#Are there any Slovak movies really?

[wintfleur]

𓈒  ୭ৎ   ˖˙  ᰋ  ── ALRIGHTY APHRODITE

aka gwen's profile

au masterlist - everything for the AU is under #📷 ͡ ꒱ GwenCaufield

ꪆ୧ BASICS ! 

name: Gwendolyn Caufield 

nicknames:

gwen (everyone)

wendy (luke)

winnie (juraj)

winnie the pooh (cole) 

lyn (parents) 

dolly (jack, trevor and alex) 

birthday and zodiac: october 31st 2004, scorpio 

location:

mosinee, wisconsin (former)

montreal, quebec (currently) 

ꪆ୧ ABOUT ! 

personality: gwen is more on the quiet side in general, more reserved and calmer, especially around new people. But when she gets more comfortable, she's a lot like Cole, can be a little loud, playful, silly, teasing and sarcastic. She’s a really sweet girl but she's just not as expressive as others. She’s really good at keeping in her emotions, so it's rare to really see her angry. She has an infectious laugh and is honestly quite the nerd. She enjoys spending time with her friends and family but likes to be alone as well. She's an introvert. 

good traits: hard-working, passionate, trustful and reliable, a good listener, warm-hearted 

bad traits: her determination can turn into stubbornness, brutally honest, scared of commitment in relationships, 

quirks: lip biting, being fidgety, doodling on anything, getting lost in her thoughts, rambling when she's nervous 

likes: photography, horror movies, drawing, thunderstorms, reading, anything autumn, chapstick, jeans, halloween obviously, steve harrington, the canucks, music, the cinema, napping, sweaters, lockets, smiski’s, lollipops, her guitars 

dislikes: hot weather, driving, fireworks, the smell of grapefruit, wearing socks in bed, stand up comedy, doing the dishes, being compared to her brothers, rude fans, sad juraj, 

hobbies: drawing, pottery, journaling, scrapbooking, ballet, singing, playing the guitar and piano 

fears: heights, dying alone, being stuck in tight spaces, loud noises 

strengths: creative, attention to detail, determined, organized 

weaknesses: talking about her feelings, self critical, perfectionism, 

languages spoken: english (fluent) french (70%) slovak (20%) 

occupation/profession: photographer for the montreal canadiens nhl team  

ꪆ୧ RELATIONSHIPS ! 

parents:

paul caufield 

kelly caufield 

sibling(s): 

brock caufield 

cole caufield 

best friends: luke hughes, arber xhekaj, lily dao, mark estapa 

friends: kaiden guhle, the rest of the habs team, trevor zegras, jack hughes, quinn hughes, alex turcotte, tate mcrae + more 

love interest: juraj slafkovský

pet(s): none at the moment but she really wants a cat 

ꪆ୧ MORE ! 

outfits: gwen’s closet mostly has a lot of darker shades but she will wear any color really. She loves wearing jeans, fishnets/different patterned tights, short skirts, leather jackets, corset/vests, hoodies etc. She loves thrift shopping so she has a large range of different clothes, for shoes she mostly wears boots, sneakers etc. Link to her closet is right here. 

accessories: she mostly accessories with her large collection of sunglasses and bags, With her larger/medium bags she likes adding small addons to them, pins, sonny angel/smiski/ keychains, small plushie keychains, photocard holder keychains ect. With her small bags she likes tying ribbon boys to them and her sonny angel/smiski keychains. She will occasionally wear a fake pair of glasses, just to add something different to her outfit. For headwear she mostly wears earmuffs, headbands and beanies. Will sometimes wear scarfs, but really her accessories really just depend on the outfit she's wearing. 

jewelry: she's a big fan of necklaces and rings. For necklaces she loves lockets, she owns many. But the one she wears the most is the one Juraj got her. For rings she wears multiple at a time, mostly four and she's always changing them out. She’s always changing out her earrings and belly button and nose piercing, she likes having something new every once in a while, she gets bored with the same things. 

makeup: gwen doesn't really use a lot of makeup, mostly just her eyelashes, eyeliner, a little bit of eyeshadow and some blush and her lips. she will sometimes wear some highlighter on her nose, cheeks and in the corner of her eyes but not often. 

scars: has a few scars on her feet from the years of her doing ballet, but none othem are really that noticeable. 

sexuality: bisexual 

height: 5’5 

piercing(s): her bellybutton, two in each ear, nose 

tattoo(s): her chest, lower back (wants more) 

face claim: ugh_liza 

ꪆ୧ FAVORITES ! 

food(s): cereal, pasta, muffins, pomegranates, cherries, tomato soup, frozen yogurt, honey 

drink(s): hot chocolate, dr pepper, hot and cold tea, water 

color(s): black, reds, oranges, greens, browns 

animal(s): bears, bunnies, bats 

season(s): autumn, winter 

bands and artist: fleetwood mac, wallows, the smiths, florence + the machine, lana del rey, hozier, the strokes, paramore, avril lavigne 

show(s): supernatural, stranger things, survivor, gilmore girls, american horror story, 

movie(s): hocus pocus, halloweentown series, scream series, halloween series, the fear street series, the amazing spider man series 

person: her boyfriend juraj and her platonic soulmate luke hughes 

ꪆ୧ FUN FACTS ! 

Gwen’s Nickname from Cole is WInne the Pooh, she absolutely loves anything honey and bears!

She can play the piano and guitar

She was six when she received her first camera, it was a digital one that she got for her birthday and she never let it out of her sight.

Over the years, her parents noticed that her love for photography only got stronger, and the fact that she was really good helped with them deciding on buying her a canon.

Gwen was part of the newspaper for her school, taking pictures and helping write articles.

Gwen did ballet since she was a little girl, only stopping when she was 17 so she could focus more on photography.

Gwen was always the teachers favorite, something her brothers loved to tease her about

She was going to join luke at umich, but decided against it when she got a job offer in montreal

Her best friend is Luke Hughes, they are inseparable.

Her favorite holiday is Halloween, and it's only right since it's also her birthday!

She's very serious about Halloween, loving to dress up, watching horror movies, eating tons of candy, and pumpkin carving.

She loves watching old horror movies, she's a big nerd about it !!

When she gets overwhelmed she becomes very quiet and a little clingy.

She doesn't go anywhere without her headphones, music is her escape.

Quinn bought her a skateboard for her 16th birthday and she almost cried, she loves it so much!

She has a great relationship with the habs team, they all think of her as a little sister . . . besides Juraj of course.

Cole is her safeplace, she knows that no matter what, her big brother has her back!

Gwen's bisexual awakening was thorn from the hex girls! And taylor momsen

She has such a loud and contagious laugh that you can't help but join in.

She's very popular amongst the fans, and she has no clue why, she likes to keep to herself.

She has 3 million followers on TikTok, and Jack and Trevor like to tease her about her being a content creator, she refuses to call herself that.

Poor girl gets teased by Trevor and Jack a lot, but they do love her! She's their little sister they never asked for.

Out of all of Cole's teammates, she would say she's the closest to arber (besides juraj) they have a great friendship! If she's not sitting next to juraj on the plaine she's sitting next to him.

The love of her life is Steve Harrington . . .

Will forever be upset that she couldn't have her teenage years in the 2000’s

She has a wonderful voice but she's only comfortable singing in front of a few people!

She writes her own songs, but they are hidden in one of her journals.

