What do you do when you’re sitting in the pressbox of Husky Stadium being paid overtime to babysit two copy machines during a football game? Enjoy the free catering? Abuse the free wi-fi? Listen to as many songs on your iTunes that have a zero play count as you can? Text your friends? Well yeah… of course. And trust me, I’m doing ALL of that. But I didn’t just stop there… oh no.
I also installed Rosetta Stone on my laptop. So as I was waiting for the game to start I did a few core lessons just to get a jump on my learning. I also read a ton of articles, blogs, and discussions on The Local. Is it just me or are there a lot of expats in Sweden because they fell in love with a Swede and moved to be with them? Just a narrow observation.
I just thought it was funny that I’m sitting in the semi-heated pressbox with a bird’s eye view of one of the biggest UW games of the year (I’m no alum and honestly don’t care about football) and what am I doing? Rosetta Stone lessons and The Local. Hilarious!
So, back to my immersion in all things Swedish: I’ve discovered that Netflix has a small but okay selection of Swedish language films in its catalouge. “Let The Right One In” is freaking amazing!! After thoroughly enjoying the movie, I picked up a copy of the book and read the hell out of it in about 3 days. Discovered that they’re doing an American adaptation called “Let Me In”. Please god, no! I can already tell you it’s going to be horrible… But I’ll still watch it and give a review after it’s released.
“Smala Susie” was also pretty damn good. I was telling a friend about it. I described it as a small budget, Swedish hybrid of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino. Despite being cheesy at times, and the fact that the subtitles were cut off at the bottom (hey, I’m not fluent YET!) I really liked the movie. Also, Malin Morgan is freaking HOT!! Tuva Novotny reminded me a lot of Julie Delpy.
Then there came the classic, “The Seventh Seal”. I will start by saying that I pretty much never enjoy films made before I was born (1978). That being said, I gave this movie 3 stars on Netflix. I think if this movie hadn’t been in Swedish I wouldn’t have liked it as much. The concept of the story was intriguing and the movie, for the most part, was well shot and all. There were times, though, that the story seemed to jump around a little bit. But that could have also been because I was focusing more on the spoken language versus the subtitles than I was on the actual content.
(As I have been typing this a UW player has been injured and is being taken off the field by an ambulance. I missed the whole thing, and looked up to see the ambulance driving off the field.)
Okay, back to more important things: The next movie I watched was called “Frostbiten”. I basically had no idea what this movie was about when I popped into my dvd player. Turns out to be another vampire flick, though not nearly on the same level as “Let The Right One In”. The movie started off cool enough; Nazi soldiers taking refuge in an “abandoned” cabin are attacked by vampires. But when the movie cuts to present day it seemed to turn into a made for TV teen horror flick. I gave it two stars.
I have a few more flicks in my queue, but I can’t remember the names right now.
Oh yeah, SVT Play is cool. I’ve been trying to watch as much content on there as I can. However, a lot of the programs are blocked to those of us outside the region. Also digging the new Kent cd. I need to find more bands that actually sing in Swedish. If only Hearts Of Black Science did… they are awesome!!
Well that’s all for today. I guess I should get back to “work”. HA!
-j