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Do you watch theatrical movies when travelling abroad?

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Do you watch theatrical movies when travelling abroad?

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Old 12-12-06 | 11:22 AM
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Do you watch theatrical movies when travelling abroad?

I admit that I do. Sometimes I don't feel like going to a club/bar at night and it might be too cold to be strolling the streets so I pop into the local movie house. I get a kick out of seeing how foreign theatres are different from the local cineplex. Different posters, trailers, the prevalence of alcohol in the theatre, etc. The experience of seeing a movie with a foreign audience can also be quite different. Off the top of my head, I've seen:

- various movies in London, UK
- Jurassic Park III in Florence, Italy (dubbed in Italian)
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in Paris, France (in Mandarin w/ French subtitles)
- Crash in Barcelona, Spain (dubbed in Spanish)
- Hostel in Prague, Czech Republic (in English w/ Czech subtitles)

I'm not fluent in Italian, French or Spanish but I had either seen these movies before or they were so simplistic (hello Jurassic Park!) that no translation was required. Watching Hostel was actually a lot of fun as the movie itself was filmed in and around Prague and the audience caught various in-jokes and locations that North American audiences wouldn't get. And the tiny movie house where I saw Crouching Tiger used a large white fabric sheet to project the movie against!

I also love seeing movies that don't get a theatrical release over here. I saw Audition and Ringu in London, for example.
Old 12-12-06 | 11:39 AM
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i have a few times. i saw jurassic park and batman returns in south korea while visiting relatives and some other movies in hong kong while visiting parents. it was interesting to watch movies with a foreign crowd because they don't get catch phrases or certain "american" humor. and there was no dubbing...just subtitles.

but if i'm going to another country for the sole purpose of traveling and being a tourist, then no, i probably won't visit a movie theater.
Old 12-12-06 | 11:46 AM
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I saw Return of the Jedi (2nd theatrical release) while on my honeymoon in Mexico, that's the only one for me since that is the only time I have ever been out of the country.
Old 12-12-06 | 11:51 AM
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I saw Meet the Parents while in South America. Some local friends wanted to go see it althought it had seen it already here in the states. The funny part was that I was laughing a good 5sec ahead of everyone else due to the subtitle delay.
Old 12-12-06 | 12:57 PM
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I lived in Russia for a few years in my early youth and I remember going to see "Free Willy" in a movie theater. If I remember correctly the dubbing was so bad that I could actually understand what was going on - you would hear the English dialogue, then a few seconds later a Russian voiceover would start.

More recently, on a visit to Prague in The Czech Republic I saw "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (in English with Czech subtitles.) I would have seen more movies during that trip had time and money (mainly the latter) permitted.

Last edited by Sondheim; 12-12-06 at 01:00 PM.
Old 12-12-06 | 01:59 PM
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The best movie I saw abroad was Memento two months before the Sundance US premier (four months before the US engagement)

Paris - Little Buddha (European cut)

London
- The Magdalene Sisters
- Miss Julie (with Peter Mullan and director Mike Figgis for a post screening Q&A)
- Human Rights Film Festival
- There's Only One Jimmy Grimble
- The Man Without a Past
Old 12-12-06 | 02:16 PM
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Saw Gladiator at the Coliseum in Oslo. That was kind of cool.
Assigned seating stands out as the biggest difference though.
Old 12-12-06 | 02:22 PM
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Very rarely. The last time I can recall was a number of years ago in London, where I took advantage of the opportunity to see SOLARIS (the original) on a big screen.
Old 12-12-06 | 02:31 PM
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I caught many of the latest Godzilla movies in Japan (none had English subs of course, except for one that I saw at the Tokyo Film Festival), along with the Japanese version of KILL BILL Vol 1. and a few other American movies. I'll tell you right now that the audience was infinitely more behaved compared to theatre audiences in North America these days, it was a delight. I also saw MARS ATTACKS in a huge theatre in Manila, Phillippines. It was a big old style theatre with an awesome balcony. Of course, I sat up there in the balcony (those tickets cost 60 cents instead of 50 cents. Great price for a first run film )
Old 12-12-06 | 10:47 PM
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I almost saw Chicken Run in Korea but the ticket price was $14 each.
Old 12-13-06 | 12:23 AM
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Originally Posted by starman9000
Assigned seating stands out as the biggest difference though.
I spent the past year in South Korea and that was the one major difference that I really didn't care for. It made it difficult if you were waiting on friends and didn't have the money to go ahead and buy their tickets or especially if someone wasn't sure if they were going to be able to make it or not. Beyond that, I enjoyed going to the movies over there as opposed to here in the States for a few reasons. They are very respectful of others around them during movies. No one talks once the movie starts (if you hear someone talk, it's almost always a foreigner), and even though you know that nearly every single person in there has a cell phone, you never hear one ring. Food at the theater is extremely cheap compared to here, and the quality tends to be better. I usually paid around $3.50 for a hot dog, a big tray of nachos, and a large drink. Ticket prices were pretty much the same, around $7.00 at night. And the employees are usually almost always on the ball about everything and are most often very nice to deal with.

Every foreign film I saw while over there was in it's original language with Korean subtitles, with the exception of most animated films. Besides the assigned seating, the one thing that really annoyed me was the delay in getting most movies compared to their U.S. release date. It's really difficult to hold off for 3-6 months (or sometimes much longer) to see a movie when there's a guy right outside the theater selling cheap, decent quality bootlegs for $2.00 each. But every once in awhile, a major movie would actually get released a day before the U.S. release, because new movies usually come out on Thursdays over there (which, do the time difference, was actually almost like 2 days ahead). Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Curse, M:I:3, and The Da Vinci Code are three that come to mind that were released a couple days ahead of the U.S.

But overall, I found each of my trips to the theater while I was there to be much better than just about any movie-going experience I've had here in America.
Old 12-13-06 | 06:25 AM
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I've seen a few movies in London during the times I have been there, but nothing in the other countries I have visited.

When I saw Jurassic Park, the theater assigned seats and an usher escorted my party to them. Definitely weird. That didn't happen the other times, though.

Last edited by SunMonkey; 12-13-06 at 06:28 AM.
Old 12-13-06 | 06:48 AM
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When I was an exchange student in the UK I saw Wargames. Later, when I lived in Germany for over six years, I saw many, many films in a number of countries, though mostly in Berlin. Odeon!
Old 12-13-06 | 08:42 AM
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Last time I went abroad for a while I saw Cube while traveling in Heidelberg. The movie did not get a release in Germany until 2000. The theatre was nice: couches.

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