The devil wears Prada 《时尚女魔头》（精讲之一）

影片对白

Emily: Okay, so I was Miranda's second assistant... but her first assistant recently got promoted, and so now I'm the first.

Andy: Oh, and you're replacing yourself.

Emily: Well, I am trying. Miranda sacked the last two girls after only a few weeks. We need to find someone who can survive here. Do you understand?

Andy: Yeah. Of course. Who's Miranda?

Emily: Oh, my God. I will pretend you did not just ask me that. She's the editor in chief of Runway, not to mention a legend. You work a year for her, and you can get a job at any magazine you want. A million girls would kill for this job.

Andy: It sounds like a great opportunity. I'd love to be considered.

Emily: Andrea, Runway is a fashion magazine... so an interest in fashion is crucial.

Andy: What makes you think I'm not interested in fashion?

Emily: Oh, my God. No! No! No!

Andy: What's wrong?

Emily: She's on her way. Tell everyone!

Nigel: She's not supposed to be here until 9:00.

Emily: Her driver just text messaged, and her facialist ruptured a disk. God, these people!

Nigel: Who's that?

Emily: That I can't even talk about.

Nigel: All right, everyone! Gird your loins! Did somebody eat an onion bagel?

Woman: Sorry, Miranda.

Emily: Move it! Ooh!

Miranda: I don't understand why it's so difficult to confirm an appointment.

Emily: I know. I'm so sorry, Miranda. I actually did confirm last night.

Miranda: Details of your incompetence do not interest me. Tell Simone I'm not going to approve that girl that she sent me for the Brazilian layout. I asked for clean, athletic, smiling. She sent me dirty, tired and paunchy. And R.S.V.P. yes to the Michael Kor's party. I want the driver to drop me off at 9:30 and pick me up at 9:45 sharp.

Emily: 9:45 sharp.

Miranda: And call Natalie at Glorious Foods, tell her no for the 40th time. No, I don't want dacquoise. I want tortes filled with warm rhubarb compote. Then call my ex-husband and remind him the parent-teacher conference is at Dalton tonight. Then call my husband, ask him to please to meet me for dinner at that place I went to with Massimo. Also tell Richard I saw all the pictures that he sent for that feature on the female paratroopers…and they're all so deeply unattractive. Is it impossible to find a lovely, slender female paratrooper?

Emily: Yeah.

Miranda: Am I reaching for the stars here? Not really. Also, I need to see all the things that Nigel has pulled for Gwyneth's second cover try. I wonder if she's lost any of that weight yet. Who's that?

妙语佳句，活学活用

1. Sack

俚语，意思是“解雇，开除”，既可以做动词也可以做名词用，例如：
If you are late again the boss will give you the sack. 如果你再迟到，老板就会把你解雇。
He got sacked yesterday. 他昨天被解雇了。

2. Text message

如果你的手机是英文语言提示，你对这个表达一定不陌生，没错，它就是“短信息”的意思，例如：I just got your text message. 我刚收到你的短信。那要表示“发短信”该怎么说呢？除了用send a text message外，text message也可以做动词用，表示“发短信”，例如片断中的例句：Her driver just text messaged. 他的司机刚发了短信。

3. Gird one's loins

这个片语也写作gird up one's loins，意思是“Prepare oneself for action准备好（行动）”，例如：I'm girding up my loins for that crucial interview.

4. R.S.V.P.

Reply to an invitation，既可以做动词也可以做名词，例如：
Don't forget to RSVP before Thursday.
He sent a lovely bouquet of flowers with his RSVP.

此外，当送出请柬的时候，也常在上面写上R.S.V.P.，意思是“要求回复（会不会来）”。

文化面面观

The Devil Wears Prada: 电影与畅销书的结合

The Devil Wears Prada is a comedy-drama film, the screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's 2003 novel of the same name. It stars Anne Hathaway as Andrea Sachs, a recent university graduate who gets a job as a co-assistant to powerful fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep. The film co-stars Emily Blunt as Priestly's first-assistant, Adrian Grenier as Sachs' boyfriend, and Stanley Tucci as a male co-worker of Priestly's. Tracie Thoms plays Lily, a close friend of Sachs' and Simon Baker has the role of a writer who assists her with some difficult tasks assigned by Priestly.

Hoping to work her way to the The New Yorker or Vanity Fair, Andrea "Andy" Sachs, fresh out of college, lands a plum magazine job: personal assistant to Miranda, who dominates the fashion world from her perch atop Runway magazine. She puts up with the eccentric and humiliating requests of her boss because, she is told, if she lasts a year in the position she will get her pick of other jobs, perhaps even the journalistic position she truly craves.

