749 replies to this topic

[LolaRuns]

I remember, as a kid, my local channel used to show the dubbed version of 'Direito de Amar', Das Recht zu lieben. I only saw bits and pieces of it, but for some reasons it's totally haunting me. Precisely because I remember only bits and pieces.

The story was something along the lines of:

Young pretty girl falls in luuuuv with young pretty guy (Eduardo something?) during a masquerade ball. But young pretty girl's father is in dept and therefore is forced to sell her off into marriage with the FATHER of young pretty guy, creepy FATHER who also fell in love with young pretty girl during that masquerade ball. She married old creepy father and starts snooping around the house discovering mysterious! creepy! clues for whatever. Meanwhile young pretty guy pines away for her and plans for them to run off together.

I remember that the intro showed her (black and white) getting dressed to be photographed in her wedding dress. The end of the into sequence is the picture of her being shot, her in the wedding dress looking as moody and unhappy as can be.

[gossipmonger]

Ohmygod! I was actually thinking about starting/ searching for this thread last week. I have no Spanish background (I took 3 years of French and that was really for an easy "A".) However, my favorite show is "Uga Uga". I have no idea what the plot of this show is, but it is very close to Days as far as it works overtime to show the featured studs shirtless, or better yet in skivvies.
I have spent countless hours pretending to understand the action when I'm really oogling the cast.

Yum!

[StephenTrendy]

I grew up watching some of the telenovelas and must say that Uga Uga is rather like Days with the amount of shirtless men. If I remember correctly, the show was dubbed from Portuguese.

Uga Uga remains one of my favorites, that and the one that had Shakira for the opening titles.

[Gemneye]

Uga Uga is the best! It is orginally from Brazil but Telemundo dubs it in Spanish. They actually are rerunning it, they gave it about a year ago. If anyone needs help understanding the plot I could probably help (even though my Spanish is limited). But I did love looking at all the pretty men. I must say that I tend to enjoy the Brazilian soaps more because the plots are a bit more original. The ones that come from Mexico seem to follow the same plot every time.

StephenTrendy the soap that had Shakira in the opening, is that El Clon? That's another Brazilian soap.

Did anyone ever watch Betty La Fea? That was one of my favorites until Univision got a hold of it and its sequel sucked so badly. I hear Salma Hayek is trying to bring an English version to network tv.

[DavidK93]

I rarely catch any of these shows, but when I do it's a lot of fun. I took French and Italian, so sometimes I can actually grok the meaning of a short scene. For example, I saw part of an episode of one called Aventuras En El Tiempo, and I realized that the one guy asked the other one if he had a car, and the second guy said that they'd ride their skateboards. Mainly, though, all I have to go on are the ridiculous facial expressions of the cast. But I once saw part of one with a friend of mine who does speak Spanish, and she was explaining it to me. The woman in the show was blind, and the man was taunting her because she could not implicate him in a crime, or something. Then the woman says something else, and my friend practically jumped out of her chair, shouting, "She's not blind! She's not blind!" Evidently, she'd been pulling a Tony DiMera, and the guy was now totally screwed. Hee!

[StephenTrendy]

Gemneye, it was "El Clon." Thanks for reminding me. I've seen a few episodes of "Betty La Fea" but I wasn't impressed. One that I also really liked was "Pedro El Escamosco." That one was pretty funny sometimes.

[under the el]

I check them out from time to time, but I paid lots more attention to Xica and Betty la Fea. Would love to see an English version of Betty, as long as the finale is less predictable. Can anyone tell me what was the name of the novela that featured Melina Leon's song "Bano de Luna"- I love both versions of that song.

[sjsufilmmaker]

Uga Uga and Xica are actually Brazilian novellas that have been redubbed in spanish. They are still good novellas but they were done in portugese orginally. Just thought you would like to know.

[Irlandesa]

Telenovelas are a lot of fun but I can never watch them for more than a few episodes...with the exception of Betty La Fea, that is.

I used to love watching them on Friday nights after a stressful day. Instead of going out and being social, I'd just put a pizza in the oven and watch one or two episodes of a telenovela. I'd scream at the TV and react in an overly dramatic way, have fun and then not return to the show until I was in the mood for it again.

Betta La Fea, however, was a telenovela I saw years ago and then watched when it was rerun on Univision's new station. I would actually tape the episodes. Unlike most other novelas, I found myself actually giving a damn for the characters.

[big chicken]

I've got a question about El Clon. I actually followed it for a few weeks and since it was subtitled in English, I actually understood some of what was going on. Does El Clon mean clan, like I first thought, or does it mean clone? I somehow got the impression that there was a clone on that show but I never watched the show through to its conclusion. I tried finding out on the 'net but any websites I could find were in Spanish or Portugese and I've never studied either of those languages.

[10rags]

I bearly remember the names of the ones I've watched over the years. Corozon Savaje? was a historical & MariMar with a young Thalia. There was another who's title I forgot with serious male exposure and a fellow a girl & a boat. My then young son would watch with me...I probably provided him with lots of stimulus for wet dreams with the half clothed females. He loves Latina women, and swears he was latino in a previous life. The good news is he likes curvy women not the skinny ones!

