5 ms·

A good friend of mine _wink_ has been a pirate since the golden age of IRC. I, uh He, always said he'd pay for digital content when they made distribution digit

by Pigo 10y ago

A good friend of mine _wink_ has been a pirate since the golden age of IRC. I, uh He, always said he'd pay for digital content when they made distribution digital. And when they did, I was happy to start paying for it. I was happy to have every King of the Hill on someone else's hard drive finally. Then the price for playing by the rules kept going up and up. Meanwhile there was less and less, and less, I cared to see. I can't even think of the last movie I actually itched to see. Maybe I've gotten old and don't have time to search for diamonds in the rough, but I don't see any more movies like Oh Brother Where Art Thou or Fight Club or Snatch that I can't get tired of. They can't cry poverty when every time Adam Sandler squeezes one out it makes $75 million. I know creative accounting makes it seem like they break even, but I call BS on that. If companies besides Pixar would actually pay for writing that moves people, their wallets would come with them.

tajen 10y ago
In Europe we get blockbusters with a delay (4 to 8 months), so the choice is, either you pirate now, either you go watch it in theaters in 6 months, either you pay for the DVD-with-unskippable-ads next year. Dumbed-down movies are also a result of trying to conquer worldwide markets with massive social inequality, from Brazil to Philippines. You need a movie that everyone can understand, including partly-illiterate people and people with various cultural backgrounds (try the same facial expression in 15 languaages and you'll run into constraints). And you also need to abide by China's policy. Result: The lowest common denominator, but distributed in 158 countries. Which is sad, because we'd prefer to see movies with half the production costs and a good scenario.
- mrec 10y ago
  > either you pay for the DVD-with-unskippable-ads Blu-Ray seems to have avoided this slide into the adware sewer so far, which surprises me a bit. Maybe there's language prohibiting it in the spec, I dunno. They're not significantly more expensive than DVDs any more, either. Unfortunately the content industry seems to be winning the war on ripping for BDs, so I've had to stop buying them for the time being.
- avar 10y ago
  To add to that, in large parts of Europe it's impossible to find showings that aren't dubbed, or don't have subtitles. Dubbing ruins the movie entirely, and I find that I can't watch subtitled movies at all, I get obsessed with both listening to the dialog and comparing it with the translation. Around here it costs me at least $300 to see a movie in its original unaltered format when it opens in theaters, i.e. a round-trip flight to the UK + hotel, so I just don't go.
  - nsxwolf 10y ago
    I can't stand subtitles if I don't need them. Sometimes a video has captioning on by default, and I find I am totally unable to NOT read them. No matter how hard I try to ignore them, I end up spending all of my time staring at the captions and not seeing the actual video content. And when they are useful to me, like an english translation... why doesn't anyone put the captions near the speaker's mouths, so I can read and see what's going on at the same time?
    - bad_user 10y ago
      Having grown with subtitles for all movies I watched since childhood, I think subtitles are the best compromise and no, I don't feel the need to keep reading if I understand the dialogue. Don't know how to explain it, it's very automatic. For me it's dubbing that's absolutely awful, because I want to hear the real voices of the actors, plus I learned English and a little Italian and French by watching movies with subtitles. I don't understand countries where dubbing is the norm, I hope it never catches on in my country.
      - avar 10y ago
        I also grew up with subtitles, and I agree they're the best compromise when you don't understand the dialog. But I never acquired the skill to ignore them once I understood what was being subtitled at a native level, and I really don't really understand how anyone could. The human vision is drawn to quick changes & movement, when you have an otherwise immobile scene that's mostly just dialog subtitles will pop in & out, I can't help but focus on them just like I would if something else suddenly popped into the scene. If you have words pop into your vision you also can't help but read them, at least I can't, subconsciously reading the translation and hearing the original version at the same time is really distracting. I found the only way to deal with them was to position myself behind some sofa so I could only watch the top 3/4 of the screen, but of course you miss a big part of the movie that way.
- kh2ouija 10y ago
  Where in Europe is that? I live in Eastern Europe and we get most blockbusters in theaters the same day as US release date.
- mvindahl 10y ago
  > DVD-with-unskippable-ads A pet peeve of mine. Fortunately, according to my religious beliefs, there is an extra circle in hell which addresses the issue. As hell goes, it's fairly benign, no fire or sulphur or pointy things, more like an open-plan office. The time that you spend there is equivalent to the cumulative amount of time that you made other people waste during the span of your earthly existence. There are the small-time offenders, spending a few hours in limbo due to the queues which we skipped or the prank calls which we made during adolescence. Also, there are the big fish. Like people who forced broken processes and flawed IT-systems upon large corporations, and are now spending decades trying to file requests of a computer mouse to IT departments in Kuala Lumpur, or filling out self-evaluation questionnaires comprising 380 questions. The DVD people are there too, each with a TV set. Watching, in seemingly endless loops, the same anti-piracy alerts and ads for Barbie films designed to lower your IQ. How long have they been here, and how long will they stay? No one knows. Hey, there's another anti-piracy warning. Happy times.
omegaham 10y ago
Yep. There have been a whole bunch of times where my fiancee has said, "Let's go see a movie." We then spend half an hour looking at trailers, conclude that everything looks stupid, and Google "Best movies of `year`." I drink a few beers, she enjoys wine, we relax with a great movie. Every once in a while, I'm willing to watch a movie in theaters, but it doesn't happen very often.
- thirdsun 10y ago
  Ah, the good old year end list marathon - Same thing that happens here. Due to this and many other reasons, I haven't set foot in a theater for a good decade.
  - Pigo 10y ago
    I have found a few decent low budget horror movies and comedies through lists. But it's work to find lists, gauge quality through reviews, and then watch 10 trailers to decide if any of them are worth a shot.