Gradually, though, Andrea adjusts to the position and its many perks, including free designer clothing and other choice accessories. She also comes to prize chance encounters with hot young writer Christian (Baker), who earns her eternal gratitude when he helps her with one of her more impossible assignments. However, her family and, especially, friends are feeling neglected. Ultimately Andrea realizes she must make a choice between them and her job lest she become more like the woman she despises working for.

Differences between film and novel

1. In the movie, Andrea is a graduate of Northwestern instead of Brown, and is from Ohio instead of Connecticut. Her career aspirations have been changed from literature to journalism, and she is a brunette rather than a blonde.

2. Lily's role is the most significant change between the novel and the film. In the former, she is a graduate student in Russian literature at Columbia rather than working at an art gallery as she does in the film. Her role in the novel is much larger, and the narrative goes into lengthy detail about her past with Andrea, depicting her as more free-spirited in contrast to her. In both the film and the novel she comes to enjoy the free designer gifts Andrea's job provides. Lily encourages Andrea to pursue Christian in the novel, while in the film she is angry when she sees the two close together. She's also Andrea's roommate instead of Nate and, over the course of the novel, starts to pick up men in bars and develops a drinking problem as a result of stress from her studies. A car accident she suffers while Andrea is in Paris triggers the climax of the novel.

3. Nate is named Alex in the novel and is teaching fourth graders in the South Bronx through Teach for America rather than being a chef as in the movie. He and Andrea do not live together as they do in the film, and have broken up at the end, although they remain friends.

4. Emily is seen much more often in the novel, and is more cynical in her attitude toward Miranda, sometimes not doing things she has told Miranda she has done. Overall, she is a more sympathetic character in the novel. In the film, it is Emily, not Lily, who is injured in a traffic accident.

5. In both the novel and the film, Andrea is required to deliver the Book and Miranda's dry cleaning to her home. In the novel, Andrea walks in while Miranda, "B-DAD", Cassidy and Caroline are having dinner and starts to talk without cue, obviously humiliating herself. In the film, this scene is simplified by having her listen to the daughters tricking her into heading upstairs where she walks in on Miranda and her husband arguing.

6. Generally, Miranda is extensively much more cold, abusive, and distant to Andy in the novel. The film offered the two a much more colorful connection and sense of understanding.

7. The Doug character does not exist in the novel.

8. Christian's last name is Collinsworth in the novel. He and Andrea do not sleep together as they do in the film. However, by the end of the book, he and Andrea still maintain their flirtatious friendship.

9. Miranda's explanation of how Andrea's cable knit sweater was ultimately influenced by the couture in the magazine's pages, and Nigel's lecture about how important Runway truly is and what it represents to so many people, are not in the novel and were written for the film.

10. Andrea's effort to get the new Harry Potter books (not copies of the unpublished manuscript) is less successful in the novel. While she is aware that the twins want separate copies, only one is actually delivered (to Paris, not the train) and Miranda again berates Andrea over it. Also, in the novel she is asked to get the fourth book in the series, not the seventh, as is shown in the film. (A closeup of the manuscript the twins read says "Harry Potter: Book Seven".)

11. In the novel, the twins attend the Horace Mann School in The Bronx, New York, while in the movie, they attend The Dalton School in New York, New York.

12. There is less confusion in the novel on Andrea's part over where to put the Book and the dry cleaning at Miranda's home (in the novel, a Fifth Avenue penthouse rather than a townhouse as it is in the film).

13. Irv Ravitz, played by Tibor Feldman and seen in several scenes throughout the movie, is only referred to in the novel.

14. In the novel Nigel is very tall, British, black and enough of a celebrity that even Andrea recognizes him; whereas the film's Nigel (Stanley Tucci) is white, of normal height and from Rhode Island. Also, he is not so nice in the book and in fact most of his niceness is arranged by Emily in the book.

15. He, and the other male Runway staffers in the novel, are also openly, even flamboyantly, gay. But while his character in the film could be gay, there are no references to it in the script, the other men were cut from the story and this aspect of the novel is largely absent from the film.

16. Nigel is never offered a new job in the novel, and Christian is never offered a job at Runway.

17. Both Andrea and Miranda are described in the book as coming from Jewish families (Miranda had even changed her name to something less Jewish). In the film, no reference is made to either character's religious or ethnic background.

