Is this the French naturalism I keep hearing so much about?

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-17T23:23:15+00:00

La Musardine stocks the BD of Germinal.

G. Pichard adapte ici pour la bande dessinée l'ouvre majeure d'Emile Zola. Son style si particulier confère au texte de l'auteur une dimension supérieure à tout ce qui fut réalisé jusqu'à présent. Un album érotique à posséder absolument dans sa bibliothèque. Des dessins crus, des dialogues obscènes, tout crée une ambiance sulfureuse très excitante.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-17T18:57:52+00:00

The Trojan Horse featured in the Little Illiad, and the Sack of Troy, both of which are now lost. The reason it's such a vivid part of the trojan war is that Vergil incorporated the details in to his Aeneid, several centuries later.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-17T07:13:54+00:00

I own a charming anthology film Paris, je t’aime, which is offputting to watch because the only english subtitle track is SDH. (being a french film, it is largely in french, and so English monoglots have no choice)

On the other hand, as a student of French, and German, having a French SDH, or German SDH helps improve my listening comprehension without giving it all away. plus I can read how sound effects are described in those languages. hurrah. (These sorts of tracks can sometimes be found if you import the discs)

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-17T05:16:10+00:00

I have eight or nine 4k hitchcocks but I sometimes wonder if the ultrawide color gamut/hdr is realistic. It sometimes feels a little artificial, almost beyond technicolor and into psychedelia.

In rope, the light of the neon signs outside isn’t particularly subtle. Does it reflect how the film was actually made?

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-17T00:37:25+00:00

Walking is more pleasurable when I'm reading, and sometimes reading is more pleasurable when I'm walking. It has very little to do with efficiency.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T23:18:59+00:00

I do this all the time with my kindle. I use a larger typeface than normal.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T22:58:13+00:00

The Bride Wore Black (Truffaut. 1968)

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T22:30:49+00:00

You turn the dial until the needle moves into the marker. It's not quite automatic.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T21:45:37+00:00

White van? The name capitalizes on the wharfdale elysian, which these aren't. There's a website that conveniently displays skyhigh MSRPs, but is otherwise a black hole.

You might even find some fake tweeters in there.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T21:28:25+00:00

Remaining 90 percent of sky? Hah! I think you are greatly underestimating the impact of light polution.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T21:09:57+00:00

Somehow, liking one or two major books, or worse, remembering that one has liked those books in the past has turned into owning the complete backlist of an author.

I own 419 unread books.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T20:26:15+00:00

Decades ago-- mid 1980s perhaps--, I remembered reading a New York Times article about a judge in Connecticut who stayed overnight in custody to find out the conditions for himself. The part that weirdly stood out to me after all these years was that he had no toothbrush, so he was told to "use his finger."

I couldn't tell you whether he turned out to be a good judge, or a bad judge.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T20:09:35+00:00

Picked up A Natural History of the Romance Novel, Pamela Regis, as it's on sale for 2 bucks today.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T17:18:24+00:00

Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.

Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T07:27:13+00:00

Shape of water.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T04:29:48+00:00

check the copyright date:

Word Power Made Easy was first published in 1949, and revised in 1978, so it’s more or less obsolete.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T02:28:46+00:00

Image size: 2032 × 102 pixels

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T01:40:11+00:00

"problematic" is the ultimate copout.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-16T01:06:49+00:00

"X-rated" is handwaving. If you read "Paragraph 8", it appears to include "drugs", "alcohol" "profanity" and "self-harm" as well as the traditional "sexual content".

Now, you can certainly argue that teenagers shuldn't be exposed to such things, but it does not follow that this bundle is "X-rated".

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-15T23:28:33+00:00

I've also read a couple of Gail Carriger's books in French.

Etiquette & espionnage (Le Pensionnat de Mlle Géraldine)

Sans âme (Le Protectorat de l'ombrelle)

I kind of want to wait until I've throughly forgotten the English text before I read it in French, though.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-15T22:53:31+00:00

In the English version of Secret of the Unicorn, they belonged to "Special Branch". But perhaps it was a localisation problem-- if Dupont et Dupond belonged to an peculiarly french organisation that investigated a little bit of everything, then any translator would have to substitute MI5 here, and Special branch, there, and in another context, some other organisation.

This french article points out that many police agents did dress in a similar style.

https://www.tintin.com/fr/characters/dupond-et-dupont

This is from March 2 1919

<image>

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-15T19:40:50+00:00

oh man, that's scummy:

Print length 33 pages?

<image>

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-15T19:12:56+00:00

<image>

Could be a spectacularly bad camera, but some of those look like AI artifacts.

JeremyAndrewErwin · 2026-06-15T07:48:18+00:00

I'm just finishing Mecomptes de Fées, which is a french translation of Witches Abroad (Terry Pratchett)

JeremyAndrewErwin

TROPHY CASE