Movie nights

One of the ironic things that has happened to me during my time in Shanghai is that I now have a chance to watch quite a bit of critically acclaimed movies. I have never been much of a movie buff. I know plenty of people who flock to the theaters to watch movies during its opening weekend. I also know people who subscribe to Netflix and developed a system where they burn copies of DVDs that they received and quickly turning the DVDs back to Netflix so they can get more. They don't even watch the movies right away; they are only interested in quickly amassing a large collection so they have their pick to watch on a rainy day. I know others who are addicted to pay-per-view movies. Well, I am not any of those people. I tend to watch movies once in a while when my friends or my wife are in the mood. I also tend to watch the Oscar nominated movies after they get nominated. So you can say that I am a passive movie fan. I enjoy a good movie just like the next person, but I rarely go out of my way to watch a movie.

Then I discover www.imdb.com and came to China. I don't think it will come as a shock to anyone that China probably has the biggest knock-off DVD market in the world. When you are in Shanghai it is difficult to pass a day without either passing some street vendor or a small shop peddling counterfeit DVDs. You can get nearly anything that is popular in the world of cinema or television. The selection is decidedly American-centric; although there is also quite a bit of Korean, Japanese, mainland Chinese, and Hong Kong movies and TV shows available as well.

My pattern of watching American TV shows now that I am in Shanghai has become buying a seasons worth of DVDs during the summer months after they go on hiatus. That is how I have been able to follow "Lost". Most of the highly rated American TV shows are available in this way. This also includes the classic TV shows like "Seinfeld", "Curb Your Enthusiasm" or "Friends". One season (24 episodes) of DVD quality video will be on 8 DVD disks costing 5-7RMB per disk (.65-.92). One season of compressed video files will fit on 2 DVD disks again costing 5-7 RMB. You do the math, it’s pretty cheap.

I recently started to check out the imdb top 250 of all time movies and realized that I may have seen about 50 of them. Then I realized that this was a good list for me to check out some good movies that I missed. Some of the DVD stores here in Shanghai have a pretty good collection of movies that include quite a number of the movies on this list. These stores tend to be in the areas that where foreign expatriates live. These are the people who drive the demand for these older movies. Lately, I had a chance to watch "Taxi Driver", "Fight Club", "Seven Samurai", "Reservoir Dogs", "Kill Bill", and "Leon" to name a few. I will probably try to check out some of the the top 10 movies soon, like "The Godfather", "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly".

Anyway, here is the list for those of you who have not seen it:

http://www.imdb.com/chart/top

At 5-7 RMB a pop for these movie classics, you just can't beat it.

BTW, Fight Club was a much better movie than I thought. I thought it was going to be one of those blood sport movies and wondered why it was on the list. Well now I know.