Save Me…… from the bleedin’ obvious

The Oscars are upon us once again this Sunday with no less than ten films up for Best Picture this time round and with a total of 24 awards for all manner of acting, design, directing, script writing, editing and for the bloke who made the best costumes.

In fact, if there were an Oscar for best self-congratulatory back-slapping then the Oscars itself would win it every year.

Among those in the running for the awards this time are The Descendants featuring George Clooney, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy starring Gary Oldman, The Help with Jessica Chastain, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close with Tom Hanks, silent movie The Artist, Terence Mallick’s The Tree of Life featuring Brad Pitt and Midnight in Paris directed by Woody Allen.

Even If you’re only remotely interested in cinema you’ll probably have heard of at least a few of these films if nowhere else but on the TV news, in the newspapers or on the internet. You might have even seen a few of them!

But if you’re Spanish, right at this moment you may well be scratching your head at a few of those names. And here’s why.

It’s not surprising, I guess, that when some English-language films come to Spain, their names are changed so that, I assume, they might be more appealing to Spanish audiences. Some film names may be expressions in English that simply don’t translate with any sense into Spanish. Some may be word-play or idioms that again don’t cross the linguistic barrier intact. Fair enough, you might think.

But here’s my problem. It is my humble opinion that a disproportionate number of the new names given to these films lack any sort of imagination and are often laughably literal.

Let’s take some of the films up for Best Picture this Sunday. The Artist and The Descendants both cross over unscathed. But Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – the film version of the TV series of the John Le Carre novel about attempts to uncover a mole deep within the British Secret Service – becomes...yes, you guessed it, The Mole.  Where’s the mystery or intrigue in that? At least the original name – derived from the names given to the suspects by the spy master - creates some illusion of conspiracy and suspicion. To borrow the slogan from a well-known DIY company, the Spanish name “does what it says on the tin” and nothing else.

You might think I’m being a little harsh here. So then, Exhibit B your honour. Recent Adam Sandler comedy Jack and Jill, about a man who dreads the annual Thanksgiving visit of his twin sister Jill, has been renamed Jack and His Twin in Spanish. So what’s that about then? Well, it’s about a bloke and his twin. Oh, right, ok. 

And I’ve got plenty more where that came from. Take Keanu Reeves’ 1991 gung-ho surfing action cop thriller Point Break. A point break is a surfing term which refers to the point where a wave hits rocks or a raised shelf which juts out of the water. You could argue, with at least some semblance of seriousness, that it is an ideal metaphor for the way that Reeves’ character juts his sizeable FBI cop frame into the “wave” created by the surfing dudes / bank robbers. You see the cunning way they link the subject of the film to the title?

Bollocks to that, think the Spanish film re-namers. In Spanish its name is They Call Him Bodhi. I imagine the conversation between the film execs who came up with that went something like this. 

They’re sitting in an office looking at the script and one says to the other “So, what ‘s it about then?” “Well, it’s about a punk cop who learns to surf in order to catch some bank robbers who spend their time surfing,” says the other. “Who’s in it?” says the first one. “Keanu Reeves is the cop and his character’s called Johnny Utah. Oh, and Patrick Swayze’s in it too,” says the other. “What’s his character called?” says the first one. The other pauses for a second, looking down the cast list on his script. “Er, ah yes, here it is. They call him Bodhi” he says triumphantly. “Bingo!” says the first one.

Need more examples? Let me wheel out Exhibits C, D, E etc. etc. etc. Gene Hackman’s 1972 thriller The French Connection about a maverick cop’s attempts to smash a drug smuggling operation between France and the US is thrillingly, if not slightly obviously, renamed in Spain Against the Drugs Empire.

1999’s The Insider, a thriller which tells the true story of a tobacco industry whistle blower who suffers threats, stalking, million dollar lawsuits and a wrecked marriage in a bid to tell the truth, becomes the massively understated The Dilemma in Spanish. The title gives the impression he’s sitting on the couch scratching his head trying to work out what to order on the Chinese takeaway menu.