She wants to get more tattoos but she's scared to give cole and brock another heart attack

a big resident evil girly

Has an internal debate everyday in her head if she should dye her hair, she's never done it!

As the youngest sibling, she's overly protected, by like everyone . . .

She's very soft tempered

She lives with Cole, and her room is her favorite place to be!

She loves going on walks

Gwen has trouble making friends, that's why she's so grateful to have luke in her life, he's really helped her get out of her shell and introduce her to his friends.

She loves art, she's excellent at drawing and painting, mostly with watercolors.

Her favorite flowers are tulips.

Juraj is her first boyfriend, she's only dated one other person besides him and that was her first girlfriend luna.

They dated for 2 years, but Gwen broke up with her in Their senior year when she found out that luna was cheating on her,

Poor Gwen was heartbroken after that, and became very distant from the thought of loving another.

Her baby is her record player, and every year Luke and Cole buy her a new record for her birthday.

Her favorite band is Paramore and she's been to 6 concerts!

She has a collection of a ton of different cameras she's gotten over the years!

She can be very sarcastic when she wants to, mostly when she's really tired or when Jack talks too much . . . so always.

Had the biggest and i mean biggest crush on quinn hughes, the only one who knows about it is luke and he loves to tease her about it.

She's the passenger princess . . . she cried during her drivers test, she hates driving.

Always has a book in her bag.

When she gets shy, her face and ears get all red

she’s secretly such a romantic

She’s a big cuddler

Secretly such a yapper omg

Gwen has two instagrams, her public one is @/gwendolyn_caufield and her private one is @/winnethepoohbear

Gwen is a sweet girl who's just more on the quiet side, she's fiercely loyal to the people she loves, and is just a great person to be around!

ꪆ୧ HER ROOM AESTHETIC ! 

ꪆ୧ HER CLOTHES AESTHETIC ! 

˖ ་ 💭 roro’s notes ( Gwen my love 🫶🏻 I’m actually in love with her , and I really hope you guys grow to love her as well !! Please feel free to send in as many asks as you want , and please let me know if you would like to be added to the taglist )

°. — taglist ( @lovings4turn @toasttt11 @cixrosie )

©️WINTFLEUR

[mercurymessiah]

“Peter” or “Pietro”?

I was contemplating Peter’s name, along with its origins. In the comics, he’s originally Pietro which is the Italian version. But both variants derive from the Greek word Petros, meaning “stone” or “rock”, which I find ironic considering Peter is opposite to that.

It got me thinking that whilst it’s normal for people to have foreign names contrary to their nationality, Peter is originally from Sokovia. Although it’s a fictitious place, it’s in between Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which are very much real countries. Meaning it’d be apart of the West Slavs. So this information lead me down a rabbit hole of looking through translations of Peter’s name in languages that relate to him.

Czech: Petr, Péťa (diminutive)

Slovak: Peter, Peťo

Hungarian: Péter, Petya, Peti (diminutive).

I found that Hungarian is the second most spoken mother tongue in Slovakia (9.4% of the population) so I researched that as well.

Both his biological parents (Magda & Erik) were born in Germany, so I searched up the German translation but it also came up with just Peter.

I tried digging up Wanda’s name too, but it appears that it’s very one-dimensional. I couldn’t find any different versions of it, but I did discover its Polish in origin. Of course, I hunted down the Polish translation for Peter’s name in contrast to hers. Interestingly, I discovered there was quite the variety.

Polish: Piotr. Diminutives/hypocoristics include Piotrek, Piotruś, and Piotrunio. (Piotr has several name days in Poland)

Erik (in the movie-verse, as far as i’m concerned) lived in Poland when he formed a new family and even spoke the language as well. Despite it not being his mother tongue, I reckon he would affectionately call Peter “Piotr” under certain circumstances. I like to think so at least.

Amongst all the research I did though, the most challenging was finding Romani translations. I know it’s apart of Peter’s identity, so I wanted to include it. However, I came up short. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to find Romani translations like most other languages. It became really frustrating too since my research kept leading me to Romanian or Roman, even when I made sure the spelling was correct. I found myself disappointed with this dead-end but it also taught me how underrepresented Roma is and how we should keep that in mind.

Nonetheless, I still did some more research on it even if I couldn’t find translations to Peter’s name. I’m aware that the Romani language is diverse, and so I stumbled upon Carpathian Romani. Also known as Central Romani and Romungro Romani. It also happens to be native to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which we know as the countries surrounding his birthplace.

Apparently, nearly all Romani speakers are multilingual, so I find it credible that Peter would be able to speak this particular dialect, along with Slovakian or Czech (in theory). Whilst I couldn’t find a new variant of “Peter” or “Petros” for this language, I at least have some deeper understanding of his connection to it.

In conclusion; the discussion about whether “Peter” or “Pietro” is better doesn’t really matter, since they’re essentially the same name. Besides, Peter being called all types of versions of the name by different people in his personal circle sounds very appealing me. With his friends, he’s Peter. For Wanda, he’s Pietro. And potentially he’s Piotr for Erik.

[thegamingcatmom]

What does Tanya do to show you she loves you? Like little touches or something? 😏

Tanya does lots of things to show her love. Lots of small touches, as well as big touches. Lots of sexy touches. 😏

Things Tanya Denali does to show you her love:

nose rubs (she loves those, you do too)

belly rubs

leg rubs

butt rubs (she loves those...and you do too)

any rubs, really

...

stealing a kiss as you prepare your food...and then one more, and one more, and one- (you two are on your way to the bedroom by now)

taking your hand, stroking her thumb over it

looking deep into your eyes, she loves your eyes

asking you for a dance (she does have a romantic side...she´s a millennia old vampire, after all)

"I love you" - lots of those, every day, staring deep into your eyes as she tells you

"I love you" in Slovak (she knows how much you love it)

any term of endearment in Slovak

speaking Slovak in general, because she knows it hits that sweet spot of yours (it sounds fucking romantic okay - then again, anything does, coming from her)

massaging your stiff shoulders after a long day

massaging you anywhere you require (it´d be her great pleasure)

forehead kisses

kisses on the back of your hand

kisses on your cheeks

kisses

and more kisses

cuddles

drawing you a bath and joining you if you wish for it, or giving you space if you require some alone time

giving you space in general, if you require it (we all got those days, let´s be honest)

learning how to cook so she can preen under your praise (she´s such a bean)

plucking you the most gorgeous of flowers, putting one behind your ear and marveling at your beauty

buying you the things you kept stealing glances at when you thought she wasn´t looking (bish pls...when is Tanya not looking?)

helping you master a skill, if you wish to learn it (drawing, playing the piano, singing - you´ll learn it together, if it´s something she herself isn´t well-versed in)

wrapping her arms around you and swaying you side to side

being your ear

being your shoulder

being your cooling pad in the summer, or if you´re down with a fever

bringing you hot chocolate with marshmallows on top, before wrapping you up like a burrito in the cuddliest of blankets, and serving as your body pillow as the two of you watch a movie together

Honestly? I could go on, and on, and on, and on, and-

We´d be here next week, lol. There´s just SO many things she´d do to show you her love. Not sure if Tumblr got limitations when it comes to how many words can fit when answering an ask. Which...that should pretty much tell you the extent we´re talking here, lol.

