The similar phrase 'Worldly Christianity' is one used by Bonhoeffer. It's J Gresham Machen that I want to line up most closely with. See his Christianity and culture here. Having done commentaries on Proverbs (Heavenly Wisdom) and Song of Songs (Heavenly Love), a matching title for Ecclesiastes would be Heavenly Worldliness. For my stance on worldliness, see 3 posts here.

10 Varying film titles

1. The fourth Die Hard movie is known as Live Free or Die Hard in the US, but as Die Hard 4.0 in the UK (as UK citizens will never have heard of the phrase “live free or die”).
2. The movie known as The 51st State in the UK is known as Formula 51 in the US, partially because the latter sounds more dynamic.
3. In the UK, the comedy Harold and Kumar go to White Castle was renamed Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies, as Brits would be unlikely to know of the association White Castle has to an American audience. (It's a chain of fast food restaurants that specialize in bite-size, cheaply made hamburgers).
4. Presumably because baseball terminology doesn't make sense to most non-American audiences, the '90s Angels in the Outfield remake was renamed simply Angels in the UK.
5. The Japanese name for Napoleon Dynamite is Bus Man, which doesn't make too much sense. It's probably a reference to another film
Train Man.
6. The Edith Piaf biopic La Môme was re-titled La Vie En Rose in English-speaking markets: Piaf was known as "La Môme" ("the kid"), but only in France, so outside France the film was named for her famous song.
7. The first film in the Rambo series First Blood is known simply as Rambo in Japan, or rather Ranbo - Japanese for "violence".
8. When producers in America got the rights to the sequel film Godzilla Raids Again they renamed it Gigantis The Fire Monster (and referred to Godzilla as "Gigantis" within the English dub of the film itself) because they thought that audiences wanted to see a different monster than Godzilla.
9. Danny the dog was released with that title in France and Hong Kong, but renamed to Unleashed for the US, UK and Australia, probably due to the likelihood that the local audiences in those countries would not only mistake the original title for that of a kids film but also wouldn't take it seriously as the title of an action film.
10. The French-British CGI film The Magic Roundabout was redubbed and retitled Doogal in the US

1 comment:

Ryan Burton King said...

The Oscar-nominated Basketball movie Hoosiers was renamed 'Best Shot' for the U.K. (presumeably because the word 'Hoosier' is unfamiliar here).