Then there’s 1979’s edge-of-your-seat horror flick Alien, which tells the story of how a creepy acid-for-blood alien creatures wipes out a crew of seven people on a mining ship in deep space.  In Spain it becomes Alien: The Eighth Passenger, just in case you forgot how many people were on board. Imagine a conversation between friends deciding what to see at the cinema on a Saturday night. “Hey, there’s a great movie about an alien space monster that attacks the crew of a space ship. Do you wanna go and see it?” “How many people are in the crew?” “Er, seven I think, because the Alien is the eighth one apparently.” “Nah, it sounds rubbish. Now, if there had been ten people on board that would have been a thriller!”

Kevin Costner’s 1997 post-apocalyptic futuristic thriller The Postman about a nomadic survivor who delivers letters among isolated and scared communities, encouraging them to stand against a tyrannical warlord, becomes Messenger of the Future (It’s about a bloke in the future who delivers messages, obviously).

Others include Ben Affleck’s terrorist-steals-nuclear-bomb thriller The Sum of All Fears which becomes Nuclear Panic; 2005’s Brokeback Mountain which becomes In Forbidden Land; 2004 remake The Manchurian Candidate which becomes Messenger of Fear (are you seeing a pattern here?); 2010’s Inception which bizarrely becomes Origin (origin of what?); 1994’s prison drama The Shawshank Redemption which becomes Life Imprisonment (Where is he? In prison. How long for? Life) and 2000’s Robert De Niro comedy Meet The Parents which becomes Her Parents, while its sequel Meet The Fockers becomes His Parents and its sequel Little Fockers which becomes Now They’re the Parents. It’s about parents, just in case that’s not clear.

And I haven’t even got on to the subject of how 99 per cent of all films are dubbed into Spanish when they are shown in cinemas here. There are millions of people in Spain who have never even heard the real voices of Tom Cruise, Sean Connery, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep and others. But that’s for another time.

If I’m to be completely objective, it’s only fair to sign off with an example of how it can sometimes work the other way too.  And for this, I only need one exhibit in evidence; Samuel L Jackson’s 2006 action thriller Snakes on a Plane. I'll leave you to guess what that's about.

Save Me…… from nostalgic trips to the bank

I remember the 1970s with a special fondness, partly because I was born at the very start of them.

Putting aside the familial earthquakes that ultimately shaped my childhood and adulthood and presented me with a big bill for years of personal counseling, the 1970s were a decade of simplicity, long summers, flares and our family’s wooden-framed Rediffusion TV.

It was a time when you had to use a phone box if you wanted to make a call while you were out. It was a time when it didn’t take long to decide what to watch on TV because there were only three channels. It was a time when, if you wanted to change the channel, you actually had to get up from your chair and walk over to the TV and do it because there were no remote controls. It was a time when I got 10p a week pocket money and would spend it on ha,penny chews and packs of stickers for my World Cup ’78 sticker album (I kept getting loads of “Dino Zoff”s – google him – and I could never swap them with my mates because they all got him too).

It was a time when banks closed early and there were hardly any cash machines and those that did exist were slow. It was a time when banks did everything on paper - in triplicate – and it took days for your salary to arrive in your account. It was a time when, if you presented a foreign cheque at the counter, the member of staff would look at you in a funny way and say “We don’t do Mickey Mouse money here Sir.” It was a time when, if you wanted to change your account details or order a new card, you had to go to your own branch to do it.

Ah, the 1970s. It’s lucky I feel nostalgic for them, because I can time warp back to them any time I feel like it right now in 2012, by just calling into pretty much any Spanish High Street bank.

While British banks have moved forward with the times, Spanish banks seem to be very much stuck in a rut. A flared-trousered, three-TV-channeled, World-Cup-78-sticker-albumed rut.

Now, of course, Spanish readers will be looking at this and wondering what the hell I’m going on about. Spanish banks are fine, you say. Well, that’s because you don’t know any different. But try visiting a British bank and you’ll probably faint at the sheer weight of technology and lack of paper that greets you when you step through their doors. And you’ll also probably be amazed to know that you can draw your money out of pretty much any cash machine from any bank and NOT be charged for it.