But, to summarize it: Any form of PDA (+ little gifts then and now)

She´s been without a partner for so long, she´ll jump at any chance she gets to show you´re hers, and she´s yours. She´ll preen under your affection, especially if others are watching. She´s just so fucking proud and in love. Just thinking about it makes me-

Of course, all the sisters have waited equally as long for their mate, but I HC Tanya Denali as the most touch-starved. The poor baby.

LEMME JUST-

Thanks a lot for your ask! 💋💋

[tolstayas]

tagged by @transmutationisms for top 9 movie watches of 2024 !

not entirely consistent with my ratings on letterboxd because idk i contain multitudes, also not in any particular order

one second: saw this at the bfi and there was a cool talk after which reminded me that i am actually also a china studies guy. really worked for me despite the sickly sweet presumably reshot ending

the story of qiu ju: zhang yimou film number two! very much in the same genre as one second. watched with a friend from wuhan and 30 seconds in we look at each other and go "i think we should turn on chinese subtitles." accents <3

in the mood for love: good movey. nice to look at

leto: a friend has been telling me to watch this for like 5 years now and i'm glad i did! fun concept, good summer vibes

between the temples: this movie made me feel weird

orlando, my political biography: okay hear me out. i think everyone criticizing this for being corny, didactic, politically confused, elitist, colonial, unsubtle, pretentious etc. is completely right. however i also read woolf's orlando last year and... it's exactly like that. i wrote about this here and on letterboxd too but i genuinely think it's the perfect adaptation. it's a love letter to orlando in the same way that orlando is a love letter to vita. preciado's fawning, uncritical, self-involved universalism is completely earnest, just like woolf's is. honestly made orlando itself way more interesting to me

much ado about nothing: sexy as hell. was on a shakespeare kick this summer and this was my favourite recorded play i watched

ivan vasilyevich changes professions: did not expect to like this nearly so much! the russians were right after all

pelišky: watched this with my slovak friend and had a great time. similar to ivan vasilyevich re: these slavs are onto something with their classic comedies

tagging @ueberdemnebelmeer @mollymooon @kafkaesquegf @kutyozh @transpigeon @girafeduvexin if you want!

[illgiveyouahint]

2025 in Review: Books Edition

I wanted to somehow summarize my year with books and I didn't wanted to do it through asks so i chose to write it down like this. Feel free to reply to this if you want to have a conversation about books :)

Best Book: Válka s mloky/War with the Newts by Karel Čapek

So Karel Čapek is considered one of the best Czech authors and this book truly made me understand why. It blew me away. The way he satirically captured Czech human nature and humanity as a whole in all its shortcomings. How he managed to perfectly capture colonialism & exploitation, cultural appropriation, racism and religious fundamentalism. He saw the capitalists and communist for what they are. He captured it and perfectly described it all. In 1937. And in the almost 90 years since we've done exactly what he said he would again and again. Amazing book. Truly.

Most touching book: Zuzana Čaputová: Neztratit se sama sobě by Erik Tabery/Zuzana Čaputová

Okay this is again gonna be very regional I guess but if you are Czech or Slovak you know who Zuzana Čaputová is. She was a beacon of hope in the last 5 years. She was the Slovak president and she, in my opinion, was everything you'd want in a president. She has such kindness, such empathy and understanding. This conversational book I think shows you who she is and why she was probably the best thing that ever happened to Slovakia. I cried so many times at various moments in the book. Just because you saw how much she loved her country and the people and how much she respected the position. If you could read just one passage then read the passage after the tragic shooting at the LGBTQ+ bar in Teplareň.

Book that made me go crazy: Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Yeah yeah yeah. But listen the tragedy of it all just makes me bit insane okay? It's not even just about LWJ and WWX though of course it's about WWX and LWJ. But the relationship between WWX and JC? They are brothers and yet the twisted fate forced JC to hate WWX. Just every character has a tragic story of its own. It gets to me, okay? It just gets to me. Even if I personally could do without the last 50 pages of porn.

Most pointless book I've read: Not Working by Lisa Owens

I've had a stack of books I've acquired over the years from various people and that I planned to get around to some day. Well I decided this year to read through that stack which i did. This book was the worst among them. It was just...about nothing. A girl left her job because she thought she should have some big purpose job but didn't know what. Spent her time looking for what she could do while her partner was looking after her. She was also drinking a lot (which wasn't at any point really talked about). In the end she still didn't know what she wanted to do but became more okay with not knowing. Seriously what kind of a plot is that. So yeah that one was really disappointing.

Other books worth mentioning:

I have loved the Iron Widow.

I've been reading through Jane Austen novel so I've read both Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey and I love Austen's writing. She has such a lightness with which she writes and such wit.

I've reread all the Moomin books and seriously I would die for each and every one of them.

Trevor Noah's Born a Crime is certainly worth it. Especially if you know only the basics of the Apartheid state.

For the czech speaking among you I recommend Rozložíš Paměť by Marek Torčík. Especially if you get the audiobook. We still have so very few queer literature so we should celebrate and support it.

Also Howl's Moving Castle? Very different vibes from the movie but such fun!

And well I also read the She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat comic books which if you loved the show or if you just love lesbians cooking with a sprinkle of feminism then I highly recommend giving it a try.

I started my year with a goal of 10 000 pages and 30 books since that was about what I've read last year. I've managed to reach my book goal but not my pages goal (I'm about 1000 pages short) because I was reading quite a few shorter books/comics. But more importantly I set a goal of reading through the stack of books that I've acquired through various means but never really read which I actually managed to do so now next year I have a complete clean slate as to what I want to read.

[im-an-anthusiast]

For this because I promised I'd send some when I finished school ^^

1, 8, 13, 18, 20 ^^

1, Ideal date location? Hmm. Either staying at home, or going out to like a mall and just hanging around, goofing off ^^

8, Best show or movie for a date night at home? I... hm. I haven't a clue. Maybe one of your favourite shows or movies ^^

13, What are some pet names that make you blush? Honestly any that you give me. And maaybe some specific ones but those would be too embarassing to admit publically. Actually, thinking about it... You calling me your lucky charm diawdkjawd

18, What's your comfort food? ...hard to say. When I'm doing too bad I can't even eat solids, so one of those squeezable apple sauce things is ideal If I'm able to eat solids, I think a chicken noodle soup is really good. Or some traditional Slovak foods from my childhood, such as šuľance or pirohy s džemom.

20, I... don't really keep track? Though I think I especially value and appreciate compliments to my work, as it is something I myself am able to find actual value in And I recently got a lot of compliments on that :3

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

For the ask thingy:- 1, 16, 18, 26

1. favourite place in your country?

Ostrava, smog-filled former industrial hellhole of a city my absolute beloved. this place is garbage but by god i am a raccoon

special shoutout to the university hospital, since my mom works there I've spent a significant portion of my childhood at that place

special special shoutout to the tunnels under the hospital

I also really love the Jeseníky mountains, Bílý kříž and the city of Olomouc where I currently study and absolutely adore it. but home is home

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

the prevailing stereotype is/has been(?) that Czech women are prostitutes, which is something that has genuinely made me afraid of revealing my nationality online out of fear that I'd get hit on, get requests for nudes etc

there's also a stereotype that Czechs are lazy, cheating, racist, xenophobic, loophole-abusing beer-drunk thieves. that one's true. bad, but true for an alarming number of people in this country :/

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language?

