THE CRAP I'VE BOUGHT: A Tale of the Angry Home Theater Enthusiast - Page 2

The movies themselves aren't crap. They're just movies I've got nothing out of yet. So they're just "crap I bought".

I also have a 30" Samsung widescreen CRT TV. It's 2 feet thick, and probably weighs 200-300lbs. I paid $999 for it about 5 years ago. It's being handed down to my Mom as soon as I can get someone to haul and help pack it.

You can't just go buying American discs of foreign films without reading several reviews first, because they seem to get fucked up at least half of the time. I'm going to set aside Miramax-style hatchet jobs completely, as those DVDs might be horrendous bastardizations of the films, but they were mostly competent presentations of those bastardizations. I'm just talking totally defective merchandise here.

GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE - the first Dreamworks DVD had closed-captions instead of subtitles; it was recalled and replaced with a version that has proper subtitles but breaks the subtitles on the commentary by taking out the text identifying which person is speaking. To their credit, they get points for antagonizing the typical dipshit anime fanbase by not providing an English dub for this extremely talky film.

THE NEST - Lionsgate's DVD has captions instead of subtitles, naturally it was never recalled or reissued. As if to demonstrate how much of a shit Lionsgate gave about this awesome film, in the credits at the end of the trailer (see above link), the film's original French title NID DE GUEPES is listed as a cast member.

TWO TIGERS - This lackluster Shanghai-filmed modern-day throwback to the golden era of 70s Italian sexploitation lacks any translation for a handful of Mandarin-language sequences. It has English subtitles... but only for the sync-sound English language scenes that make up the bulk of the film. Another quality DVD from Lionsgate.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA parts 1 through 3 - Sony's DVDs of the first three entries in this 7 film series* are merely the same awful 4:3 letterboxed masters used for the original Megastar Hong Kong DVDs - which were then converted by Sony to 16x9, resulting in them looking even worse than before. They have the clean mono sound lacking from those early 5.1 remixed "echo chamber" Hong Kong discs... but the picture quality is unwatchable so it doesn't really matter. Those jagged edges and blown-out highlights in the linked trailer above - that's not YouTube, that's really how these DVDs look. Maybe they'll do a remaster based on Fortune Star's new HD tran- oh, who the fuck am I kidding? It's Sony.


*IRON MONKEY counts as a prequel, as indicated by the Chinese title which translates as IRON MONKEY: THE YOUNG WONG FEI-HUNG - though Miramax did their damnedest to eliminate that aspect of the film in their cut. Anyway, people need to stop calling it a trilogy. It isn't.

I had the same TV. I sold it to a friend when I got my new Sony. That was a great TV, though. It's a shame that you can't make a HD CRT more than 30 inches (or so) because the picture is great--nothing produces true blacks like a CRT!

I bought the 2003 Sony DVD of Ringo Lam's Full Contact for $20 when it first came out. I was incredibly excited because prior to that I had a $40 VHS tape from Tai Sing that looked like crap, but that I watched endlessly in high school (a wonderful Xmas present, thanks Ma). I got it home and immediately noticed something off about the Cantonese track. Where was the fucking canto-rock music? This film is not the unltra violent bullet fest that many make it out to be, but it does contain some incredibly cheezball music that gives a certain camp value to all the melodrama. Without it everytrhing just felt flat and dull. Out of curiosity I switched over to the English dub and there the songs were in all their bizarro glory. But if there is one thing I hate it's a dubbed Chow Yun Fat.

I had a similar (though infinitely worse) experience when I purchased City on Fire. My Tai Sing VHS wasn't even letterboxed, clipping the mangled subtitles (hex errors?) on the right and left. I eagerly snatched up the Dimension DVD when it went on sale in the used bin. If you have not seen this version of City on Fire, DON'T. Re-edited and dubbed with new soundtrack music (deleting the Christmas jingle heard as the thieves escape the robbery as well as some truly strange Cantonese Blues during a montage, to name two instances). And so I was introduced to the loving care with which the Weinsteins treat their Asian releases.

I also got a Turbo Grafx-16 w/ CD-ROM drive. Wanted to be different from the kids with their fancy Sega Genesis(es?). Bonk never really gained the pop culture resonance of Sonic the Hedgehog, did he?