Lately I have been taken with watching foreign films. Some of them are ones I have seen before, but most of them have been new ones to my collection.
Unfortunately many foreign films are not available in Region 1 (or NTSC) format. If you are lucky enough to know how to rip a DVD and watch it on your computer then you are able to watch them, however most DVD players sold in the United States are region locked. If you use a Mac then you can change the region encoding on the DVD player application, but only five times, which makes it damned inconvenient. If watching them on your computer isn’t working for you then take a look here for some region-free DVD players.
Here are a few of the ones that I have screened over the last few weeks:
- Raise the Red Lantern ( Amazon – IMDB )
- Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker ( Amazon – IMDB )
- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ( Amazon – IMDB )
- The Irene Huss crime series from Scandinavia ( Amazon – SF International )
What are some of your favorite foreign films?
Most of Akira Kurosawa, but especially Yojimbo; Iron Monkey, Drunken Master 2, Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films, especially Kiki’s Delivery Service; The Triplets of Belleville (trippy!), Onibaba, Lagaan, Cocteau’s La Belle et Le Bete, and The Bride with White Hair, among others. We read a lot of subtitles.