Ostrava and her surroundings have a dialect heavily influenced by Polish, to the point that even when using regular Czech vocabulary, we still put stress on a different syllable than everyone else in the country, we also tend to speak faster, shorten our long vowels and generally use "harsher" sounds. My accent is noticeable enough that people outright ask me "you're from Ostrava, aren't you" after spending just a couple minutes with me

I don't use that many dialectal words but I think if I used any more, I'd be unintelligible to people outside of my region lol

i still want to learn proper old Ostrava dialect, the one that coal miners spoke, just to confuse and annoy people like my father used to do when younger

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?

I actually can't remember really seeing any Czech characters in American movies, aside from the one man and child in Titanic where it's a question if they're Czech or Slovak (I think actually Slovak) and they're there for like, five seconds total. Still gotta watch Anthropoid but since that's not something with a Token Czech CharacterTM but a movie where the main cast are Czechs (played by Brits/Americans) I think the movie will treat them more like typical British/American main characters with an accent.

oh and then there's this guy

absolute perfection, 10/10

also Viktor from Arcane is Czech, don't @ me

[kejklir]

Doesn't @valerieandherweekofwonderz have them on the drive? I think she might have them.

Hell yeah the first movie is there with English subtitles.

The drive

It's under 'fairy tails' then 'czech' and it's called 'Anděl páně' from 2005

I'm not even sure if there is much of another way to get to this movie than this because it's not on any streaming platform (that I know of) and this is the only version with english subtitles (that I know of).

There's also an incredible ton of really classic czech and slovak films made accessible for non czech/slovak speakers thanks to this person because you just can't easily access most of this anywhere if you're not from Czechia or Slovakia. Very impressed by that person.

Hello Mr. Gaiman :)

I just wanted to ask whether you know the films "Angel of the Lord" and/or "Angel of the Lord 2" by Jiří Strach - they are Czech films about an angel and a demon and there are many parallels between them and the Good Omens series. So, if you do know them, did they inspire you in some aspects?

I wish you a very pleasant afternoon.

I don't know them. But I'll try and find them.

[rrxnjun]

well music taste is also kind of questionable since i don't really mind his music at all (although my taste in music is questionable for a lot of other reasons too lmaooo) i added all of them to my watch later (but the fact that jack manifold is in those videos and he is one of my fav streamers just makes them probably even better)

AHHH IM GLAD U LIKED THEM!!🥳you're here that's the thing is just such a nice song i'm glad that it's ur fav 🥹🥹

i kind of liked the chilling adventures of sabrina although i never finished the first season cuz i just for some reason can never finish shows🫡 but it also didn't become my fav show so i understand why didn't watch it🫡 ooo i never saw friend dahmer was it good??:o PASS ME BY IS ONE OF THEIR BEST SONGS OUTTHERE and tbh i deff recommend red velvet, if, lay your head down, easy love, heart made up on you (these are probably my favs from them but i'm not sure whether u will end up liking them or not😟)

dude i've been vibing so much to my by yael on my way to school that song is so🤌like that songs just adds life to my mornings!! i swear why is it so hard to find artist in native languages🥲tbh i was struggling so much with finding hungarian artists as well but then i found like three good ones and the rest i'm just trying to force myself to like (or more so ignore the thing that i don't like like cringy lyrics xd) ohh that probably makes sense why they feel nostalgic then!! thank u for telling me🥲

MY CLASS TRIP GOT CANCELED CUZ NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE APPLIED (?) FOR IT😭😭so sadly i'm not going anymore☹️☹️☹️☹️but i hope one day i will get another chance to go to slovakia☹️

(and school has been kicking my ass lately so sorry for the kind of late reply☹️ liebestraum anon💕)

ppls taste in music is sometimes so weird but somehow it makes sense. also i love how diverse it can get like u can find ppl who really do listen to a LOT of genres and i think thats great !!!! and even tho i do clown myself for my music taste sometimes,, at the end of the day its music and supposed to make ppl happy and thats what matters the most 🥰 ALSO JACK MANIFOLD IS SO FUNNY ISTG hes my fav guest on these 😩💕

i get u!!! if i dont hyper obsess over a show i hardly ever finish any either 😭😭 i dont get how ppl can push themselves through shows they dont like. omg my friend dahmer was...less chilling then the dahmer netfix series for sURE also i think evan peters did a better job than ross did at portraying him but it wasnt a bad movie imo! for obvious reasons i cant say i enjoyed watching it but i definitely dont regret it. ALSO I REALISED I KNOW ALL THOSE R5 SONGS U RECOMMENDED I JUST FORGOT ABOUT THEM AHAHAHA am i secretly an r5 stan and didnt know abt it ???? thanks for refreshing my memory i fucking lOOVE red velvet especially

the lyrics to my are also soso pretty imo!! a lyric from the song is my spotify playlist name LMAO its such a screamable song. its dedicated to his daughter 😌😌 altho i wont talk abt this bc i find the whole situation kind of..uhh yeah (love me some slovak drama). AHAHA i get u w the artists in your language!! i wish we had slovak artists that make music in the vibe of the artists u recommended to me :(

OH NOOO :((( NO BRATISLAVA FOR U THEN 🤧🤧🤧 id be bummed bro i loved class trips. we dont get those at uni anymore its depressing 😭😭 the first time i was in bratislava i was impressed w the old town centre i kept taking pictures bc i have a weird obsession w pretty buildings AHAHA hope u can visit some other time!!

its okay also!! my replies are so late as well so dont worry abt it😩 hope school is easier for u soon!! have a great day xx im rooting for u!!

[thetigerisariver]

Thinking hard whether there are any Slovak lgbt movies

[madicham]

Tobacco is indeed really good ! I've never been great at selling the things I like, but I'll do my best sfdgf

Though I haven't watched the movie, I did read the book and really liked it. It's been translated into Slovak, German, Polish, Russian, Romanian, Hungarian, Chinese, Greek, Turkish, Mongolian and Japanese according to one article I found. Wikipedia says there's partial translations into english, spanish, italian and french, but I couldn't find any of those online </3

(and little clarification - there are two version of the book that exist. The original was deemed "inconsistent with communist ideology" by the communist censor at the time and Dimov was forced to change it, including some communist good guy characters. I've only read the original, and I don't know which version is translated in all those languages, big sorry)

Maria is only a supporting character, though I love her dearly. The main characters are Irina and Boris - a girl and a guy from a small village where the main source of jobs and income is a tobacco factory. They both hate their current lives and the village, and both want to leave tho through very different means. Irina wants to go to the capital and become a doctor, while Boris wants to become a rich businessman. The book follows these two as they age and become rich, influential and terrible people, while also dealing with many other (tbh, still very relevant) subjects like the exploatation of the working class under capitalism, corruption of government, police and prison brutality, ww2 etc etc and it does so really well. Highly recommend to anyone that can get their hands on it in a language they understand!

There's a few scenes that still live in my head that happen around the middle of the book //I think? it's been a while dsfgfhg// so I'll ramble about them a lil under a cut, just in case fdsgfh

SO Irina's the daughter of the village police chief. This happens when she's already in the capital studying, and Boris has already become CEO of the tobacco company. Tobacco factory workers all around the country are striking against the horrible working conditions, health hazards and minimal pay - they're protesting and rioting. Boris, basically having the government agencies in his pocket, orders the protests squashed. So Irina's father recieves a call telling him to go out there and beat the protestors off the streets with his men.