by Pigo 10y ago

tajen 10y ago

In Europe we get blockbusters with a delay (4 to 8 months), so the choice is, either you pirate now, either you go watch it in theaters in 6 months, either you pay for the DVD-with-unskippable-ads next year. Dumbed-down movies are also a result of trying to conquer worldwide markets with massive social inequality, from Brazil to Philippines. You need a movie that everyone can understand, including partly-illiterate people and people with various cultural backgrounds (try the same facial expression in 15 languaages and you'll run into constraints). And you also need to abide by China's policy. Result: The lowest common denominator, but distributed in 158 countries. Which is sad, because we'd prefer to see movies with half the production costs and a good scenario.

mrec 10y ago
> either you pay for the DVD-with-unskippable-ads Blu-Ray seems to have avoided this slide into the adware sewer so far, which surprises me a bit. Maybe there's language prohibiting it in the spec, I dunno. They're not significantly more expensive than DVDs any more, either. Unfortunately the content industry seems to be winning the war on ripping for BDs, so I've had to stop buying them for the time being.
avar 10y ago
To add to that, in large parts of Europe it's impossible to find showings that aren't dubbed, or don't have subtitles. Dubbing ruins the movie entirely, and I find that I can't watch subtitled movies at all, I get obsessed with both listening to the dialog and comparing it with the translation. Around here it costs me at least $300 to see a movie in its original unaltered format when it opens in theaters, i.e. a round-trip flight to the UK + hotel, so I just don't go.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  I can't stand subtitles if I don't need them. Sometimes a video has captioning on by default, and I find I am totally unable to NOT read them. No matter how hard I try to ignore them, I end up spending all of my time staring at the captions and not seeing the actual video content. And when they are useful to me, like an english translation... why doesn't anyone put the captions near the speaker's mouths, so I can read and see what's going on at the same time?
  - bad_user 10y ago
    Having grown with subtitles for all movies I watched since childhood, I think subtitles are the best compromise and no, I don't feel the need to keep reading if I understand the dialogue. Don't know how to explain it, it's very automatic. For me it's dubbing that's absolutely awful, because I want to hear the real voices of the actors, plus I learned English and a little Italian and French by watching movies with subtitles. I don't understand countries where dubbing is the norm, I hope it never catches on in my country.
    - avar 10y ago
      I also grew up with subtitles, and I agree they're the best compromise when you don't understand the dialog. But I never acquired the skill to ignore them once I understood what was being subtitled at a native level, and I really don't really understand how anyone could. The human vision is drawn to quick changes & movement, when you have an otherwise immobile scene that's mostly just dialog subtitles will pop in & out, I can't help but focus on them just like I would if something else suddenly popped into the scene. If you have words pop into your vision you also can't help but read them, at least I can't, subconsciously reading the translation and hearing the original version at the same time is really distracting. I found the only way to deal with them was to position myself behind some sofa so I could only watch the top 3/4 of the screen, but of course you miss a big part of the movie that way.
kh2ouija 10y ago
Where in Europe is that? I live in Eastern Europe and we get most blockbusters in theaters the same day as US release date.
mvindahl 10y ago
> DVD-with-unskippable-ads A pet peeve of mine. Fortunately, according to my religious beliefs, there is an extra circle in hell which addresses the issue. As hell goes, it's fairly benign, no fire or sulphur or pointy things, more like an open-plan office. The time that you spend there is equivalent to the cumulative amount of time that you made other people waste during the span of your earthly existence. There are the small-time offenders, spending a few hours in limbo due to the queues which we skipped or the prank calls which we made during adolescence. Also, there are the big fish. Like people who forced broken processes and flawed IT-systems upon large corporations, and are now spending decades trying to file requests of a computer mouse to IT departments in Kuala Lumpur, or filling out self-evaluation questionnaires comprising 380 questions. The DVD people are there too, each with a TV set. Watching, in seemingly endless loops, the same anti-piracy alerts and ads for Barbie films designed to lower your IQ. How long have they been here, and how long will they stay? No one knows. Hey, there's another anti-piracy warning. Happy times.

omegaham 10y ago

Yep. There have been a whole bunch of times where my fiancee has said, "Let's go see a movie." We then spend half an hour looking at trailers, conclude that everything looks stupid, and Google "Best movies of `year`." I drink a few beers, she enjoys wine, we relax with a great movie. Every once in a while, I'm willing to watch a movie in theaters, but it doesn't happen very often.

thirdsun 10y ago
Ah, the good old year end list marathon - Same thing that happens here. Due to this and many other reasons, I haven't set foot in a theater for a good decade.
- Pigo 10y ago
  I have found a few decent low budget horror movies and comedies through lists. But it's work to find lists, gauge quality through reviews, and then watch 10 trailers to decide if any of them are worth a shot.