Silly Little Country

Tyler Cowen, also headed to France, surprises me

And his surprises are much of why I like to read him.

But what does he say?

The best-selling book in French history?

Sadly it is The da Vinci Code.

Huh.? Like why sadly?

His commentors do very well on this topic.

For all their differences, the French are just like Americans in one respect:
They enjoy badly written pseudointellectual crap just as much as we do.

Or ...

Less Proust, Derrida, Foucault...more Brown. Less pompous windbaggery, more fun.

Yes, fun! Even the comparatively tedious movie was fun. The book was a very poorly written roller-coaster ride, full of sound and fury and .... yup. But fun!

Or ...

Well, after those the topic in the comments shifts into a very interesting question I would like to see discussed more - dubbed films vs. subtitled films. I cannot watch dubbed films - it is just too weird (voices rarely match the characters and the synchronization goes all to hell),and so I have found the prevalence of that approach in Europe baffling. I assume it has to do with state subsidization of a dubbing industry. It's not clear to me which approach is cheaper - subtitling seems easier on the face of it. I do note that many Almodovar films feature dubbing of foreign films as part of the story.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 8:08 PM