And he kind of has a moment of clarity - for a split second he realizes that he's just a tool for the rich. He's not rich either. He also grows tobacco to sell to the factory for extra income. He knows all the people outside. He's scared of them, because they're angry and armed with planks and bats and such, but they're also poor and starving and sick. They're asking for a better life and he's being told to go and beat them into compliance.

This all crosses his mind but he refuses to think about it any longer. He just goes out to do his job. And he dies.

He's killed by one of the protestors - a single mother of two that we've seen a few times already. She splits his head open with a bat and is shot almost immediately after.

Their funerals are on the same day.

The woman's funeral is small, attended by other workers and her two small children that a kind old lady has taken in. (It's mentioned how the other workers from the factory, though they themselves barely have anything, pitch in a little bit from their salaries each month towards those kids) They're forced to cut the funeral short and chased out of the graveyard so the police chief's can start.

His funeral is grand and splendid in a way even Irina herself finds tacky.

And when she calls Boris to inform him of what has happened, he says that Oh, he forgot her dad is the head of police there. Had he remembered, he would've raised the wages in that area to calm the people down.

⚠️Vote for whomever YOU DO NOT KNOW⚠️‼️

Click on images for labels

Vote under the cut if you read the rules

[writingonesdreams]

b. How are you learning new languages?

e. How did you decide what languages you wanted to learn?

f. Would you say you're proficient enough to write a scene of a story in the other language(s)?

l. What is your favorite language you've learned (if you're learning/have learned multiple)

b. Mainly through actually living in them. Through hearing lectures, watching movies, listening to songs, reading and writing in them and speaking with other people.

e. Came as necessity and advantage. My parents send me to an austrian school to learn German when I couldn't speak it at all, when I was 10. That is one dramatic but efficient way to learn language, let me tell you XD. I had trouble understanding for a year and trouble speaking for the second, but hey here I am, writing scientific papers in it now. I had to learn English for classes but this is also a language I learned the most myself in my free time. Started as watching tv shows that I watched in original cause I couldn't wait for the subtitles. Binge watching shows really can teach you something. XD

f. Haha I do this everyday in English. Surprisingly turned out as my fave language to write in or maybe I'm just that used it by now. I read in English the most cause the ebooks are cheaper, so ofc I get the most vocab there, even though it's actually my what, fourth language. Writing in my mother language would be easier, but it also kinda feels off to write in that tounge after the years...plus I kinda started writing in English so my mom, a professional editor, couldn't read my work. I was very self-conscious as a kid and now I'm paying for it, cause the one language I'm comfortable writing in now is the one she can't edit for me.

l. English is probably my fave, cause it's me free and me time language. Reading, writing, friends, blogging, I do it all in English and I feel pretty good at it at this point. Even more assured than in German, since that's a language my brain connects to school and assignments XD and I admittedly don't have German friends to practice actual speaking with, so my level of daily German, the one with slang, dialects and shortcuts for everyday use is actually lacking for this. I'm known to write the best academic essays and have the best "high" level vocabulary, but start talking about movies and drinks and I have a hard time keeping up. XD

▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎

Thanks for the ask! I'm not currently learning any new language outside my main four (Slovak, Czech, German, English), but switching between them on dialy basis is difficult enough and I still have lots to learn, even though I'm really good and functioning in all of them. It's just really hard for a writer like me, cause I love words and I was always good with them, and learning new languages like German and English mostly through shock and intense exposure XD makes me extra conscious about making mistakes and not being able to find the right word at the exact moment. Not to mention that the more I do in one language, the more difficult the others get. After an uni class in German I feel like an ape trying to talk to my parents in my mother tounge. XD

Just fun to think about what a multilingual life is like and how many people have it like me :D Maybe I will learn Russian and Polish one day, cause my mom says for a Slav like me it would be super quick and easy, since our languages are so similar. I learned French and Latin in school, but I don't use those, so ofc they get rusty. I can get the general meaning out of French texts and I was really good at writing in it, but I don't have any speaking or hearing opportunities, which is the most usual problem when learning languages.

[miss-biophys]

Reading some 200 years old English

After successfully finishing the most lyrical, beautiful, and exceptionally hard book Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert MacFarlane, I take reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, first published in 1813, as a great language learning achievement!

You see, my native language is Czech, which is a Slavic language really close to Slovak and Polish. My parents do not speak any English, so I ever learned it at school. At the age of 19 I could maintain a conversation, but not watch movies without subtitles or read books in English. I started really using English only during my PhD studies, when I joined an international research group at a scientific institute in Prague. But still, I was in Prague, and did not rely on English. When I turned 29, we moved to the Netherlands for a postdoc and my English got another boost. We watch Netflix majorly without subtitles, speak fluently, and almost half of the books I read are in English.

Now, reading the 200 years old Pride and Prejudice without problems fills me with joy and pride on my increasing language skills.

Having been living in the Netherlands for the past two and half years, I wish I could get my Dutch abilities to a similar level and enjoy this joy and pride again. Still a long journey to go with Dutch though. 😊

[buc3t4l0v3r]

Aww, thank you so much for agreeing. Here's my info:

My name is Gabriela, but my friends call me Gabika, Gabi, Bella, Raven and Gigi. I'm 15 years old girl from Slovakia 🇸🇰, Libra ♎, 5'9 ft tall and I'm tall and I'm only child.

I have brown-green eyes, dirty blond hair to my shoulders, cute gap in my tooth and I'm tall. I play basketball and ping pong.

I'm half Spanish, Russian and Slovak, I have members from these wonderful countries and yep, I have a big family.

I have Spanish and Russian accent since childhood, I have ancestors from Russia and I speak perfectly Russian and Spanish.

I curse a lot, my favorite are : fuck, damn it, damn, and best FUCK YOU IN THE MOUTH. I say this 24/7. And so much more.

I'm introvert, shy, sweet, hothead, sarcastic, stubborn, impulsive, intelligent, creative and smart, I am caring and loving and very calm and funny. I'm sassy and very flirty.

I love art and books. My favorite artists are Raphael and Donatello and Leonardo Da Vinci. I don't have favorite genre of books, I can't choose. Every genre is unique and amazing. I love art

I draw and paint. I love work out and knitting, video games and mobile games and my BIGGEST passion is cooking. That's why I went to High school Hotel Academy. I love it there.

I have one adoptive brother Casey.

I write song fics, matchups, headcanons and stories.

I play on accordion, piano, tamburine , harmonica, electric and acoustic guitar and I love to sing.

I love rock pop and rap. RHCP, AC/DC, KISS, DEPECHE MODE, PENTATONIX, SET IT OFF AND LITTLE MIX ARE MY FAVORITE.

I love dance.

That's All. Thank you so much 💖

Okay first of all, I loved your name! One of my best friend's name is Gabriela, such a cute name lol♡

Well, I'd match you with...

Raph❤

This hothead fell hard for you

He thinks your accent is adorable!

It's awesome you play basketball, it means you and Raph can play together! He may or may not lose on purpose just to make you happy. Except he will

The guy is so interested in your family, like, you have such a big family he never saw a family that big before. Mainly because his family is just his brothers and his father so he's curious about yours

He can be really good playing basketball but he sucks at ping pong, you guys can compete to see who's better at any sports. And Raph is very competitive

He think it's hilarious every time you start cursing out of nowhere. He also curses a lot so you're like soulmates (Leo doesn't appreciates it)

He'll help you open up a bit more and be less introvert (but only if you want to, of course)

He acts like a fanboy to your fanfics and stories, he always wants to help you with your stories or just watch you while you're writing. Okay he'll try to make you introduce a strong and brave guy in every story you write

Omg he loooooves your songs and he's impressed with how many instruments you can play, like damn you're so talented!

