There and Back Again

Disposition: Hungry
Listening: Goodbye Lenin Soundtrack
Reading: Day of Confession
Watching: Intacto
Obsessing: Eduardo Noriega
Pondering: French is the language that turns dirt into romance. (Stephen King)

My silly infatuation over Spanish actor Eduardo Noriega is teaching me new things. This weekend it taught me how to order DVDs in French.

To collect DVDs of his movies, I’ve been ordering from places as far as San Sebastian Delos Reyes in (Madrid) Spain where my trusted supplier of region 2 DVDs - dvdgo.com - holds office. I love ordering from this place as they are more efficient than amazon.com and they offer an English site for their non-Spanish clients, like me! How cool is that? I also recently ordered Noriega’s French-released movie, Novo, from an unlikely place — Hong Kong’s YesAsia and they were good too although, I found out later on that I was not really ordering from Hong Kong but from a local office right in my backyard of San Bruno, California.

Now, I thought that aside from a new release (Les Mains Vides) and insignificant previous releases I don’t care to buy, my Noriega collection is complete. Until my research this weekend yielded Vies Brulées, the French version of Plata Quemada (Burnt Money). I discovered that the French release has way more bonus materials in than the US or Spanish releases. Albeit the features will be in French or Spanish, I had to add it to my collection. Besides, Plata Quemada is one of his best movies. So I decided to order from what seems to be the most legit place on the Internet that sells it - Fnac which is based in France. It should be easy, right? Just like ordering from Dvdgo.com.

Well it wasn’t as easy. Fnac didn’t have an English site for their non-French speaking clients. Numerous viewing of Amelie has not made French familiar to me at all. But as I have already set my mind to purchasing the damn DVD, I pulled up the somewhat reliable but imperfect Babel Fish translator and winged my way through the registration and ordering process.

Apparently, it was a success since I received an email shortly from Fnac reading, “Mademoiselle Lisa Y — Nous avons bien enregistré votre commande sur Fnac.com et nous vous remercions de votre confiance…Vies brulées, Marcelo Pineyro; DVD Zone 2 Expédition prévue entre le 6 mai et le 11 mai 2004. Nous vous remercions de votre fidélité à Fnac.com. A très bientôt. L’équipe de Fnac.com” Roughly translated by Babel Fish as saying, “We recorded your order well on Fnac.com and we thank you for your confidence: Brulées Lives, Marcelo Pineyro; DVD Zone 2. Forwarding envisaged between May 6 and May 11, 2004. We thank you for your fidelity with Fnac.com. With very soon. L’équipe de Fnac.com.”

Now we wait and see if the DVD actually arrives. I’ll keep you posted.