Yes, it’s true. And what’s more, I’m prepared to go on the record now about Spanish banks and I don’t care if my bank here in Spain blackballs me for what I’m about to say.

Spanish banks are crap. They are backward, sluggish, inefficient, technology-starved and so irritating that you want to pick up a chair and throw it at someone – which is probably why they’re screwed down in every branch you go into.

I have the misfortune to be with Banesto. But, let’s not be unfair here. All Spanish banks are the same, useless behemoths.

You may think I’m just ranting, so let me put some meat on the bones of my rantathon.

There’s a lot of paper in Spanish banks. A lot. Even though they have computers, they still do everything with paper. And then they copy it on to three other bits of paper, just in case the first bit of paper goes missing. Everywhere you look in a Spanish bank, there are piles of paper. You want to know where the Amazon rain forest has gone? It’s in Spain. In the banks.

They charge you for having an account, they charge you for giving you a debit card, they charge you for arranging to pay your rent out of your account every month, they charge you for having your salary paid into your account. Then they charge you for paying utility bills out of your account. Then they charge you for the statements they produce that tell you what you’ve just been charged for doing all that other stuff. They also charge you if you draw money out at a cash machine from another bank. And I’m not talking piddling amounts either. I’m talking about five Euros a pop for most things.

I fairly regularly transfer money from my Spanish bank account to my British bank account – but I can’t set up a monthly payment, oh no. I have to do it manually every month, even though I do the same bloody thing every month. And then, when I do, a new member of staff turns up who doesn’t know how to do it and ends up spending 30 minutes staring at the computer screen and ringing loads of numbers trying to find somebody who knows what to do, while also tutting and telling me at the same time that I’m holding up other customers and can’t I come back another time when they’re not there and another member of staff can spend another 30 minutes doing the same bloody thing.

Things that take a matter of minutes in a British bank take ten times longer in a Spanish bank. Even getting your salary. In the UK, the transfer from your employer’s bank to your bank is instantaneous. In Spain, it takes a couple of days to appear. I guess that’s because the bank’s carrier pigeons can only carry so much in one go.

Look, don’t get me wrong. British banks are far from perfect. And they’ve also had a load of taxpayers’ money to bail them out, yet still find the cash to pay out big, fat bonuses to big, fat bankers. (Note to big, fat bankers - come the revolution, you’re probably quite high up the average taxpayers’ “To Do” list, if you know what I mean).

But, really, come on Spanish banks. While there were many things in the 1970s that I loved, going on a nostalgia trip every time I walk through your bloody doors is not something I want to keep doing. Get a computer that works faster, buy a longer cable, install broadband, stop using so much paper. Do something, for God’s sake.

Everybody else is waiting for you to catch up.   

Save Me…… from angry claims of non-existent French conspiracies

For the second time in a matter of months it seems my blogs have magical predictive powers. Last week I wrote about the pointlessness of local rivalry in sport, and in particular football. Then, this week, as if by magic, the papers and the TV news here have been filled with reports of what appears to be an increasingly bitter sporting rivalry between Spain and France.

From talking with local people here in Seville, apparently it’s the fault of France that Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador, three-time winner of the Tour de France, got a two year ban for doping offences this week.

And as if to make matters worse, the Spanish government yesterday threatened to sue French TV station Canal Plus over a satirical sketch show that suggested more Spanish athletes and sports stars had ties with doping.

Contador got banned for having a tiny amount of banned substance Clenbuterol in his wee. From the cursory research I’ve done into it, the ban was imposed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), based in Switzerland. The case was brought by the World Anti-Doping Agency, also based in Switzerland and the International Cycling Union, also based in Switzerland. The three-man panel at the CAS which ruled on it was made up of a German, an Israeli and someone from Switzerland.

Now, maybe I’m missing something here. But I didn’t see the word “French” or “France” anywhere in that last paragraph.

So having found this out yesterday – because I don’t have anything better to do with my miserable life – I decided the right thing to do would be to go and stand on top of Seville’s tallest building with a loud hailer and tell the locals that in fact they’d got it all wrong and the French were actually innocent in all of this and deserved an apology.