I don't speak spanish but can spanglish with my client's. Watching the novellas helped me with cadence and pronuncation...the tapes are too European! I don't know the soap you have mentioned with the eye candy but I'm gonna look up the channel & time...I have Telemundo and Univision!

Edited by 10rags, Mar 8, 2004 @ 6:56 PM.

[TheCustomOfLife]

The one that was creepiest for me was Kassandra. I can't remember the storyline that well, but I think it was about gypsies who wandered through Venezuela in the 1960s. The gypsy girl got pregnant by a rich man, they left, and the daughter basically lived out the life story of her mother.

[10rags]

Oh my I remember Kassandra. It was sorta creepy at points but it was easy to follow.

[liliymichilly]

Hello, first time TWoP here so if i make mistakes on writing a post please let me know.

I grew up watching telenovelas, it was like family hour where everyone in the house gathered around the tv and watched mostly Mexican soap operas. my family was so invested in these novelas and talked about for hours. now i watched mexican soap opera just to laugh at the bad acting.

someone mentioned earlier that mexican soap operas have the same plot. though i agree, I remember an exception to that. I forgot how it was called, I think it was called [/I] Alguna Vez Tendermos Allas[I] with Kate Del Castillo. I has so hooked to the unconventional plot and most all the characters were multi-dimensional and the music score was beautiful and haunting. Did anyone else saw it? It came out around 1998.

Enough of my blabber:)

Edited by liliymichilly, Mar 8, 2004 @ 8:53 PM.

[Prada]

HATED Betty La Fea...Everyone here in Puerto Rico LOVED it and I wanted to gauge my eyes out whenever I saw it. However, I did love Alondra, La Duena, Agujetas de Color de Rosa and I really can't remember which ones.

[TheCustomOfLife]

I know Maria Conchita Alonso and Salma Hayek were in telenovelas. Which ones, though?

[Gemneye]

I never saw it but I think the novela that Salma Hayek was in was called Teresa. She starred opposite Luis Miguel IIRC.

While a lot of Mexican soap operas follow the same plot there are some great exceptions. I just get tired of the same damn plot where the beautiful young girl falls in love with the rich guy but because of class differences they always had obstacles in their way. (Although it never stopped me from watching any of Thalia's soaps) And of course there is the villainess that is in love with said rich guy and tries to make the poor girl's life a living hell. That is probably why I was so pissed when Telemundo stopped airing Solterita y de la Orden (a Columbian soap) because it centered on a young woman and her friends. And she was a 20-something and was focused on having a career and had a complicated love life. Kind of like a Spanish language version of Friends meets Sex and the City.

I must admit that I do love teen soaps like Muchachitas, Sonadoras, Amigas y Rivales and Primer Amor.

Edited by Gemneye, Mar 9, 2004 @ 2:10 AM.

[sjsufilmmaker]

He He I loved muchachitas and Agujetas de Color de Rosa. Just so you know there is a soundtrack for the novella Agujetas de Color de Rosa. I also loved Baila Con Migo. A good novella is like crack it slowly starts taking over your life. You find yourself rearanging your schedule and pissing off if someone interupts your novella. Not to mention I think for some reason the villans in novellas can be way more evil than the ones in American soap operas. (Not that American villans aren't evil.) Although sometimes I find myself watching novellas and snarking on them. But I can't help becoming nearly obessed when a good novella comes around. I even try and get relatives in Mexico to tell me what happens. A good one I catch every now and then is Clase 406 but it comes on in the afternoon so I don't get to watch it on a regular basis. But when I do its usually awesome. Does anybody here watch that one? What novellas are you guys currently watching? The last one I was into was
El Manantial. It was awesome. They main girl in that cried in like nearly every episode. I think Adela Noriega who played her. She is usually awesome. What soap actors and actresses do you guys like? Among my favorites are Alejandro Camacho
(The bad guy from Muchachitas), Thalia's sister ( I don't remember her name), Maurico Islas, Kate del Castillo, Erik del Castillo, the evil girl from El Manatial.

[10rags]

My first novella was from the mid eighties. It had a young man who was a guitar player and he marries his young pregnant girlfriend. He was shown trying to break into the club scene and she was dutifully waiting for him. The staging was poor, the lighting bad and the acting cheesy but the story rocked! ( I think the girl was the producers daughter.) It was early Univision.

[Prada]

Agujetas rocked. I was obssesed with it! But here in Puerto Rico they cut it short and ended it with Paola choosing her lawyer husband instead of Martin. It pissed me off.

Omg, all of Thalia's novelas are the same! Poor girl falls for rich guy, obstales happen, they love each other, she gets pregnant, he marries the bad girl, she becomes rich and inherets money and becomes a bitch, blah, blah, blah. We used to watch Marimar (I think) and we would make SOOO much fun of her wimp son Nandito. He was SOOOOO gay.

I just remembered when I was younger I was OBSSESED with Carrusel de Ninos and Quinceaneras (Thalia was in this).