Won't stop flirting with you

Appreciates your sarcasm and finds it funny (Mikey almost never understands and it makes both of you laugh)

He doesn't really understands what headcanons are and even when you explained to him he didn't understand very well but if you're happy he's happy!

You have a good taste for music Omg! He's more than happy when you share songs you like, maybe he'll make a special playlist just for you

He also knits! You guys can knits together, he'll make plushies and hats just for you and you can have a good time enjoy one another's company

Raph also enjoys cooking but when you offer him food you made he won't deny it! Maybe you can cook a special dinner just for both of you, and you'll eat it while watching movies on Netflix

With the two of you being so stubborn you can have some discussions from time to time, because you'll never admit you're wrong, but at the end of the day you love each other too much to stay mad for too long

Raph loves you with all his heart and you're the most special person in the world for him!❤

Hope you like it :)~♡

[arbenia]

The other day on the BBC news I saw a young, educated and eloquent Serbian woman speaking about the life of ordinary citizens under the NATO bombing. The Serbian citizens are afraid, she said. Normal life is more and more difficult. There are power cuts, and people are forced to go several days without access to the Internet. There is also a cigarette shortage. But yes, they are trying to live normally. They go to work, they shop, and they sit in cafes. Of course, the bombing turned the Serbian citizens against NATO, not against Slobodan Milosevic. After all, “bombs are dropping from the sky.”

Clearly, this young woman, like so many Serbs, does not want to understand that her country is at war. They still seem to be thinking, What has all this to do with me? I know this mechanism of denial, because I have seen it before. Serbs by and large ignored the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. It was always happening somewhere else, to somebody else, and they were not involved. It was the Serbian army, the police, the paramilitaries, but not them, the ordinary citizens. But now, when it is happening in Serbia and affecting all of them, they are still somehow surprised.

The young woman on TV used the expression “Serbian citizens,” but her use of this phrase suggested that these Serbian citizens are people struggling to maintain the normality of their daily lives. By “Serbian citizens” she evidently meant only Serbs. Others–that is, Albanians–are simply never mentioned in that context. Their problems are not addressed, by her or other Serbs. In the perception of ordinary Serbs, Albanians are not included in the category of Serbian citizen and therefore are absent from the language as well.

Why? The problem is that Serbs–or anyone else, for that matter–cannot identify with the suffering of others if they are not able to see them as equals. In Yugoslav society Albanians were never visible. There was no need to construct their “otherness”–as, for example, with Jews in prewar Germany or recently with Serbs in Croatia. The Albanians were never integrated into the country’s social, political and cultural life. They existed separately from us, barely visible people on the margins of our society, with their strange language that nobody understood, their tribal organization, blood feuds, different habits and dress. They were always underdogs. What was their place in the Yugoslav literature, in movies and popular culture? What famous Yugoslavs were Albanians? Because of that estrangement, not many voices were raised in protest during the past ten years, when Albanians in Kosovo lived practically under apartheid.

For the older generation, the only visible Albanians were people in white caps coming from Kosovo to their cities to cut wood in the winter. For my generation they were people selling ice cream all over Yugoslavia. They spoke our language with a funny accent and never could pronounce “lemonade” properly. They lived among us, but we chose to ignore them. If we did happen to notice them, we despised them, laughed at them, told jokes about them. I never had an Albanian friend in Zagreb. No one I knew married an Albanian. But the difference between Croats and Serbs was that Croats did not really have to deal with the Albanians; we had no Kosovo.

It was clear that they belonged to a different category from Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins or Slovenes. Serbs could even fight a war against Croats, but they never perceived each other in the same way they both perceive Albanians. The prejudice against Albanians can be compared to that against Jews or blacks or Gypsies in other cultures. Today every Serb will tell you that Albanians multiply like rabbits–that this is their secret weapon in the war they are waging against Serbs in Kosovo. This is not nationalism; this is more or less hidden racism.

The woman on the BBC the other day may be only an ordinary person, but there are other Serbs who should know better and who can’t use the excuse of innocence so easily. They are the people in the opposition. But all one hears from them is their lament about the destruction of democracy and civil society in Serbia. The NATO bombing is to them a savage attack, a terrible act of aggression against a sovereign state–they all use the language of Milosevic’s propaganda. There is “the other Serbia” they say, a better Serbia of the brave people who fought Milosevic all along.

Surely there is another Serbia that will surface once Milosevic is gone. And surely everyone can understand that opposition people are afraid now. One is tempted, however, to ask, Exactly what opposition, what civil society, what “other Serbia” are we talking about? The one that for more than a decade was not able to produce a democratic alternative to Milosevic? The one that never established contacts with Albanians from Kosovo in order to work together for the common future of both nations? If the opposition, political as well as intellectual, ever had anything in common with Milosevic, it was in its attitude toward Kosovo. Kosovo Albanians were a litmus test for the opposition all these years, and they always failed it. Now they are engulfed in self-pity.

An open letter from Vladimir Arsenijevic, a young Serbian writer of some renown, circulating on e-mail, is a striking example of this invisibility of Albanians. In his answer to a friend from Zagreb, who reproached Serbs for their lack of remorse over the situation of the Albanians, he wrote: “On account of lack of pity for the fate of Kosovo Albanians, I know (from my own experience–and I know that I have no bad feelings whatsoever directed toward anybody, least of all Albanians) that it is very hard to care about somebody else’s problems if you are personally experiencing major problems of your own at the same moment. There is no favoritism in this society. Everybody is too busy surviving here to be able to feel any remorse…. Remorse is a privilege of the well-nourished, clean and civilized. And we are all Albanians here. All of us: Serbs, Montenegrins, Hungarians, Slovaks…. Poor, underfed, degraded, oppressed. And I mean ALL of us, even those who have supported Milosevic with all their heart through all these years of terrible hell.”

There is something almost obscene in this sudden “visibility” of Albanians, in the Serbs’ desire to achieve the status of victim through this kind of identification. Albanians remain an abstraction, an empty notion with no real substance, used solely as a means of adding visibility to Serbian suffering, thus denying the Albanian identity once more. I can see this young writer sitting at his computer (there must have been no shortage of power then) in his Belgrade apartment: He sends his e-mail letter, checks the latest war information on the Internet and goes to bed. Meanwhile, his Albanian counterpart, with whose suffering he identifies so much, sits in a tent somewhere in Albania or stands in the mud, waiting to cross the Macedonian border. His house is burned down, his computer–if he ever had one–has been taken by Serbian paramilitaries and he doesn’t know where his family is.

If the young writer considers himself an Albanian, why is he not fleeing to Macedonia or Albania as well? How cynical–or young or innocent or perhaps stupid–do you have to be to say that? It is as grotesque as if the Germans, after World War II, had said, “We were all Jews.” After all, had they not suffered occupation, bombardment, rationing?

