e_spartacus40

Despite only a weak understanding of the Frisian language (that which is considered the closest language to English without being a dialect of English), this movie is very well made. It's hard to believe it is a TV movie. I guess the Frisians don't get much airtime even in Friesland (Fryslân).

At any rate, this movie seems to be about an aristocratic Frisian family (circa before automobiles?) with only one grown son (Ate Wallinga), and no other children to speak of. There is a horse race (drivers in a small chariot dragged by the horse) where the winner wins a golden whip (de gouden swipe). This trophy is evidently very important to the father. The mother dies midway through it. The real story seems to be about how the son falls in love with one of the family's workers, Janke Feikema (played by the tige moai (very beautiful) Maaike Schuurmans); it would seem that the Feikema family had been working on the Wallinga farm for a very long time.

I won't give the rest away, but will say that even without understanding the dialog, it is reasonably easy to figure out the general story. Because the filming is so good and the Frisian landscape so nice, it is an easy watch. Also has a good soundtrack. At some point I'll finish reading the book (also in Frisian; seemingly a different dialect than west Frisian), and then perhaps I'll understand the film better.

I recently received a dvd of Nynke from a Netherland company. The add for the dvd said that it was in Netherlandish (aka by most as Dutch) with English subtitles, which went against my knowledge that the movie is actually in Frisian. To my delight it is in Frisian with some Netherlandish. However, the subtitles were not in English at all, but only in Netherlandish. I am learning Frisian, but as an American living in the United States, my command of this language is weak at best. Having said all of this, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It was easy enough to understand the jist of the movie; although I'm sure it is far more complex and interesting if you do understand Netherlandish.

If you can see it with subtitles in your own language, then I strongly recommend it. Oant skrieuwen!

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is, in my opinion, the best of all the Star Trek movies. It's direction is superb and its creativity is on par with the best of science fiction movies. Many people who have seen it found it boring because it spends a lot of time on each scene. Similar to Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" it has a lot of slow camera shots of space, the various ships, etc... combined with awesome musical scores. I found that this "slowness" helps bring you into the whole futuristic world and subsequently assists you in believing the rather far fetched story. Apart from the obvious things about the movie, it turns out that it has a very interesting and subtle underlying story (or at least message) that only comes out in symbolism (missed by most everyone including me) and perhaps with some of the logic vs. emotion, evolution of living things and love. I was introduced to this at a barb-e-que one Memorial Day. A philosophy professor (specifically Eastern philosophy) pointed out that the whole platform on which V'Ger sits is in the shape of (I forget now exactly what he said) some Hindu temple (or something) and that V'Ger sounds out a Hindi (or possibly another Eastern language)word for love. This would go along with the story of the machine becoming sentient and, in the phase of being a child, now searching for the meaning of it all and requiring love. I don't know how much of this pans out, but check with someone who is well versed on Eastern philosophy and ask them about this movie and how it relates. The person who turned me on to this had much more to say about it and myself and those present only understood about 20% of what he said (many PhD candidates in the related field of mathematics). One of the main characters, Lt. Ilia, was portrayed by an Indian actress who spoke Hindi, so it is possible. Regardless, the movie not only has a compelling, if hard to swallow, story coupled with beautiful photography and direction, but it also gives the audience a lot to think about.