Oops...What Do I Know About Film Festivals?

A couple of entries ago, I wrote about seeing the Polish film ``Katyn´´ at the Rio film festival, and about how much I liked it. I noted that I had read it received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. So far, so good except that what I actually saw was that it had been nominated as BFF for the 80th Academy Awards...and the 80th Academy Awards were held last spring. It has already lost to ``The Counterfeiter.´´ What do I know about film festivals? I just sort of assumed that the entrants were newly-released films. Oh, well.

To everyone in the U.S. who likes to complain about the immigrants from Mexico who are still speaking Spanish or fractured English, I want to say ``lighten up.´´ I´m on the other side now, and I have a lot of sympathy (of course, being an empathetic kind of guy, I always did). I am working on my Português, and I´m making a little progress, but I´m never going to be fluent in this language and English speakers here probably are always going to be a welcome island of comfort whenever I encounter them. I can´t imagine being here in Brasil without computer access to the NY Times and the LA Times, or The Daily Show and Colbert Report. I might be learning Português a little slower than I would otherwise because of these security blankets, but I´m a lot more relaxed and comfortable. I just wish I had some local English-language TV options. :-)

And now I am going to cut this short so I can work on my Português exercises. My teacher gives me lots of home work.

Tchau.