[shinji12]

HELP!!! What was the name of the subtitled AZTECA TV soap that aired on Telemundo about 4 years ago?

I use to watch it on AZTECA TV when it first aired, after Sailor Moon of course. It had the hairy younger guy (always in white underwear, strange sight) and the older woman with three kids?

And how can no one mention XICA? Hello?!?!?! That was some fine work!

[Douggley]

Oh! I'm happy I found this thread.
Since I only have Univision at this point, I'm pretty limited on novela choices, but I adore Primer Amor. My favorite of all time, however, is a novela from about three years ago called Carita de Angel, about a little girl at a school run by nuns. All the nuns wear pink, and the little girl talks to the ghost of her dead mother, and her dad had a romance with one of the younger nuns and she was forced to kick the habit [pun alert] to be with him. Cute, cute stuff.

[jackiecarr]

I'm so glad there's telenovela thread! I started watching Pasion de Gavilanes on Telemundo soon after it started and I had no one to discuss it with. I've since slacked off since it comes on at 7 p.m. which is a bad time for me. Fortunately it's close captioned in English.
I was flipping across the channls one day and became entranced by Mario Cimarro who plays Juan. I've had a thing for Antonio Banderas circa Desperado- looking guys for a long time so I was in love. And it helps that he removes his shirt at least once an episode. Then I stopped watching for maybe a month or six weeks and the timeline was like a year later. Norma had had a baby, people were married to different people, etc.
I have to ask, do these shows just go on for years like American soaps, or is it a shorter run? I always see Telemundo commercials for new series, so I figure that they can't last that long.

[Gemneye]

jackiecarr to answer your question novelas have a pretty short life span. They aren't like American soaps that go on and last for a few months. Which is a system I like because it can keep things fresh. Can you imagine and American soap pulling off something like Uga Uga, El Clon or some other historical novelas.

Does anyone remember a novela with Natalia Oreiro called Muneca Brava? I just loved that one mainly because the protagonist wasn't freakin crying all the time. She actually had fun.

I love historical novelas like Corazon Salvaje, Xica, Amor Gitano and Alondra most of which are awesome. Plus Corazon and Alondra had Ana Colchero and she rocks in all of her roles.

I do wonder what everyone thinks of this trend of having so many Eastern European actresses starring in novelas nowadays. So many of them are blond and blue-eyed like Ana Laevska, Joana Benedek and Ludwika Paleta. I know this bothers some people because they say that this causes image problems among latinas.

[sjsufilmmaker]

Ludwika Paleta, Ana Laevska, and Joana Benedek are actually from eastern european decent. They were all born in latin american counties. At least Ludwika Paleta was born in Mexico. She was also a child actress (she was the snotty girl in CAROSEL). Besides when speaking of novellas there were already tons of image problems to begin with. For instance why is it that dark looking girls are always cast as servants or peasants. That is something that happens reguardless of blond and blue-eyed actresses. Besides people of latin decent can be blond and light-eyed. It all depends on what genes you get. The whole skin color thing is one of latin america's dirty secrets. Its something that people won't recognize as something that is wrong or discriminating. Lighter skinned people have always been cast in better roles in spanish television. I mean look at La India Maria, the last time I saw her she look rather light skinned in spite of the fact that she is supposed to be of indignous decent. Its something that is cultural and isn't limited to actresses of european decent. Well I'm done on my rant. And for the record its all good no matter what skin color you happen to be as long as you look hot on my television screen.

[10rags]

The historicals are usually well produced. The costuming and househould items blow my mind. I sorry, I don't remember the names at all. There was one set in Mexico with Indians and the setting was amazing. I know there was a catering wagon parked off screen but watching always took my breath away.

The color issue will always be with us. I'm black american & we cause most of of our problems as we try to out black each other. The indigenous plus european layered with the asian/middle eastern cultures make it all colored to me. I enjoy seing the Indian and black people represented. The new world hid a lot of families secrets.

[Jaguares]

The last one I was into was
El Manantial. It was awesome. They main girl in that cried in like nearly every episode. I think Adela Noriega who played her. She is usually awesome.

I. Loved. El Manantial. It was so addictive. It was amazing how suspenseful it was for a novela. The scenes between Alfonsina Valdes and Justo Ramirez/Margarita Ramirez always had me the edge of my seat. It was a little frustrating at times, though. Alfonsina just took so much with out slapping anyone. That's what I hate about female leads in novelas, they cry too much and don't slap enough. Although Alfonsina was better than most leading characters.

Usually if one has curiousity in watching a novela (you'd be surprised how many non-spanish speakers do. It's the over dramatic acting that pulls people in. It's hilarious yet gripping.) one should start with one with Adela Noriega (El Manantial). She knows how to pick them. I went to Mexico this summer and for those of you who like period novelas, there was one airing called "Amor Real," which Adela stars in. From what I managed to see, it looked pretty good. Its final episode supposedly pulled in gigantic numbers for Televisa.

Edited by Jaguares, Mar 14, 2004 @ 1:43 AM.

[Douggley]

I just found out that a girl from Gata Salvaje just got cast on Passions, and I'm excited to see what she can do in English.