesses the English translation for "The Devil's Backbone" was terrible. Obviously, not every director can pay attention to every bit of subtitling, but to not pay attention to the English subtitling for your movie seems crazy and frankly negligent. I didn't like "The Devil's Backbone" and so haven't been a fan of Del Toro's till "Pan's Labyrinth." Maybe the subtitling is the reason I was put off.

And director Zhang Yimou discusses his new movie and preparing to work on the opening ceremony for the Olympics when it debuts in Beijing in 2012. I've seen a series of articles about China preparing -- telling people to remove exotic items from their menus because Westerners would be freaked out and insisting that everyone stop spitting on the streets. They are taking the Olympics very seriously. And somehow I'm not quite convinced when Zhang says his movies aren't political, now that they seem to reflect well on the government. Did he insist they weren't political when they were banned by China?