But then France’s Canal Plus satirical news show called Les Guignols (The Puppets) – sort of a French version of 1980s British satirical news show Spitting Image – then went and broadcast three sketches poking fun at the situation; the latest sketch featured Spanish athletes including Rafael Nadal and Spanish football captain Iker Casillas signing a petition in support of Contador. But using needles instead of pens.

Oh ha ha. Very funny. Cheers France. Just when I was about to back you up.

Now Spanish people are fuming, the government has blown a gasket, and it’s a dangerous place to be round here if you’ve got even a vaguely Gallic accent or admit to liking Camembert cheese.

I’ve spoken to a few people here to try and work out what’s got them all mad about the French, aside from the stupid TV sketch show. And the message I tend to get back is that apparently the French are jealous of Spain’s sporting achievements and that there’s some sort of conspiracy going on to discredit the Spanish so that France can once again regain international sporting glory.

Well, ok, Spain does have the best football team in the world at the moment, granted. And their basketball team isn’t bad. But they don’t have the best tennis player or Formula 1 driver or golfer or rugby team or swimmers or snooker players or gymnasts or boxers or skiers or cricketers or table tennis players or ice hockey players or darts stars. The list of what they’re rubbish at is frankly endless.

So that got me thinking. Is this sporting pride all a bit misplaced? Is the Spanish perception of a French conspiracy a little far-fetched?

“Rafael Nadal’s the best tennis player of all time,” said a Spanish friend to me this week. So I googled “Who’s the best tennis player of all time?” and I found a website that said it was, in fact, Jimmy Connors (who’s American by the way, but you probably knew that already). Nadal didn’t even make it into the top ten. He popped up at number 24!

Another said “It’s all political. We’re the best in the world when it comes to sport and the French hate us for it.” So then I typed “Who is the best country in the world at sport?” into Google. The answer I got was “Australia”. And by a long shot as well, apparently, especially when you take into account sporting prowess per head of population.

Another said to me: “Well, the French control everything when it comes to sport, especially cycling.” So I typed in “World sporting federations based in France.” And I got nothing. But what I did find out was that the International Olympic Committee and FIFA are both based in Switzerland.

Can you see a pattern emerging here?

Look, I’m the first to admit that my research isn’t exactly scientific. But, while I may be going out on a limb here, I’m willing to bet that the real conspiracy is being masterminded by the Swiss and is designed to make everyone blame France for everything.

A classic case in point is Toblerone, a chocolate bar that you can’t actually eat without making your mouth bleed. Many people believe that the triangular shape of the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps gave Swiss inventor Theodor Tobler the inspiration for the shape of his creation. But what few people know is that the shape actually originates from a pyramid the dancers at the Folie Bergeres in Paris created as the finale for a show that Theodor saw.

So you see, every time you get a sore mouth from eating a Toblerone, it’s the bloody French who get the blame again. If I was French I’d have written an angry letter to the Swiss by now, telling them to back off.

Anyway, after all this googling, I was getting quite carried away so I finally typed in “What is Spain good at?”

Organ transplants, olives and the Women’s Roller Hockey World Cup apparently. They’ve won four times since 1992, which is nice for them. France haven’t ever won it apparently.

Save Me…… from pointless rivalries that test the boundaries of common sense

The dictionary definition of the word rivalry is “the state or condition of competition or antagonism. An angry or violent struggle, conflict or contention, especially of a bitter kind.”

Hmmm. Bitter, angry, violent, antagonistic. Yeah, that about sums up what I want to talk about this week.

Now, rivalry is a good thing in many cases. It fosters competition, improvement, drive, motivation and the desire for perfection in many things. Take sport for example. Barcelona and Real Madrid, Manchester United and Arsenal. What’s their rivalry based on? The fact that they are all at the top of their games and want to be the best.

But then there are the sporting rivalries based not on the drive for perfection, the desire to be better or the motivation to improve, but on the simple fact that the competition happens to live just down the road.

