Recent comments in /f/todayilearned

res30stupid t1_jd774p6 wrote

Reply to comment by BrokenEye3 in TIL that Laurel & Hardy and the Our Gang kids reshot each film for foreign audiences by phonetically reciting their lines in the foreign language by uncled0d0

> The Spanish version of Dracula is generally considered a superior film thanks to the alternate cast.

It actually goes further than this, actually.

This was right towads the end of the Silent Era, which introduced a rather interesting problem to the whole industry. It was rather easy to sell movies across the entire world without any issue since the story was either conveyed entirely through body language or title cards that could be changed rather easily. But with spoken dialogue, this introduced a language barrier to a lot of their newer productions.

Most movie studios decided to invest in a way of easing the production process for other-language releases. Multiple studios even looked at making multiple versions with casts speaking different languages.

It turned out to not be a good idea, usually having lesser returns just a single-language release or being sub-par compared to the English version due to language barrier issues - usually having the same producer who needed a translator to speak to the other language crews. In fact, Dracula was one of the last movies to involve a dual-language, dual-cast production.

Both the English and the Spanish versions of the film were filmed simultaneously and on the same sets - the difference being that the Spanish crew had to film at night. But a lot of changes were made either by necessity or through different direction.

It appears that the English version had a lot of scenes left on the cutting room floor that were kept in the Spanish film, which was an entire half-an-hour longer. And as James Rolfe - famous for being the Angry Video Game Nerd but also a noted horror movie fan - the Spanish version also includes more scenes from the original novel.

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SpunKDH t1_jd76gvi wrote

Reply to comment by VengefulMight in TIL that Al Pacino boycotted the 45th academy awards in 1973, because despite having more screen time than Marlon Brando, he was nominated for best supporting actor and not best actor. by VengefulMight

I don't get you people with this stance. Is it a masterpiece? Maybe not but still a great movie with a solid story. Your purism is really borderline gatekeeping and totally childish

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kudichangedlives t1_jd747gk wrote

Reply to comment by p-d-ball in TIL that mosquitos can be a nuisance for everyone but not for the people in Iceland. Simply because they don't exist there: by bringmeturtles

Hey, I just want to steal everything in Iceland's history museum and put it all on South Georgia island with some sort of nuclear deterrent to moving it off of South Georgia island.

If I have to release a hoard of rabid Spidermen to do it, then by god we're getting radioactive spiders

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kudichangedlives t1_jd73jb4 wrote

Reply to comment by p-d-ball in TIL that mosquitos can be a nuisance for everyone but not for the people in Iceland. Simply because they don't exist there: by bringmeturtles

It's a very cheap plan and we are welcome to investors, the only entry requirement is that you provide information on your base of operations and a list of invasive species that would be detrimental to the local ecosystem and population, so we can help protect our partners from invasive species that is.

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ST616 t1_jd73eer wrote

Reply to comment by Boogzcorp in TIL the term "death row" comes from an assassination attempt on FDR. The shooter Giuseppe Zangara was sentenced to death, but there was already a convict awaiting execution, and FL law forbade them from sharing cells. A second cell was built, turning the "death cell" into the first "death row." by AdmiralAkbar1

He was above average height for the time he lived in. The average height has increased since then.

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ST616 t1_jd72zgs wrote

Reply to comment by SatansMoisture in TIL that Laurel & Hardy and the Our Gang kids reshot each film for foreign audiences by phonetically reciting their lines in the foreign language by uncled0d0

Not really the same as they were nearly all new sketches especially written for the German production.

Only the first of the two German Monty Python specials was filmed in German. They found it very difficult so when they did the second one they just recorded it in English and let other people dub their lines into German afterwards.

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_Dnikeb t1_jd72px1 wrote

Reply to TIL that mosquitos can be a nuisance for everyone but not for the people in Iceland. Simply because they don't exist there: by bringmeturtles

The most common explanation for why there are no mosquitoes in Iceland is that the frequent freezing-thawing cycles kill off mosquito brood by not giving it enough time to develop between frosts. But that doesn't explain why other insects with much longer life cycles, such as wasps, manage to thrive.

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