Gawker: defamer, lost in translation

Vaguely Racist 'Hancock' Subtitles Prompt Fledgling Fan Revolt

STV — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:50:00 EDT

The Dark Knight may have its curse, Transformers 2 may have its star's busted hand and Terminator 4 may face the opprobrium of its own franchise anchor. But another summer blockbuster faces an unfortunate — if totally foreseeable — development of its own. Those viewers who remember Hancock's introductory action sequence may have been too rattled/busy/overwhelmed to have been paying attention to the subtitled conversation of its Asian bad guys, but nothing got past an eagle-eyed blogger who caught the slightly insensitive translation pictured here. Follow the jump for an enlarged image and a summary of one man's! total! outrage!

Look, would we have translated the dialect into a little more elegant English, as opposed to the more stilted "Engrish" of Hancock? Yeah, probably. But we're not quite ready for the boycott action proposed by this particularly incensed viewer:

I don't know the grammar of Chinese or any other Asian languages, so I don't know if this construction is correct according to whatever language they're speaking, but come on. Have the writers of this movie ever seen a foreign film? Subtitles don't translate word-for-word. It's not like German movies are subtitled with shit like "You like when I making the food, jaaaaa?" Japanese films don't have "Ridicurous!" along the bottom of the screen. Seriously, do they get what subtitles are? These people are speaking their native language. ... I no pay for next Will Smith movie.

That's fine — judging by the ready availability of this screen grab, he didn't pay for this one either. But anyway, don't hold it against Smith; we hear the especially insidious "subtitle thetans" will be among the first to go at the megastar's swanky new school in Calabasas.

Producers of 'Hancock' don't understand what subtitles are [Rottin' in Denmark via THND]

Bill Murray's 'Stupid Country Bumpkin' Look Doesn't Impress Greta Scacchi

Molly Friedman — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:10:00 EDT

We’ve had a thing for Bill Murray since the first time we saw clips of his pity-me-but-look-at-me skits on SNL right up until his sad lonely guy role in Lost In Translation, when his gray hair and inability to smile deflated our crush ever so slightly. But unlike actress Greta Scacchi, who blabbed to a London paper about the night he innocently asked for her number and was harshly rejected by her and the too-cool group of Eurotrashy friends she rolls with, we’d never resort to the level of cattiness the Italian quasi-star did today:

”He was wearing his stupid farmer's boots, a lumberjack shirt and looking like the country bumpkin from the Midwest that he really always was. And he left, shaking his head, and I never had to see him again.”

How the two came together in the first place, and what might have scared the poor guy away, after the jump:

According to Scacchi, who you may remember only for her many nude roles in The Red Violin and Heat And Dust (and, obvs, her role as the Ice Queen that tantalized Griffin Mill in The Player), she met Murray at a casting meeting for an undisclosed film in which the two are apparently slated to play each other's love interest. And Scacchi claims Murray openly requested her phone number to prove to the rest of the crew that their on-screen heat would be realistic should they play it out off-screen as well. See Hollywood Ethics 101 for why this is perfectly reasonable. In any case, Murray agreed to meet Greta at her apartment where Greta had invited "an eclectic collection of friends...cooking, playing music, dancing, all completely stoned. He just sat on a sofa, out of his depth." Frankly, we don't care how sexy Scacchi used to look, but we're on Team Murray: that scene is far too 70s for our taste, and we'd leave those faux bohos in the pot-scented dust just like he did.

[Photo Credits: Getty Images]

BILL MURRAY IN TOO DEEP AT GRETA SCACCHI'S [London Telegraph]

Husky Voiced Scarlett Johansson Set To Cover Husky Voiced Tom Waits

Molly Friedman — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:50:00 EDT

It took long enough, but the release date of Scarlett Johansson's highly anticipated debut album is near. The LP, titled Anywhere I Lay My Head, features album cover art of Scarlett looking like an introspective earth mother and showcases her trademark fiery red lips and oft-victimized bosom. And what are we to expect from the music itself? As People reports, her long-awaited covers of famous Tom Waits tunes will include vocals from David Bowie and one original track by Scarlett herself, which sounds like it could be promising. But we took a look back at some of her past performances to get a better sense of what Scarlett's presumably sexy vocals sound like, and aren't entirely convinced Grammys lie in her future.

The first time we remember hearing ScarJo's vocal talents was during that pink-wigged karaoke scene in Lost In Translation. And while she certainly managed to tighten a few thousand male viewers' trousers with her shimmying, the actual audio itself is, dare we say, subpar. Instead of the bold, jazzy acoustics we'd expect from such a deep-voiced actress, all we hear is a whisper-y, high-pitched whine. Then there was last year's dreadful performance at Coachella, where she sang back-up for The Jesus and Mary Chain. While we'll withold judgement until we actually hear the record, we're thinking that Scarlett's talents are probably best suited to fling-based video cameos and grinding with the Pussycat Dolls.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON'S ALBUM COVER ART REVEALED [People]

"Tom Cruise" is Spanish for "Heath Ledger"

Joshua David Stein — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:11:14 EST

If you've been trying to communicate to your friends in the Latino community that Heath Ledger has tragically died telling them, "Heath Ledger esta muerto" but have been confounded and angered by their replies of "Me gusto Cocktail pero el video es loco, cabron!" we might have figured out why. Apparently, at least according to the geniuses at Google Translate, the Spanish for "Heath Ledger" is "Tom Cruise." Interestingly, the Spanish for Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise. Try it yourself. Go to Google Translate, type in "Heath Ledger is dead" and watch what happens.

Mark — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:37:07 EDT

Quick-triggered DreamWorks mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg was reportedly involved in a simple misunderstanding during a recent visit to New York that resulted in a brief dust-up at the Four Seasons; apparently, a bar manager took a cellphone-toting Katzenberg's friendly greeting of,"Who the [bleep] are you? Do you know who I am?" the wrong way, mistaking the common L.A. idiom that translates to a polite, "Excuse me, dear sir, but I am engaged in some pressing business that demands my immediate attention. Please pardon this brief intrusion," for some sort of hostile expression of Hollywood entitlement. After a clarification, the two men shook hands, and no one was roughly escorted from the premises. [Page Six]