Red Planet (2000). Producers ran $100 short.

Just watched the subj movie. The plot is cheesy and technical details in film are laughable, but that is not why I write this.

It is, yes you guessed it right, another example of a bad Russian language in a Hollywood film. I know, i know. You are probably tired hearing my complaints on the topic but this one is REALLY outrageous.

As the story evolves, the crew is stranded on a planet with no means to go home except for old Russian mineral probe, which was unable to return to Earth automatically, but can be kick-started manually. And on the way to their only hope of survival crew members go in jokes of how this vessel is crap because it was made by silly "russky". (Jokes on them, plan worked, happy ending, bitches).

What really pisses me, is that producers of the film can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on CGI, and fail to invest $100 to language-proof one of the main plot devices. This level of negligence is staggering.

Starting with the audio interface of the probe's control system (WTF is this doing there anyway? The probe is designed to be unmanned) that speaks in horrendous 3rd generation emigrant accent. And ending with unreadable text strings on screen that are composed of random letters, some of them even are not in a Russian alphabet.

 

 And  where they got words right, they put them upside-down, like at the green button below.

 

Some can do it.

Well, well. As many of you correctly pointed out, I should not  have been all negative babbling how badly Russian language is portrayed in English video production. There is indeed a bright exception to generally practiced ignorance of proper articulation of foreign languages.

Here and now, I present you...
Ksenia Solo

Few times she speaks Russian in "Lost girl", she does it next-to-perfect. Thanks to Slavic origins.


Ain't she cute?  Personally, I like her character, Kenzi, much more than the protagonist (Bo) in the said show.

When stupid is funny.

 Look what I found in my mail box today!

russian-in-english

I've decided to start a series of posts about use (or, rather, misuse) of Russian language in English media, specifically in movies and tv shows. This one is the first of a kind and all of them will be tagged "russian-in-english".

Our first item comes from "Sanctuary" - a very fine piece of science fiction known for its low budget CGI, but otherwise nice. Apparently, there is a lost Russian vessel frozen in ice somewhere in Barents Sea and the crew went crazy and shot each other, but not before putting a strange label on the white "first aid kit" box you see on the left side of the screen. The weird part is that they decided to transliterate from English instead of translating! So yeah, the sign actually says "first aid kit", with all Latin letters replaced with Cyrillic ones of similar sounding.

Sanctuary US S04E07 "Icebreaker"

Nikita S02E09 "Fair Trade"

The second one comes from the latest revision of "Nikita", the show that is riddled with horrible "russky" voicing. Russian voice actors are so bad there, I usually have trouble understanding what poor background characters are trying to say. Anyway, this time filmmakers did pull their shit together and gave a good try to produce a single episode without a fuck-up. Well, they almost did it. Dreadful "russian" speaking is still there, but at least they got most of the signs right. Except for the one on the picture (it is off by a single letter!), of course. Better luck next time, people.

I was pretty awesome today. Fixed my LCD.

This post was going to be about me trying drugs for the first time last Friday, but on Saturday something more important happened.

My BenQ 19" LCD monitor broke, it was switching off by itself after I turn it on and was making annoying high-pitched sounds while going between on and off states. I applied my "Educated Guess" ability and surmised that some faulty capacitors in powering circuit are to blame - a problem I am totally qualified to deal with. Disassembling the monitor (the plastic back panel) was troublesome since i never did it before and i had to take advise from YouTube for this, but the rest was pretty straightforward. As i expected, three capacitors were inflated and had to be replaced.

So, I bravely ventured out on a quest for required circuit elements and soldering gizmos. Long story short i ended with a simple 40W soldering iron (which is a bit too much for electronics btw), a bunch of soldering supplies (solder, flux, etc..), a solder sucker, a capacitance meter, a multimeter and new capacitors, of course.

Desoldering bad capacitors with the pump was a breeze, soldering in new ones took some efforts, but eventually the job was done and I am writing this post on a fixed monitor, happy as an elf on a tree.

P.S. all the equips together cost me around $40, the price of fixing LCD alone was below $1, if you are interested.

I got a job!

My days of unemployment are over, it seems. As per usual, the initiative was not mine. My dad reached out and pushed me into job interview, which resulted in being hired.

Well, can't say I'm excited much: salary is shit, work is low-tech IT mostly and on top of it they forced me to continue my higher education (remotely), and I must pay for it myself, of course. So, basically i will work for food till summer, which beats sitting flat with no job at all, but only by little.

As of right now, I've worked for a full week. Was bored most of the time and feeling incompetent for the rest of it. I seriously lack in "handy" skills, like drilling and screwing and soldering, but I'll catch up no doubt.

On the "plus" side the repair shop i work at is located within 15 minutes of walk from my home and i can have lunch at my place. Also, people at work are very nice and my boss is kinda cool old dude. I'm not very social person myself and often get uncomfortable in a new environment, but not there. I "clicked" in perfectly.

Hand made!

So-so. Few days ago a rush of creativity came over me, my hands were itching for action. Here is the result, it took me 9 hours over two nights to make this crappy picture, but I'm still proud of it.

Man on a photo is John Wells who told me he is not red-haired "down there". Too bad, John, I'm sucker for ginger. :-)