Soviet Musketeers

One unexpected result of coming across that online review of different screen versions of "The 3 Musketeers" was that he mentioned the existence of a wildly popular Soviet Russian musical adaptation, available on YouTube with English subtitles... so I went looking for it, and absolutely loved it, to the extent that I found myself watching Russian fanvids :-D

( Read more... )

( Lyrics )

My Russian was just about adequate to back-translate most of the short dialogue exchanges where people didn't go too fast, and to follow bits of the unsubtitled versions of the songs after having seen the subtitled version. It is of course grossly inadequate for following the plot of an entire film on its own, although I did have the satisfaction of spotting a couple of short untranslated phrases. But I managed to acquire several new and somewhat specialised bits of vocabulary by virtue of repetition: 'sword', 'blood', 'honour', 'Gascon', 'Eminence' :-D ( Read more... )

I can absolutely understand why it has apparently become a cult classic, why people treasure memories of watching repeats on TV, why schoolgirls fell for Aramis en masse, and why it seems to have subsequently acquired a vigorous online fandom. I now have an entire playlist of related videos and excerpts!


Also, I did, inevitably, end up launching back into the novel in the original French, if only to work out how many of those dialogue lines genuinely are taken directly from the original ;-)

Seeds of Spring

PNG support in wttr.in is *finally* back, after about a year of being 'temporarily disabled :-)
So I can see the forecast in a way that actually aligns the columns readably, rather than assuming things about my terminal font that appear not to hold true...
( Weather report image )

Overcome by an excess of optimism during a warm spell, I planted some seeds last week: some of my saved pods from the rocket that went to seed at the end of last year, alongside the one plant that overwintered, and some marigold seed in the mini-greenhouse. The rocket is definitely germinating, although the marigold seed, which admittedly had not been stored in the best of conditions (this was some 'spare' seed that had been literally lying around on the tabletop for months) isn't showing any sign of life.

Most of my seed packets still recommend you wait until March to sow seed outdoors, but in the absence of a usable indoors I have planted out some experimental sweet-pea (also in the mini-greenhouse) and mixed cutting salad seed that I was given for free. It may be date-expired, but we shall see.

I need to start my tomatoes and chillies reasonably early, but up to now it really has been too cold indoors, at least at night...