The simple fact – be it pointless, illogical, irrational, emotionally-twisted and moronic – but which drives the desire to see the other team get totally and utterly stuffed as much as possible, even if you’re not in the same league as them and the outcome doesn’t affect you in the slightest.

This is something that ‘s puzzled me for years, mostly because I have personal experience of it. But it’s come to a head quite neatly this last week because the teams I’m talking about have all faced off against each other in the last few days.

And the rivalries these particular teams foster – here in my current home in Seville and back in my old home of Croydon - encapsulate every bit of the twisted negativity that the dictionary offers up as definition.

In the case of Seville it’s the rivalry between Sevilla FC and Real Betis who both play in Spain’s premier division La Liga. In Croydon it’s the rivalry between Crystal Palace and Brighton, who both play in England’s second tier known as The Championship.

Like I said, my problem isn’t with rivalry per se, but with rivalry based purely on geography.

Ask any supporter of Sevilla FC (recently the more successful and generally more affluent team in the city) what they think of Real Betis (with a working class fan base and a poorer history, which has only recently seen an upturn with promotion back to the top division last season) and you will witness barely concealed rage and vitriol. It works the same way in the other direction too.

As for Crystal Palace and Brighton, well their rivalry is even more bonkers. They’re located a good 40 miles apart. But they still hate each others’ guts. Walk down the street in either town carrying the colours of the opposing team and you’re just asking to be punched in the gob.  

It’s not as if the teams have had much to be angry at each other for in recent times. Betis only got promoted back to the top division this season, so they haven’t even played Sevilla in three years.

The same is true of Crystal Palace and Brighton. Brighton got promoted to the same league as Palace this season, and before that the last time the two teams met was seven years ago!

I once asked a friend of mine, who was a Portsmouth FC fan, why he hated Southampton FC, 30 miles up the road, with the same vigour shared by Brighton, Palace, Betis and Sevilla. This was at a time when Southampton were two divisions below Portsmouth.

I was hoping he’d say something like: “Well, we are both on top of our games at the moment and we want to be the best, as it fosters a healthy drive towards perfection which is wonderful for the historic sport of football, my good man.” Or something like that.

He pondered for a moment, and then said “Well, it’s ‘cos they´re cunts aren´t they?”

Indeed. Now do you see my point?

I should add, at this juncture, for purposes of full disclosure, that I was born in Brighton, I grew up there and naturally enough I support the team. As far as Sevilla FC goes, I live about five minutes walk from their stadium and can hear the fans roar when a goal is scored on match nights, so naturally I keep an eye out for how they do as well.

Last week, when Sevilla played Betis at Betis’ stadium in the south of the city, the fun and games started in the morning even though the game didn’t kick off until the evening. As I walked past the stadium at about 10am, there were a couple of hundred fans chanting, singing and flag waving next to the – empty – team bus parked up outside. As I walked up the road, I saw another gang of supporters outside one of the big hotels doing the same thing. A few seconds later, the team bus drove past us and away up the road to turn around at the roundabout. The fans roared as it went past – still empty. Then they roared again, as it drove back and parked up to, I’m guessing, pick up the players holed up in the hotel.

It was still 10 hours before kick-off and the Betis stadium was about a 15 minute drive away. What were they going to do? Give the players a day-long tour of their own city on a bus?

Later in the afternoon, the fans were still outside the – wrong – stadium chanting, singing and flag waving. But by this time, their numbers had swelled. It’s never like this when they play other teams. Even Barcelona and Real Madrid.

Anyway, on Tuesday this week Brighton travelled to Palace for a night game and the usual crowd trouble flared up outside the stadium before and after the match.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that all this energy, anger, vitriol, venom and spite might produce some thrilling head-to-heads between these spitting, vicious rivals.

Well, the result of both games was a decidedly dull 1-1 draw. About as enthralling as a fart in a tornado.

So the conclusion that it’s all complete nonsense is surely obvious, is it not then?

Mind you, having said all that, I still think Crystal Palace are a bunch of wankers and I´m delighted when they lose, even when it has no connection to my team whatsoever. And no amount of logical argument, even by me to me, will ever convince me otherwise.