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What is your go-to feel-good movie?


John

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@Marian Schedenig

This is simply not true. Just because the voice actors don't have much time it doesn't necessarily mean, they're doing a bad job. Game of Thrones is one of the few examples that is affected by the time pressure.

 

However, even sitcoms like Big Bang Theory or Scrubs are spoken with so much passion and emotion, so that once you get used to the voices you cannot imagine the characters without their "false" voices. And why should a German that doesn't understand Sheldon in the original, because he's talking as fast as a train, watch BBT in English or with subtitles? The humor is a result of the joke itself and the way it's recited. When you just read the subtitles and when you cannot concentrate on the actors mime and gestures, it is not funny.

 

Besides, most actors have certain voice actors that have been dubbing them over decades and they know how to transport the performance of the original. Robert De Niro, Leonardo Di Caprio, Jack Nicholson and Ralph Fiennes, for example, they all have fantastic voice actors in Germany!

 

There even are a few voice actors that are even better than the real actors. I was quite surprised that Brad Pitt was not as good as an actor as I thought. His German voice actor lifts the performance of Brad Pitt, which can especially be seen at the end of Se7en.

Let's not even start talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger.

 

You also said many voice actors are just capable to do one genre of movies. Did you know the guy that did Patrick in Spongebob did also Tom Hardy in Bronson? And it works!

 

You should not have that much hatred against German dubs, because while our movies are the worst, our dubs are the best. (Seriously, some German movies should be dubbed by German voice actors, since they're normally better.) It's an art form that is executed since the beginning of the past century. It can't be compared to Spanish, French or American dubs that are usually of much lower quality. Of course it cannot always nail it a 100%, but considering what they achieve is pretty impressive.

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17 hours ago, Jerry said:

The Muppets are a feel-good bunch, yes. One guy sure to get you going is...

image.jpeg

 

Thats the drummer from Led Zep!!

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1 hour ago, Stefancos said:

Dubbing for non children's films is a mistake that should have been excised from history long ago. It ruins the movie, unless you have been conditioned from birth to accept it.

Maybe that argument is valid in your country. From my Canada trip I wasn't used to dubs any more and unless they were bad it wasn't a problem when I came back.

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1 hour ago, Stefancos said:

Dubbing for non children's films is a mistake that should have been excised from history long ago. It ruins the movie, unless you have been conditioned from birth to accept it.

 

How can a person even be expected to judge an actors performance?

 

It's like somebody would paint you an impression of a Hopper painting without ever showing you the original. As good as the impression might be, it's not Hopper. It's hard for me to imagine that there are movie fans out there who have never heard the true voice of Orson Welles or Anthony Hopkins.

 

Another problem I would have with 'dubbing' is that audio and visual are (obviously) never in sync. Even with non-dubbed movies, it drives me mad when it's 1 millisecond off.

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18 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

It's like somebody would paint you an impression of a Hopper painting without ever showing you the original. As good as the impression might be, it's not Hopper. It's hard for me to imagine that there are movie fans out there who have never heard the true voice of Orson Welles or Anthony Hopkins.

Isn't it a misconception when something is seen as a problem that is just different but not necessarily worse?

 

7 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

Woody Allen flicks

I've only ever seen a half Woody Allen film and I already agree.

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Jungle Book (the original Disney version)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Terminal -yeah, I know, I can't help myself

The Emperor's New Groove -the latin american dub is priceless, one of those movies I can quote almost from start to finish

Prisoner of Azkaban

 

Not a movie but any of the good episodes of Rurouni Kenshin  -in particular most of the second season- always cheer the fuck up out of me

 

22 hours ago, Bilbo said:

Jurassic Park is another.

 

I prefer to watch Jurassic Park in few ocassions to make it more special every time I watch it. For the just "feel good" experience I prefer to watch TLW, that's far less demanding and dumber but also a lot of fun. Makes me feel like I'm seven again.

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6 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

 

Why not '70s Woody?

 

The 80s is my favorite period of his films and it's not close.

 

I enjoy the 70s movies, but they're not in the same league as Hannah, Radio Days, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Purple Rose, etc..

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I don't have "feel-good" movies per se, but I have a lot of films that I can put on and watch, any time day or night. These are my "TV dinner films"; ready-made entertainment, that doesn't need much paying attention to. It's just there.

The one film, however, that I must watch every year-or-so, is GRAND CANYON.

Now, I'm not sure how much love JWfan has for this film (then again, I'm concerned about the quality of love, not its quantity), but it is my top-10 favourite films. It's difficult for me to explain my emotional and intellectual attachment to this film - there's no SFX to speak of, no fancy editing, and cinematography is...ok, but it's the interplay between the characters, and the expression of ideas, that moves me. It's really just a film where people talk to each other - a scenario rare, these days, in film - and that makes it far more interesting than 3-second cuts, and endless CGIs.

I always smile when I hear the last lines:

 

What do you think?

I think...its not all bad.

 

...and then JNH's wonderful Copelandesque fanfare leads into the end credits.

GRAND CANYON is, mostly, a film about people meeting their life-challenges head-on, and using the skills that they have to forge ahead, without resorting to maladaptive means. Its a mature film that suggests that there is a way to find what you are looking for and to keep hold if it, and to see where life takes you. The more I journey through my life, the more relevant GRAND CANYON becomes to me.