The writer means to say that if the Serbs are victims, then how can they possibly have anything to do with the responsibility for this war? Or for the Milosevic regime? War goes deeper than bombardment, and the more we pretend it doesn’t concern us, the more it invades us. War is destructive of the human soul. It corrodes human beings, bringing out things we didn’t know about ourselves. And when he says that remorse is a privilege of civilized people, he puts himself and his nation on the level of people without pity. He is justifying the inhumanity of his people, and that is terrible.

This is what the war is doing to the young writer. But like the woman on the BBC, as well as ordinary people and opposition intellectuals, he is not able to realize that. Precisely this denial, blindness, unconscious racism and cruelty toward other human beings, this lack of remorse (but no lack of self-pity!), is what war is doing to Serbs, and it is much more devastating than NATO bombs. Living with Milosevic’s regime and the war for so long takes its toll. It has changed Serbs in the past ten years, and the rest of the world is witnessing this only now, still puzzled and bewildered by it. It is hard to understand that our acquaintances, our lovers, drinking buddies, philosophers, our once dear friends, are different people. It is even harder to understand that they themselves let that change happen.

`(Slavenka Drakulic, a Croatian-born author, is a Nation contributing editor. Her latest book is A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism.)

[ocw-archive]

Plight of the Navigator; Entertainment Weekly, Sept. 2001

"The first thing you have to understand is this line," says our assigned ensign, leaning into the stiff pacific breeze scouring the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. Shielding his eyes as the sun peeks over the receding mainland, he points out a red-and-yellow-banded stripe that cuts a clean diagonal off the ship's stern, some 50 yards away: "This is the Foul Line. Cross it, and you die." Muffled chuckles bubble up from his audience, an unregimented clutch of bleary-eyed grips, gaffers, production assistants, and on wind-buffeted journalist who's still trying to figure out where "the head" is. The officer regards us all with concerned amusement,; the Navy-standard attitude for handling the grossly uninitiated. "No, really," he stresses., "You will die. If the bird landing doesn't clip you, the wire will." For most of the Hollywood landlubbers assembled, "bird on a wire" means "disastrous Mel Gibson-Goldie Hawn caper." For anyone familiar with a flight deck, it means potential decapitation. The "birds" in question are $40 million F-18s, the workhorses of today's Navy, including the top-of-the-line F/A-18F fighter and attack jet. (Like Tom Cruise's baby fat, those chunky, gas-guzzling F14 Tomcats from Top Gun will soon be a distant memory.) For a week, pilots will be smacking them onto this deck at several hundred miles an hour, hoping their tailhooks connect with the retractable cable ("the wire") that yanks them to a stop before they skid into the ocean. The Foul Line is the outer boundary of that cable when it's snapped taut with the combined weight and engine thrust of the yet. We all take a step back. Meanwhile, the ensign has moved on to new horrors: Step over another line, and the jet blast from launching F-18s will sweep you off the deck. Also: "You can't wear sneakers up here. The fuel will melt the rubber."

"Why is there jet fuel on the deck?" asks a PA. "The planes leak. What do you expect? They're old." "So where can we stand?" "Stand anywhere you like," the ensign says amiably, "as long as it's not in the way." Filming a movie is challenging enough without worrying about jet blasts, melted soles, and beheadings. But filming a $40 million military adventure like Behind Enemy Lines--and trying to make it look like it cost twice that--is a real decathlon, involving a three-month tour of duty in the Slovak Republic (doubling for the Bosnian countryside) and now, in early February, five days off the coast of Southern California. What's more, this is a working aircraft carrier currently conducting landing trials for fighter pilots, which means the crew can't simply film wherever and whenever it wants. That's an awful lot to throw at a first-time feature director John Moore and a star better known for wry improvisations that raw war dramas. Not that Owen Wilson seems to be having any trouble impressing the real sailors of the Carl Vinson. With every call of "Cut," the lean, blond 33-year-old actor, decked out in the dull green flight suit of a naval aviator, is mobbed by enlisted men and women who pour into the three-Wal-Mart's-long hangar bay armed with pens, paper, and, in one case, a videotape of Anaconda. "He signed it, "Your pal, Owen Wilson," crows a chief petty officer, pad held triumphantly aloft as he emerges from the fray. "My kids are just gonna shit." To be fair, the rampant Owenism may have something to do with the fact that his movies are being shown back-to-back, all day long, on the ship's closed-circuit TV network. (Down in the chief's mess, we watch him die twice daily in Armageddon and The Haunting). Also in heavy rotation: the oeuvre of Gene Hackman, who plays flinty Admiral Leslie Reigart, the battle-group commander forced to choose between rescuing his downed pilot and preserving a fragile peace process in the war-torn Balkans. The 71-year-old Hackman is genial enough on deck, signing autographs and chatting up starstruck sailors, but when a scene wraps, he disappears into his stateroom to steal some much needed shut-eye. His quarters are situated alongside the flight deck, where jets are touching down with deafening frequency throughout the night. But even his brief visitations have spawned rumors worthy of Liz Smith. In one, after a sailor tells Hackman he's his biggest fan, the star asks which film is his favorite. Gushes the swab: "The one where you say, 'You can't handle the truth?' That sort of thing, coupled with the roar of afterburners next to one's ear, would be enough to try any actor's soul. But Hackman is probably more comfortable with the military life than most; he was, after all, a Marine, enlisting at 16 and working as an armed forces deejay in post-WWII China. "I wasn't a very good Marine," he's quick to note. "I went in as a private and came out as a private. I wasn't a great military person, but I recognized enough about it to play a military person." And he's played several, from an Air Force colonel stuck behind enemy lines during Vietnam in Bat 21 to a secretary of defense in No Way Out to a besieged sub captain in Crimson Tide. The same can't be said for Wilson, who was handpicked by Hackman to play Lieut. Chris Burnett, an untested navigator whose jet is struck by a missile over Bosnia. (Hackman decided Wilson "looked like a movie star" after seeing Shanghai Noon and recommended him for the role). Having cemented a reputation as one of Hollywood's premier screen ironists (with scene-stealing turns in Meet the Parents and Zoolander, not to mention collaborating with Wes Anderson on the scripts for Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and December's The Royal Tenenbaums, in which he again costars with Hackman), Wilson is the first to admit he's an odd choice for the lead in a spit-and-polish war movie. "I did go to military school," he says in his defense, lounging in a makeup tent. "For my last two years of high school. Just enough to know I'm not cut out for it. I got kicked out of

