I hate English
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So, this is the promotional material for Quentin Tarantino's latest film.
The 9th film from Quentin Tarantino.
It sounds like shit to me. It sounds as if it should be by, or even better, "Quentin Tarantino's 9th film". I ask my British mum. "No, it's "by". Definitely". So is it correct or is it actually a mistake? My problem with bilingualism is that sometimes stuff feels like a bad translation from Italian to English (or vice versa) and I can't tell if it's right or wrong. And I don't really trust marketing departments when it comes to grammar.
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@admiral_p it doesn't look wrong to me. Feels like it's a free variation--either from or by in that position works for me personally.
Edit or the possessive.
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I bet there's a technical and absolute "correct" answer, and if so, "by" would probably be it. However, English is often colloquial, even in promotional material. And especially any promotional material that has Tarantino's name on it.
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@admiral_p By is perhaps "better" grammatically, but from is completely acceptable and indicates the movie originates from his imagination, creativity, whatever.
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All of your rephrasings are correct (even technically correct) and mostly equivalent with just slight differences in connotation Although, I wouldn't be surprised if aesthetic concerns like typography determined which phrasing was used in the poster. The word "from" emphasizes the reception of the movie by the public and Tarantino as the sender, similar to "an email from your boss." The word "by" would emphasize that Tarantino created the move, as in "the 9th film [made] by Tarantino." Phrasing it as "Tarantino's 9th film" would emphasize the creative ownership of the movie.
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@HardwareGeek that's what I thought as well, but I thought it was a misuse.
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It's pretty common in promotional materials for films. "From the same people that brought you Sharknado!", "From the director of Battlefield Earth" and so on.
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"From ashes to ashes", where an object was used to produce something. Seems cromulent I think.
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I'm not really in the position to complain, as I arbitrarily use the wrong prepositions all the time, but still "by" sounds much better than "from".
Aside, it feels weird to count your films to begin with. Who else does that?!
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@admiral_p said in I hate English:
It sounds like shit to me.
It's really quite good. Especially so if you like films about characters and place and history and dialogue and the odd bit of ultraviolence.
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@dkf That's not what he meant.
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@topspin said in I hate English:
I'm not really in the position to complain, as I arbitrarily use the wrong prepositions all the time, but still "by" sounds much better than "from".
Seems fine to me.Aside, it feels weird to count your films to begin with. Who else does that?!
People who have a distinctive style and a lot of fans who like it. It also has kind of a retro sound to me, which is part of Tarantino's aesthetic.
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Looks fine to me but I'm probably the last person you should ask.
As an aside at one company I worked at we had an in house translator. We would come up with a term to describe an action in the product. She would translate it into German and then from German back into English. The English translation was then used in the product. The English version of that tool was a little suspect.
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@DogsB said in I hate English:
She would translate it into German and then from German back into English. The English translation was then used in the product.
But why?
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@Gąska Google translate idempotence? Consistency?
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@topspin said in I hate English:
Aside, it feels weird to count your films to begin with. Who else does that?!
Tarantino has long stated that he will only make 10 films.
Quentin Tarantino still insists he’s going to stop at 10 movies
Speaking at San Diego’s Creativity Conference yesterday, Quentin Tarantino reaffirmed his longstanding claim that he will retire after his tenth film. Variety quoted the director as saying, “Drop the mic. Boom. Tell everybody, ‘Match that shit!’” For those keeping score at home, Tarantino has...
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@topspin said in I hate English:
Google translate idempotence?
That actually kinda sorta almost makes sense... but only for one foreign language.
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@pie_flavor Thanks, I hate it.
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I think the case could also be made that 'by' is too strong for the director of a movie. If there were also no other writers involved, that would make it more acceptable, but 'by' is a bit too all-encompassing for something that involves so many people and so much time - even for a guy who, if memory serves, is a crazy egotist.
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@admiral_p -- I'll respectfully disagree, since it could be coming from Quentin Tarantino LLC, or whatever his production company is called.