18. Emily is English. The novel made no reference to her nationality.

19. Conversely, Miranda is English in the novel, but Streep plays her as an American.

20. In the novel, Emily cannot go to Paris due to a bout with mononucleosis. In the film, Miranda decides Andrea is more capable when Andrea remembers who an oncoming guest is at a museum benefit after the cold-stricken Emily fails. She puts Andrea up to telling Emily she's going with her instead, and the film implies Emily is also fired. However, before Andrea can tell Emily this, she gets hit by the car.

21. In the book Andy has been told by Miranda that she has to babysit her friend's son at this party. The son ends up being Christian. None of this happens in the film

22. Andy has a sister who gives birth to a baby boy which Andy is unable to meet for the first few months of his life because of Miranda's tight noose on Andy.

23. Miranda's husband does not leave her in the novel. The two have a stable and happy marriage.

24. Miranda's job is not in danger at the end of the novel, as it is in the film.

25. In the novel, Andrea ends her time with Miranda by telling her, very publicly, "Fuck you, Miranda. Fuck you." instead of simply throwing her cell phone into a nearby fountain. This happened, in the novel, after Miranda blamed her for not realizing that her daughters' passports had expired a week earlier and that she needed to get them new passports and on a plane to Paris by that very night. She immediately returns to New York to attend to the comatose Lily. Miranda actually does not make much more of an appearance in the novel after that moment. She doesn't help with any connections. The major connection that Andrea was able to make was enhanced by a loathing for Miranda that she had in common with the woman at Seventeen.

26. The novel ends with Andrea, finally having launched a more serious writing career with a somewhat autobiographical short story in Seventeen, returning to Elias-Clark to discuss writing assignments with another of the company's magazines. In the film, she gets the reporting position she always wanted with the New York Mirror (a fictionalized Village voice) instead.

27. The film gives the impression that Miranda has a very high regard for Andrea at the end, despite her cold, unfeeling exterior, and that even Andrea has come to like Miranda. In the novel, how Miranda truly feels about Andrea is not known, although she does offer to let Andrea write short pieces for the magazine and pull strings at The New Yorker. Andrea does show some appreciation for Miranda and what she does at some points in the novel, but not as much as she does in the movie.

28. At the end of the novel, it is implied that Emily is likely to pretend she does not know Andrea because of the controversy surrounding her confrontation with Miranda. In the movie, however, it is made clear by Emily to the new assistant that she greatly respects and likes Andrea, and believes she did a honorable job as second assistant.

29. In the film, Andrea kindly offers Emily the clothing she received from Paris. In the book, Andrea sells the clothing to a second-hand shop for $38,000 and finances her writer's life for the next year.

30. In the Book we can read that Miranda and Andrea are both staying at the Hotel Ritz Paris. In the movie it's the Plaza Athenee.

31. In the novel version, the white Hermes scarves that Miranda likes to wear are discontinued, however in the movie, when Emily gets hit by a taxi, there is a shot of white scarves flying all over the street. (answers.com)

我观之我见

随着司机的一条短信提示，整个办公室都开始进入备战状态：穿平底鞋的秘书抓起备用的高跟鞋往脚上套、高级助理飞快地把各种杂志往她桌上摆好、连带倒上矿泉水捧起日程安排表……当米兰达抵达公司时，女助理立刻跑到身边，开始记录米兰达的任务，她说话语调从来不会抑扬顿挫，两片薄薄的嘴唇在短时间内不停地轻微运动，连珠炮地把一大堆事务交代给助理去办，语句之间不需要停顿，一气呵成。完了之后一句冷冰冰的"That's all"就把人打发走，即便是没听清楚也不能问她。这就是这部电影给我们呈现的一个时尚界的"女魔头"形象。跟着这样的老板干活大约新陈代谢都要提高二十倍才能保证跟得上步伐、不会被fire掉，同时还得有强大的心理承受力，不然每天对着这样一张冰冷的脸人都会疯掉。夸张吗？不，职场中人很多都经历过这样的上司，这部电影引发了他们心中的共鸣，这也是这部小成本的电影能获得巨大成功的原因。

考考你

用今日所学将下面的句子译成英语。

1. 公司威胁说谁罢工就解雇谁，那只不过是虚张声势罢了。
2. 大家各就各位。主编来了！

Prison Break 1《越狱》1（精讲十二）考考你 参考答案

1． 这个团伙那天晚上出去搞破坏了。
The gang was out to raise hell that night.

2． 他说如果他们不还钱给他的话，他就要搞点动作。
He said he'd raise Cain if they wouldn't give him a refund.

3． 如果她还是那么粗鲁的话，我就离开。
If she's rude again I'm just going to take a walk.