Chinese James Bond

I'll post some more tales from China, but I wanted to share an amusing story about the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. This film is still in theaters and judging by reviews, a mediocre film at best. That being said, it's still Bond, so I wanted to see it.

In Manhattan, if I happen to treat Katie to a ticket, buy the tickets on Fandango, get some drinks and snacks in theaters, the total bill can run close to $40. Simply ridiculous. That's why when I had the chance to buy new Bond movie on a pirated DVD in Shanghai for the rough equivalent of $2.50, well, I jumped at the chance. I didn't really care if the quality was poor, since that money wouldn't even get my foot in the door in New York. Did I mention the movie was released a week ago in the United States?

I started watching the movie, and while the quality wasn't great, I wasn't complaining because of the absurdly low price. After an hour of smooth sailing, a scene repeated intself before going to the next action sequence. It was like I rewound the movie for five minutes and started watching again. No big deal, I can live with that.

A few minutes later, the English suddenly fizzled out and the dialogue was suddenly in Chinese. Regardless of what kind of audio settings I had, the movie switched back and forth from English to Chinese. Furthermore, when the movie was in Chinese, I added English subtitles--except these weren't normal English subtitles--they were in Chinglish, a delightful Chinese twist on the English language. For example, and English subtitle might read "It was Green who sold the nuclear warhead" while the Chinglish would be translated as "It was Blue who took the bomb battletop."

So for about 20 minutes, I had to deal with the three-headed-monster of poor picture quality, Chinese audio and Chinglish subtitles. Additionally, the movie was extremely difficult to follow, so I never really knew what was going on. But the funny thing is, none of it really bothered me since I spent less than $3 on the flick. So if anyone is interested in seeing the movie, I will gladly give you the pirated DVD, compliments of Shanghai's finest computer hackers.