Being sentimental

As I have told you here I can now see Finnish television over the Internet. I´m using this service mainly to watch news, a couple of my favourite series and an occasional film, mainly when wanting to see and hear the original version instead of one dubbed in German.

Yesterday evening I found something that made me cry. Yeah, I know. A chauvinist, ugly middle aged man, should not be sentimental but I just couldn´t help it. I found a film called "I´ll be there" (UK, 2002). The story is set around Cardiff in Wales, where an aging rock star is trying to find himself but instead of that finds a daughter he´s never been aware of. Nice and harmless story, nice to watch and storyline actually quite good, but not worth of buying the DVD.

So I thought. Until this scene:

The singer is Charlotte Church. In the movie she plays the role of Olivia, daughter of rock star Paul Kerr, who is played by Craig Ferguson. WHAT A VOICE! She sings here "Summertime" from George Gershwin´s folk opera "Porgy and Bess".

I can not understand why my reaction was so overwhelming. Maybe because I´ve always loved Gershwin´s music, maybe because I´m home alone in Solingen and Angie in Leipzig (She´ll be here on Friday!). Or, maybe, she just has the most beautiful voice.

Enjoy!

TV from Finland

About a month ago life became easier for us Finnish immigrants. Finally after years of waiting Finnish television is available to everybody with a flat rate Internet connection. Best part is it costs only €10 a month. Viewer should also have a Finnish TV-license paid. I can now watch everything from channels TV1 and 2, Yle Teema, FST5, MTV3, Nelonen, Sub and Jim. It´s not live; I can start watching a program about 5 minutes after it´s finished. For me it´s OK. The provider TV-Kaista stores all programs for two weeks so I can watch my favorite shows whenever it suits me. The quality is super! Watch yourself; the photo here is from my favorite soap Heartbeat, "Sydämen asialla" in Finnish.

It is a tremendous pleasure to watch a nice film or show with original sounds and speech!

Here in Germany they dub everything. Sometimes it is a bit comical, like a musical where some famous American star sings with his / her own voice, in English, but his /her spoken voice is a totally different German voice.

As my friend put it, I rather hear Arnold Schwarzenegger say in his own voice "I´ll be back!", than a totally strange voice in German with bad lip-sync "Ich komme zurück!"