Il commissario Montalbano

[muck_a_luck]

cinzia will have a good laugh. Meet my newest TV boyfriend, Salvo Montalbano. He's charming, smart, crafty, and often amusingly frustrated. Not to mention he looks just as good in a suit as he does swimming in the ocean. Oh, and his car is hilariously like something your best-friend from college used to drive. :)



Also, and uisgich may be amused by this, if *I* were ever going to run off and live someplace new because of something *I* saw in a movie, I would definitely be going to Scicily. Montalbano's fictional home, Vigata, is represented by the town of Ragusa. It is fantastically beautiful, as are the rural landscapes that are the settings for most of the stories. And the beaches - amazing!

So, get yourself a Region 2 player, contact that weird guy in Australia who has them all on DVD, and watch them with the English subtitles turned on. The men are all well-dressed, the women are all beautiful (in an interestingly real way - this show has given me a new appreciation for Italian actresses), there's the occassional nudity, if you go for that sort of thing in your TV viewing, and Scicily is absolutely breathtaking.

Comments

[cocoajava.livejournal.com]

Okay. One minor detail.... WHAT IS THE SHOW TITLE?

:D

Harumph. Cheating on me aleady... I swear.

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

:D It's a series of Italian TV movies, Il Commissario Montalbano, Inspector Montalbano, in English. It is based on a bunch of novels and short stories about the guy.

[cinzia.livejournal.com]

Luca Zingaretti is on my flist! I have now seen it all. ;)

(Well, actually I've never seen the movies, though both they and the books are pretty popular over here. :))

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

Well, I say check it out! Though, of course, as I'm reading subtitles, I can't speak to the full quality of the thing. It's weirdly different, getting the dialogue through subtitles.

[cinzia.livejournal.com]

Hee, don't I know. ^_^

As far as I know the dialogues are all in Sicilian (specifically, Ragusan) dialect, though, which is very different from standard Italian (I'd probably need subtitles myself. ;))

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

All of it, or just his sergeant? Husband has read the books (in translation) and I know their sergeant is supposed to be nearly incomprehensible, even to them.

The subtitles are cute. Sometimes the English is kind of mangled. But that's part of the charm of them. :D

[cinzia.livejournal.com]

I honestly have no idea, sorry. Never seen an episode. ^_^

The only book I ever read by Andrea Camilleri, the author, was Il Tailleur Grigio (not in the Montalbano series) and it was really good, and also heavy on the Sicilian: in some places I couldn't understand all the words, just enough to get the gist of it. I think I'd like to read it in translation--that must be fun. :)

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

He does look cute, and has that well-dressed/slightly rumpled hot thing going on. :D

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

And he's always well-dressed but rumpled. Sometimes he's well-dressed, rumpled, and barefoot. Out on the beach. *drools slightly*

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

*grabby hands*

[madaboutdanny.livejournal.com]

Oh my! I LOVE Luca Zingaretti! Here in Italy Commissario Montalbano is a huge success! And it's really a pity that you can't hear the beautiful sicilian accent that Montalbano sometimes speaks.

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

it's really a pity that you can't hear the beautiful sicilian accent that Montalbano sometimes speaks

Now I am sad! :(

I do like the actor, and the character is great! I love how he's almost always one step ahead of everybody, but it's subtle, and he's usually kind of quietly exasperated about it, rather than being smug or cocky or whatever.