 

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14 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

 

The 80s is my favorite period of his films and it's not close.

 

I enjoy the 70s movies, but they're not in the same league as Hannah, Radio Days, Crimes & Misdemeanors.

 

Really? To me his late '70s movies Annie Hall and Manhattan soar high above the rest.

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That's a personal decision.

 

His movies were very important to me when I was developing my taste in culture as a teen, so I just compartmentalize.  I don't hold it against anyone who refuses to acknowledge his films and I ask that they not hold it against me that I separate the art and artist.

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This is an interesting question. I keep going back to Robin Hood. Nothing humorless.

 

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Errol Flynn, 1938)

Rogues of Sherwood Forest (John Derek, 1950)

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Richard Greene, 1955 TV series)

The Court Jester (Danny Kaye, 1955)

Robin Hood (talking cartoon fox, 1973)

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (Cary Elwes, 1993)

 

I should probably check out some Ivanhoe adaptations. Any other recommendations?

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2 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

That's a personal decision.

 

His movies were very important to me when I was developing my taste in culture as a teen, so I just compartmentalize.  I don't hold it against anyone who refuses to acknowledge his films and I ask that they not hold it against me that I separate the art and artist.

This. I get ridiculed a lot for being a fan. 

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On 6/13/2018 at 12:49 AM, Brundlefly said:

while mostly successfully destroying the mood and the message of the original.

 

Fixed. ;)

 

On 6/13/2018 at 1:27 AM, Marian Schedenig said:

Definitely. I think I've seen three good German dubs in my life, two of them for animated films. And I know that German dubs are still good, as far as dubs go.

 

First, you have the voice actors. Some of them are good (for example Peter Matić, who does Ben Kingsley among others), most are lousy and just narrate everything in the same cliched dub inflection. Then there's the casting - for example, the "funny voice" (I don't know who the voice actor is) for actors like Eric Idle - or Tom Hanks, because he used to do primarily comedies in his early days, but even his most serious drama still features the same voice and cliched acting (which by the way has nothing at all to do with Hanks' own voice or performance). Then there's the problem that most voice actors don't seem to care who or what they're dubbing - see the aforementioned cliched dub inflection, which makes the most cliched genre Hollywood film seem like high art in comparison. Add to all that that real time dialogue generally *cannot* be translated properly, and that most translations are even worse than they would have to be (especially bad with TV series, where there's apparently hardly any time for the translators, and none for the actors for even a read through, resulting in completely missed puns and emphasis, simply because the actors have no idea what context an earlier line will have later in the script).

 

(And then take films like Monty Python and the Holy Grail or The Hallelujah Trail, where they took out much of the fun stuff from the original script and then added a narrator (which does not appear in the original) to replace it with seriously un-funny jokes)

 

Or simply consider that you originally have a cast of actors who spend weeks, often months, shaping and performing a role, making it their own, and then you have other actors, often with completely different voices, chosen decades ago because of some genre casting, who don't know and/or don't care about the script or the role and just do every drama and every science fiction action flick and every romantic comedy exactly the same way, with little preparation and little time to record.

 

I recall a moment from the Se7en commentary track when Brad Pitt regrets that they had to re-dub a car dialogue scene in post production because they could never get close to the original performance. An excellent foreign dub usually cannot possibly match a good original performance, but most actual dubs are leagues below that.

 

I haven't seen a dubbed film in years, probably decades, but I cringe whenever I have to see a dubbed trailer. German dubbing has such a distinct sound, I can hear a commercial in a supermarket and recognise it as dubbed dialogue excerpts from a movie, simply based on the quality.

 

I'm absolutely convinced that, as a general rule, dubs ruin movies. 

 

Best post about dubbing in the history of JWFan, so far.

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Yes, but still fuzzy and pedantic. The whole argument really falls apart when you admit to yourself that not every movie and tv series is that precious - in reality, they are mostly not - and must be scholarly studied like a sumptuous masterpiece. if you're too lazy, just watch the damn dub and don't lose sleep over it...;)

 

Case-in-point (as Marian cited him): Tom Hanks performances. They are boring. Save maybe for stuff like 'The Ladykillers' i just don't see why anyone should be appalled at watching him dubbed in, i. e., 'Captain Philips' or such. 

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I'm against translating anything and everything (especially songs). But dubs are a great option for people who cannot understand english good enough and it's a hundred times better than subtitles (after all, film is a visual format and you should focus on the images and not on the text at the bottom of the screen). It is just dumb and wrong to claim that a good dub with charismatic voice actors destroys the film, just because it's a dub. I watched tons of dubbed movies and when I started watching them in english I didn't have the feeling of a revelation, that it was much better in the original or something like that. Maybe the only revelation was that Arnold Schwarzenegger is a terrible actor. His German voice actor is a professionally educated theatre actor, so I always thought Arny was a quite decent. Anyway, it's about what is good and what is bad and not about what is original and what is dubbed. But I know that I can't change a few arrogant film geeks' point of view.

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It's just not that big a deal, since you have both options. And if you're lucky, you get a good dramatic actor enhancing a limited star performance (though this was more the norm in older times, when there were quite a lot of brilliant german theatre actors dubbing in their spare time, i. e., the likes of George Lazenby who suddenly appeared a major acting talent.

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Our suddenly growing indian populations means we are getting their cinema extravaganza shown locally. I have yet to partake.

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