Do you watch foreign films?

[dilute micro]

I don't put modern American films in the same class as the vintage ones. It's two different cultures. I can watch Audrey Hepburn or Laurel and Hardy all day but I can't with anything now.

 

[Dillinger4]

as that great foreign film Kings of the Road says 'the yankees have colonised our minds' (as they are driving along listening to some bit of rock n roll). American culture, and i think it is 'american' largely, rather than global, certainly dominates and uses its power to instill a particular way of seeing the world, and of thinking about it, but thats quite a long way from saying that the wearing of bleedin' baseball caps is an example of cultural imperialism. Why not use jeans as an example? Because there it is blatantly obvious that they are used, not cos we want to be yanks (tho of course there was an element of that in the old Eastern Europe), but because they are eminently practical.

As to watching 'foreign' films - frequently. Les Parapluies de Cherbourg last weekend, utterly wonderful film, of the kind the yanks forgot how to make, and the brits never knew.

*that* is what I was thinking with my first post. I didn't know quite how to put it.

when I say 'hollywood', I don't mean who is behind the films, who is financing them, but a particular model of film making, and narrative.

I think this says it better than I can:

According to that view, popular narrative films — especially those produced by “Hollywood,” a term that referred to the entertainment industry located in Hollywood, California, but also included popular narrative films produced on a similar model — inevitably supported social oppression by denying, in one way or another, its existence. Such films were taken to present nothing but fairytales that used the realistic character of the medium to present those imaginary stories as if they were accurate pictures of reality. In this way, the actual character of the social domination assumed by such a view to be rampant in contemporary society was obscured in favor of a rosy picture of the realities of human social existence.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/film/

So, if you think of it like that, films that people consider 'foriegn', like Amelie, would fall under the hollywood model, whereas say, a film like Half Nelson, wouldn't.

Maybe I still have not said what I mean. Hmmm.

 

[Kenny Vermouth]

I don't like films in foreign languages unless it's one I understand (Russian, Ukrainian).

And I don't like subtitles.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

at least they aren't as bad as dubbing

dubbing is one of my pet hates i understand it's uses in some areas (like films for really young kids) but it is so often absolutely dreadful

translating something is a tricky area

 

[cliche guevara]

I'd take "foreign film" to mean "foreign language film", and as such wouldn't class American (or any other English language) films as foreign.

 

[cliche guevara]

at least they aren't as bad as dubbing

dubbing is one of my pet hates i understand it's uses in some areas (like films for really young kids) but it is so often absolutely dreadful

translating something is a tricky area

I'd rather watch a subbed film that a dubbed film any day of the week. Dubbing almost always ruins films. There can be exceptions, for comedies or OTT films such as the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

 

[butchersapron]

at least they aren't as bad as dubbing

dubbing is one of my pet hates i understand it's uses in some areas (like films for really young kids) but it is so often absolutely dreadful

translating something is a tricky area

I've seen Russian films with the original sound still on, with a translator then speaking the words after them rather then being dubbed over the original track (and try that if you're watching a russian film with foreign language parts *and* subs). Total mess.

 

[belboid]

at least they aren't as bad as dubbing

dubbing is one of my pet hates i understand it's uses in some areas (like films for really young kids) but it is so often absolutely dreadful

translating something is a tricky area

I watched Persepolis dubbed the other day. As a cartoon, it should be workable, especially when they have damn good actors doing the dubbing (and they did!). But it was still pants, no matter how good the dubbers they are just never going to have anything like the same feeling for the role, or put enough expression or life into it. And so Persepolis was largely just flat, quite a disappointment.

 

[belboid]

I've seen Russian films with the original sound still on, with a translator then speaking the words after them rather then being dubbed over the original track (and try that if you're watching a russian film with foreign language parts *and* subs). Total mess.

aah, just like watching The Singing Ringing Tree then

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

There can be exceptions, for comedies or OTT films such as the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

shogun assassin is shit in comparison to the proper kozure ookami film series

 

[cliche guevara]

shogun assassin is shit in comparison to the proper kozure ookami film series

Don't think I'm even aware of it's existence. You got a link?

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I watched Persepolis dubbed the other day. As a cartoon, it should be workable, especially when they have damn good actors doing the dubbing (and they did!). But it was still pants, no matter how good the dubbers they are just never going to have anything like the same feeling for the role, or put enough expression or life into it. And so Persepolis was largely just flat, quite a disappointment.

this is what i feel

i have never listened to an anime dub that was better than the original

also often when they try to do clever stuff they make it worse

a good example was a trend in dubs to equate people speaking a kansai-ben with people speaking with a deep south accent (or a new york accent in some shows) however this got abused so you ended up with some charactors sounding like Scarlett o'Hara on crack

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Don't think I'm even aware of it's existence. You got a link?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_and_Cub

as for movies pirate bay has a copy...