I just finished watching two propaganda movies tonight. Beginning of the Great Revival which was a chinese propaganda film celebrating the 90th anniversary of the communist party of China with a bunch of A-list stars and Courageous which was a religious propaganda flick. I feel brainwashed.
I've become very interested in seeing the Iranian film A Separation, but I'll have to wait for it to come to my hick state. I hope I'm not put on a terrorist watch list or get a rectal exam from the TSA next time I book a flight if I go see it. I've seen rave reviews, although I avoided reading anything detailed for fear of spoilers. My guess is that most of you probably haven't watched many films from Iran, but there are some magnificent directors from there who have won top prizes at film festivals for years, such as Kiarostami and Majidi. I'm not very familiar with the director of A Separation, Asghar Farhadi, but he seems to be highly regarded from what I've read. Iran and South Korea have both produced some incredible talent. I can recommend some movies from either country if anyone is interested in checking them out.
South Korea Here are a few to get started: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring Oasis Memories of Murder 3-iron Samaritan Girl JSA My favorite Korean movie is Oldboy, but that's as revenge oriented as one can get. I plan to watch Peppermint Candy next.
Memories of Murder may have the most mainstream appeal of those. It's a crime mystery with a decent amount of humor mixed in, which somehow works pretty well. I haven't talked to anyone who has seen it and disliked it. Something like Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring is admittedly more challenging and unusual, but I also think it's the best of the movies I listed. Oasis is also rather bleak, but even if you end up disliking the moving, it's worth it to see Moon So-Ri.
out of that list, I've watched jsa and memories of murder already. I got spring summer fall winter and spring but haven't been in the mood to watch it for awhile. I'll make note of the other ones. you watched chaser yet? I kinda liked that one. pretty brutal, but really intense. but I think the best one ive seen yet is The Man From Nowhere (ahjussi).
If you prefer to watch an english dub of a movie that is non-animation, you deserve to die. Horribly.
Alibris seems to have quite a few copies in a wide range of prices. Have you ever used this site? Pretty good for out-of-print books and harder to find DVDs, and sometimes the prices are better than Amazon's third party sellers. Anyone know why PVCF is cropping off the right hand side of posted images rather than resizing?
Generally I hate films with subtitles as they distract your eyes from the characters/action and you have to read while people waffle on in a foreign language. That said, I saw Kung fu hustle both dubbed and subbed and I preferred the subbed version.
I never had a problem with it. Subtitles are done in such a way that your eyes can just see the entire picture and not have a problem reading the lines. Keep in mind that subtitles are a normal thing in non-english speaking countries. English dubbed movies are quite horrible. Of course, imo, they're not watchable.. but if anyone prefers an english dubbed movie over the original audio track with subtitles, like I said, die. No worse way to ruin a movie for yourself.
Agreed. The only situation in which I prefer dubbing is old school Kung-Fu Theater movies from the 70s.
I usually end up having to watch foreign films twice. Once to read the dialogue, and a second time to actually watch what's going on.