Foreign Language Media Thread

The best way to practise your language skills is by using them, so let's help each other find interesting films, books et cetera in the language we're trying to learn.

In Japanese, there's animu, obviously. That should be enough material to last anyone a few decades.
There's also 2chan, of course.

In French, there's a number of French dubs to animated films on the pirate bay; I've found Aladdin, the Lion King, Atlantis, Alice in Wonderland, Bambi, Sleeping Beauty, Jungle Book and the Aristocats. There's also French Wall-E, The Incredibles, Toy Story, Cars and Ratatouille; and there's the Simpsons Movie, Mr Fox and Winnie the Pooh. And of course natively French ones like Asterix and Tintin.
There are French dubs of Harry Potter films and there's one of Enchanted.
I also enjoyed the Banlieue 13 films, as well as Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain. The first Asterix live action film was utter crap, but Mission Cléopatre was made of pure awesome.
Underfoule is a French chan that gets decent amounts of traffic.

In German, the pirate bay offers Jungle Book and the Lion King. Maybe more, but I haven't found them yet.
Lola Rennt is a good natively German film.
A German friend recommmends the German dub of Detective Conan, but I haven't found it yet.
I don't visit German chans myself, but I know there's one called Krautchan.

In Dutch, you can find a dub of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Alles Is Liefde is a decent natively Dutch film. There's a whole lot more to be found, no doubt.
Popular Dutch chans are 31chan and Dejimachan (previously Sovjet Nederland).

In English, there's the entire god damned internet.

P.S. For Dutch music, Bløf is a pretty good band. I also like Marco Borsato.

In German I kind of like Welle Erdball, in all its (deliberate) cheesiness.

Good French musicians are Yann Tiersen, René Aubry and Justice, but those don't involve a lot of singing. Manau does; it's a bit cheesy, but it's grown on me.

Just me in here? Bummer.
Proceeding.

As for books:

I haven't read much French literature, but I liked Sartre's plays. They're high brow-ish, but they're plays, so they're still nicely easy to read. (I read Huis Clos and Les Mains Sales.)
French comic books are legendary - there's Tintin and Asterix again, and Gaston Lagaffe, Thorgal, Spirou, Mélusine.

German: The Neverending Story is originally a German book (Die Unendliche Geschichte), and we all loved that film when we were kids, so go read it.

Dutch: I'm not all that impressed by Dutch literature - maybe it's just not my taste. But I sort of enjoyed De Procedure by Harry Mulish. I'm also reading the Dutch translations of the Wheel of Time series, it's pretty decent.
Popular/good Dutch comic books series include Sjors & Sjimmie, Douwe Dabbert, Gilles de Geus, Hagar, Jan Jans & de Kinderen, and I've become very fond of Sarah & Robin.

Japanese: Just go read raw manga, or go translate hentai tagged "translation_request" on Gelbooru or something.

Of course, there are translations of pretty much any worthwhile book out there.

>>2
P.S.:
For French and Dutch comic books, do pay attention whether you're reading standard French/Dutch or Belgian French/Dutch. Belgium has a pretty impressive comic book output in both of those languages, but of course they speak them slightly differently.
Not a huge danger - at worst you'll sound a little quaint - but still.

I've seen Belgian Dutch comic books "translated" (or rewritten, whatever) into Standard Dutch, too. I wouldn't know how a second language learner would have to tell the difference, though.

How did you learn your languages?
Also, any recommendations for Spanish (preferably Latin American, but Spain Spanish is fine too)?

>>5
I learned the basics of my languages mostly from Dutch high school... these recommendations are for perfecting an already solid language proficiency.

I don't speak Spanish myself, so I haven't looked into that, but you can try looking for torrents to Disney dubs (I believe Disney has relatively good dubs in every major language), or dubs of any other show you like (if you're okay with potential cheesiness).

Anyone else have Spanish recommendations?

theres plenty of anime subbed to spanish,
but choose only the ones subbed to LatinAmerican spanish, aka Neutral Spanish because the iberian-spanish ones, have lots of unneeded and useless regional expressions.

Subbed to Neutral Spanish:
Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball Z
Dragon Ball GT
Digimon Adventure
Digimon Season 2
Digimon Season 3
Digimon Tamers
Doraemon
Slam Dunk
Saint Seiya (up to Hades arc)
Naruto (not sure if subbed up to Shippuden)
Death Note
Saikano
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Nadia
Bleach (dropped, up to ep 60)
Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)
Rave Master
Pokemon (up to the last season)
Mushishi
Speed Grapher
Blood+ (up to second season)
Rurouni Kenshin
Ramma 1/2

theres plenty of anime subbed to spanish,
but choose only the ones subbed to LatinAmerican spanish, aka Neutral Spanish because the iberian-spanish ones, have lots of unneeded and useless regional expressions.

Subbed to Neutral Spanish:
Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball Z
Dragon Ball GT
Digimon Adventure
Digimon Season 2
Digimon Season 3
Digimon Tamers
Doraemon
Slam Dunk
Saint Seiya (up to Hades arc)
Naruto (not sure if subbed up to Shippuden)
Death Note
Saikano
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Nadia
Bleach (dropped, up to ep 60)
Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)
Rave Master
Pokemon (up to the last season)
Mushishi
Speed Grapher
Blood+ (up to second season)
Rurouni Kenshin
Ramma 1/2

>>8
>>7
if I wanted to watch anime I'd be learning japanese
get your weeaboo shit outta here

>mfw cultural chauvinism on an internationally oriented board

>>10
mfw Japanese have a shit culture

Swedish:

There are some pretty good Swedish films around. Here are some that I've seen:

Sökarna
Let the right one in
Mitt liv som hund

I've also seen an episode of Wallander. There's a fair deal of stuff on amazon.

I bought the first Harry Potter book in Swedish from ebay, and downloaded the swedish audiobook from thepiratebay. This will probably come in very handy.

If you're learning Russian, rutracker.org has an unbelievably extensive catalog of dubbed American films, tv shows, e-books and anime. Get a movie that you've seen a bunch of times and watch it in Russian without subtitles.

>>12
If you want to learn swedish, 8sidor.se is very good. They have mp3 recordings of the articles so you can listen and read. Very helpful for learning pronunciation.