an all-boys private school in Dallas. It was just discipline stuff. I wasn't a very focused student." Turns out Burnett isn't a very focused soldier either, thanks in part to Wilson's influence. In earlier drafts (by Predator's Jim and John Thomas, Red Dawn's John Milius, and The Rock's Mark Rosner, to name just a few), the character was more Maverick than Goose: He sat in the front seat of the plane and bore his plight with an attitude that was a little more steroidal. "There were changes we made when I signed on to make it a little easier for me to play," Wilson recalls. "We switched it from the pilot to the backseater guy, the navigator. I'm definitely not playing a Schwarzenegger, because I don't think I'd buy myself doing something like that. But I can buy myself running for my life.": Which is what Wilson spends most of the movie doing. "I'm behind enemy lines by myself," he muses. "So there's no one to riff with. It's a lot of "Now run over here! Now run over there! Now you're really scared! Now you're really angry!" Needless to say, that's not the usual Owen Wilson MO. With no Ben Stiller or Jackie Chan to play ping to his pong and Cheech to his Chong, Wilson couldn't lean on his much-vaunted improv skills. Instead, he had to cultivate something few had seen in him: grit. Back in the Slovak Republic, that meant running a gauntlet of ticklish, trip-wired land mines, no stuttering or stunt-doubling about it. "That was me!" he exclaims, as if he himself has trouble believing it. "We did one take of that. It was the first day Gene Hackman showed up. I think that gave me a lot of points with him. He treated me like I was a good guy after that. During Tenenbaums, he was telling Wes, 'They were really working Owen hard.' And I was thinking, 'They didn't work me that hard.' But it was because he'd shown up the day I ran through the minefield. he thought that's what it was like every day." A few more sailors move in to seed autographs, and Wilson dutifully obliges them. Then suddenly, he's seized with a new idea. "Have you seen the fantail?" he asks, speaking of the rear platform using the proper ear protection, onlookers can watch the F-18 pilots wheel, wobble their wings, and swoop in to land just overhead. Wilson charges out of a rear hatch just in time to see a jet scream past, jiggling the contents of our stomachs. "Isn't that incredible?" Wilson grins, gripping the railing like an 8-year-old at Niagra Falls. The surf kicks up along the Carl Vinson's stern, spraying us with a fine mist of brine. "Sitting out here, I think of Harvey Keitel in U-571 saying 'I'm an old sea-salt dog,' or whatever he says. Maybe I've got a little bit of that in me, the old salty dog. Salty Dog Wilson." He scans the horizon. "I've also found myself thinking, on that nautical theme, about Treasure Island, Cast Away." There's a pause as another jet comes into view. "And also Cabin Boy. You know, Chris Elliott?" He hunkers down for the thunderous approach. "Yes, my thoughts do run to Cabin Boy." If moviemaking had a Powell doctrine (defined mission, overwhelming budget, clear-cut release strategy), Behind Enemy Lines probably wouldn't have passed muster when principal photography wrapped last spring. "We were trying to make a military movie at a time when nobody gave a s___ about the military," remembers exec producer Wyck Godfrey, who saw the initial script in 1997. "We decided the only way for this movie to appeal to people was to make it about a character who has himself lost faith in his purpose." And then, of course, Everything Changed. America was suddenly under attack and American's military reentered the popular consciousness. Exactly how it's making that reentry (and how profitable it will prove for Hollywood) is still open to question. For example: Will moviegoers be spooked or excited by Behind Enemy Lines' harrowing crash sequence or its trench-level portrayal of an American pilot hunted by enemy troops? For the producers, that debate ended when Sony announced that it had moved Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, a

fact-based account of Special Forces troops ambushed in Somalia, from January 2002 to an Oscar-qualifying limited run in late December; from there, the film moves into wide release on Behind Enemy Lines' original opening date of Jan. 18. Remembers Godfrey: "It wasn't really until Black Hawk Down moved to our date that we thought, Let's get it into the holiday season." Two days later, Twentieth Century fox bet its Behind on a Nov. 30 slot. Buoyed by what he claims are the studio's highest combined male and female test scores for any action film since Speed, Fox Filmed Entertainment cochairman Tom Rothman has high hopes. Just don't call it a war movie. "It's an action-adventure movie involving the military. It's not a war movie in any traditional sense," he says. But Rothman is just as quick to defend the film's patriotic virtues; he is, after all, a vocal supporter of the new Hollywood-Washington alliance, wherein studio heads agreed (in a Nov.11 meeting with White House adviser Karl Rove) to promote seven "ideals" suggested by the Bush administration, including volunteerism and support for the troops abroad. "There's no reason you can't have very valid positive stories about the military, the same way we've had very valid negative stories about the military." But according to director Moore, the original script was simply a very inauthentic story about the military--more to the point, it was "truly, truly, truly bad." The villains were wielding "long curved knives, drinking wine out of goatskins," and its gung ho heroes escaped from peril in a credulity-straining climax involving WWI biplanes. "But it was set in Bosnia. That's the only thing that interested me." Moore, a 31-year-old Irishman who won the gig largely on the strength of a 1999 commercial for the Sega Dreamcast, spent the mid-90s in the Balkans, shooting still photos (his work was displayed at a Dublin exhibition in 1997); he eventually departed after becoming what he disdainfully calls "a war tourist>" For him, the release of Behind Enemy Lines in the current climate has nothing to do with capitalizing on resurgent patriotism, and everything to do with showcasing a conflict that went largely unnoticed by the American public. (Until now: The United Artists import No Man's Land will also tackle Bosnia this holiday season). "There'll always be people holding placards saying this is insensitive, flag-waving horses___," Moore admits. "But I've been very interested in and horrified by those Balkan wars, and the way they'd been ignored by the West." In fact, one of Moore's favorite characters is the least pro-American of the lot, a NATO admiral who opposes a cavalry-style rescue operation because it could disrupt a peace deal. "He passionately believes it's not worth it for one man, whereas the American military view, as crystallized by Black Hawk Down, is 'Leave no man behind.' I tried to challenge that view a bit." Not that Behind Enemy Lines will be mistaken for a policy seminar. "This movie uses every once of modern technology to put you in the seat of an F-18," says Rothman. "And hell, that's cool. And I submit to you, that was cool before September 11, and it's cool after September 11." As for that modern technology, most of it was provided gratis by the Navy, a key factor in keeping the movie's budget down. "There's no location cost for shooting on an aircraft carrier," says Godfrey. "The production budget is $17 million, not counting about-the-line talent. The whole film's coming in for under $40 million. And it ended up looking like a $70 million film." Applying for material and advisory support from the Pentagon is a time-honored strategy for military films (Top Gun, Rules of Engagement, and Men of Honor all did it). In return for the assistance, Uncle Sam gets "a realistic and respectful treatment of the military," according to former Navy pilot and Behind Enemy Lines consultant Dave Kennedy. (That's why Hackman's Crimson Tide--which portrays a mutiny aboard a nuclear sub--didn't make the cut.) As it did for Men of Honor, the Navy can

negotiate to have a recruiting commercial, featuring clips from the movie, appended to the video release free of charge. In this era of patriotic make-nice between L.A. and D.C., such collaborations are enough to pique even the casual paranoiac. But the decision to join up with the service didn't come from the Illuminati or the Freemasons. Rather, it was director Moore, a military buff and critic of Hollywood's over-reliance on computer-generated wizardry, who decided he wanted the sort of authenticity--ground-to-air combat sequences, realistic command-chain politics, and, of course, the carrier itself--that could be attained only through cooperation. Also, he wanted the new F/A-18F Super Hornet. "This movie stars Gene Hackman, Owen Wilson, and the Super Hornet," says a gleeful Moore, who pushed the military to provide him with the jet. "The airplane we were physically using--I literally saw it in bubble wrap. It was that new." Chances are, it's been broken in by now. Super Hornets are currently seeing their first combat missions over Afghanistan; some may even be launching from the deck of the Carl Vinson, which was one of the first carriers to respond to the crisis. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Fox screened the film for the carrier's crew (now on active duty in the Arabian Sea) in the cavernous hangar bay where, just nine months and one civilizational sea-change earlier, Wilson and Hackman played sailor for fun and profit. For the ship's crew, memories of last spring's moviemaking jaunt are probably cold comfort; but for all of us back home, it's nice to know that somewhere at sea, a CPO is admiring his autographed copy of Anaconda, while overhead, another bird catches the wire.