DVD's
I can buy a DVD of any popular film for 6 or 8 RMB. That is at most $1. Sometimes it is a video of an actual movie screening, like the ones you can buy on the street in any major US city. Most of the time, though, they are copied from the actual DVD's themselves.
One of the problems with trying to buy legal DVD's in China is that when I go to Wal-Mart or Gome, the DVD selection is limited. Only the really big US movies are in the stores. The Chinese government has a quota of 20 foreign movies that can be released and distributed here as first-run in-theaters. I don't know if a similar quota isn't also imposed on DVD's, though it seems it. Most of the movies I want to see are not the REALLY big movies.
When they are, and I can find the properly distributed DVD in one of the mega-stores, they aren't available with any option in English. I find this amusing since I can go back to the U.S.and buy a copy of Farewell My Concubine or 2046 or any Chinese-language movie with various language options for dubbing and subtitles. I wanted to get another copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but I couldn't get it in English unless I bought it on the street. And I have to believe that somewhere in Asia multi-language DVD's are being sold, because some of the DVD's we've bought in the streets have options that we can toggle through to allow us to watch the movie in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Korean, etc. Same with subtitles.
The other problem I have had is that when I want to get a Chinese language movie, like 2046, I can't get it with English subtitles. That's been disapointing, too. Unfortunately, there isn't a big market among the expats for Li Gong or Zhang Yimou movies, so I can't even buy them in the streets.
Sometimes the movies we buy look like so real that it is hard to believe that they are actually copies. Disney movies that are copied usually bear a sort of watermark. We have a few that do not have this. In fact, Randy had bought a 72-disk boxed set of "Disney Classics" in anticipation of our arrival. The first few movies we watched out of the set, Winnie-The-Pooh is one that comes to mind, did not have the watermark. However, a few others have one, and one, The Lion King, will not show in English at all. And then we read the liner notes on the box. They are really too long for me to reprint here, but include descriptions for movies clearly not in a 72-disk set of Disney cartoons, like the Baron Von Muchausen and Mission Impossible. Maybe the pirated ones you buy in the streets in New York are like this, too. I've never looked too closely at them.
The way I have reconciled buying these movies is that 90% of them we own in the states already. Half of the remainder are ones that I have in my Netflix queue, and the balance are ones I wouldn't watch except for the fact that it only cost $1. And absolutely none of them will be coming back to the States.
One of the problems with trying to buy legal DVD's in China is that when I go to Wal-Mart or Gome, the DVD selection is limited. Only the really big US movies are in the stores. The Chinese government has a quota of 20 foreign movies that can be released and distributed here as first-run in-theaters. I don't know if a similar quota isn't also imposed on DVD's, though it seems it. Most of the movies I want to see are not the REALLY big movies.
When they are, and I can find the properly distributed DVD in one of the mega-stores, they aren't available with any option in English. I find this amusing since I can go back to the U.S.and buy a copy of Farewell My Concubine or 2046 or any Chinese-language movie with various language options for dubbing and subtitles. I wanted to get another copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but I couldn't get it in English unless I bought it on the street. And I have to believe that somewhere in Asia multi-language DVD's are being sold, because some of the DVD's we've bought in the streets have options that we can toggle through to allow us to watch the movie in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Korean, etc. Same with subtitles.
The other problem I have had is that when I want to get a Chinese language movie, like 2046, I can't get it with English subtitles. That's been disapointing, too. Unfortunately, there isn't a big market among the expats for Li Gong or Zhang Yimou movies, so I can't even buy them in the streets.
Sometimes the movies we buy look like so real that it is hard to believe that they are actually copies. Disney movies that are copied usually bear a sort of watermark. We have a few that do not have this. In fact, Randy had bought a 72-disk boxed set of "Disney Classics" in anticipation of our arrival. The first few movies we watched out of the set, Winnie-The-Pooh is one that comes to mind, did not have the watermark. However, a few others have one, and one, The Lion King, will not show in English at all. And then we read the liner notes on the box. They are really too long for me to reprint here, but include descriptions for movies clearly not in a 72-disk set of Disney cartoons, like the Baron Von Muchausen and Mission Impossible. Maybe the pirated ones you buy in the streets in New York are like this, too. I've never looked too closely at them.
The way I have reconciled buying these movies is that 90% of them we own in the states already. Half of the remainder are ones that I have in my Netflix queue, and the balance are ones I wouldn't watch except for the fact that it only cost $1. And absolutely none of them will be coming back to the States.
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