Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

I’m a qualified teacher but not a language teacher. Like most people my age I was taught languages at school, French and Latin in my case, and I’ve dabbled with other languages at various points since. I know a bit of Mandarin and some conversational Portuguese plus a smattering of Māori. Learning languages, or attempting to, is something I’ve done, on and off, over the years. Duolingo is the latest of those. In terms of my Duolingo experience I’m up to 100 days experience, so this review is based on that first three months or so. I’m aware that what it teaches changes somewhat as your experience in the language increases, but I haven’t got there yet. I’ve been learning Welsh, but as I understand it the general structure is the same for other languages. At this point, there is a very distinct approach to learning a language with Duolingo. It’s loosely conversational. You could describe it as “advanced phrase book” learning. You start off with introducing yourself, saying hi, talking ...

Don’t worry, no spoilers! Wynonna Earp: Vengeance is a follow up movie to the TV show. It’s not a replacement for the Season 5 we were supposed to have but never got, rather it’s a sequel, stand-alone, five years later, kind of thing. I will admit, I had my doubts going into this. Wynonna Earp felt like our shit-show, but it also felt like it might be lightning in a bottle, and once it had escaped, you could never recapture it. Just putting the band back together again might not be enough. There were odd moments when I still felt that was true. Which in a 95 minute film is probably a reflection that, at some level, there were odd scenes that I thought needed a bit of work. Given I could say the same of almost any film, that’s not a bad thing to say about this one. There are many I’m far more critical of too. This one just registered a bit differently with me, because I had different expectations, and worries, compared to most films. But the things I expect from Wynonna Earp were ...

French TV and film, I guess like visual media from any country, has its own unique style. They tell stories in different ways, use visual metaphors differently and often have different outcomes to their stories too. If you think of big hit films like La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element and Leon can you imagine any of them being made by an American director? It’s not just the French that do this of course, British TV is distinctly different to American TV, even when one nation remakes the other’s shows. Think of the two versions of The Office but even shows where there’s hardly any format change can have vastly different fortunes: College Bowl is an American quiz show you’ve possibly never heard of, it has run for six seasons across its initial run and two relaunches. University Challenge , the British version, is currently in its 54th season, although it has had a brief hiatus and a channel swap. Why all this preamble? Furies is similar to a number of shows and films I’ve seen bef...