Analog Thoughts on a Digital Age

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Quotes from my DVD cover sheets

I own about a hundred pirated DVD's. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Before you condemn me to the depths of digital hell, let me tell you that I am also a movie fan. Die Hard. True to the bone. I am also not a rich person. And the movies I love are either not available locally even if I turn over the racks and raid the stockrooms of the most popular video stores or are simply not within my price range. Blame it on the economics. The owners of all the major film outfits in the United States and Europe are not losing money. They're just not getting added revenue. They make enough money in the homebase and just get as few extra dollars with their overseas releases. Call it poetic justice. Call it a lame excuse. I want my movie.

Having said that here is one thing about piracy I enjoy just about as much as the movies themselves....the sheet covers!!

Since it's pirated. These guys (probably Chinese or Malaysian dudes in a stock room with little or no English) don't really need to be writers and journalists to be able to write the blurbs on the DVDs cover sheets. Actually, they dont write them at all. They just copy them off the internet or on the DVDs original sleeves. A lot of these blurbs aren't exactly praising the movie, especially the critic's remarks found in the internet. But they put them there anyway. I guess they do that to make the discs look more "authentic". It doesn't bother the buyers a bit, though. People still buy the movies even though the main review on the front cover says " A Shameless Waste Of Film!" or "Time Well Wasted...".

Here are some of the ones that I own. I tried to take the best possible images I could produce with my camera phone. I apologize for some blurry images. I'm too stingy (prounced "poor") to bet myself a digital camera.

THE HOME TEACHERS


I have to admit, this movie wasn't that great. What got my attention when I saw this DVD in angeles was its blaring headline review blurb...


It turns out, when I researched this movie's review in imdb.com, this exact same blurb was one of the really scathing negative reviews by and imdb user. This led me to the conclusion that the pirates get this info from imdb.


JSA(Joint Security Area)


I was pretty excited when I found this Korean classic in the asian movie pile (when I say "pile" imean "PILE" !), so I got it right away. It was a while before I discovered the little error they made on the casting credits on the back.



It says "Set Decorator: MARK RUFALLO".

Wow! Mark must have been experiencing hard times back in 2000, he had to take up a job in Korea as a set decorator. Now that he's a big star and all, I guess just looks back at that as a "stepping stone".


SAINTS and SOLDIERS


The sacrifices made by the soldiers in the Second World War is still felt in our time. It is proper that we give them proper homage. Saints and Soldiers is a storey about five brave Allied force soldiers who crossed enemy lines to bring important info that could bring down the Fuhrer's reign. Here's the blurb...

In case you can't read it, it says, "THE HITLER'S FIVE BRAVE SOLDIERS".
Nice!


COLD MOUNTAIN


For once, they should put reviews like this on original DVD's because in this case..It's true.


The "bore"-fest which was Cold Mountain contained just as much excitement as a glass of water. The review on the back describes the movie to a T. Why I bought this DVD? The fonts on the front cover were in gold leafing. Very rare in fake DVD's. How's that for being a critic?


PASSION of the CHRIST


Now this one was the best blurb I saw so far. I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I saw what these bozos did with the most controversial movie of the year.


What sick mind would think that PASSION was "Absolutely Hilarious!"? Imagine a guy sitting in the theater watching Jesus getting whipped with the metal shard scourge laughing his butt off. He'd be dragged out of the theater in seconds, at least in this country. I'd like to see that happen, though. Now that would be funny.

I'll see if I have more to add i in the future. Hopefully then I'd have a beter camera.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

hilarious!!! but i couldnt understand one of the blurbs in saints and soldiers-hundun

1:19 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

cool entry! - franch

3:26 PM

 

Post a Comment

<< Home