A $6 Day at the Movies
May. 16th, 2009 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azuriteI didn't want to be stir-crazy today, so I went to the movies. It was a choice between "17 Again," "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," or "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past." Opting for the chick-flick that I figured I'd never be able to see with someone else, I went for a showing of
"Ghosts of Girlfriends Past." Like some reviews said, Michael Douglas kind of stole the show. I was concerned that Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner wouldn't have ANY chemistry, but given McConaughey's character (a playboy, more or less), they pulled it off splendidly. I thought it was adorable how the same girl who played Jennifer Garner's younger self in "13 Going on 30" did the same thing for this movie. I suppose she really does look like Jennifer Garner when she was younger!
Next up on my movie watch list: The Brothers Bloom, Public Enemies, My Sister's Keeper, Terminator: Salvation, 17 Again, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Star Trek (on Wednesday with Baba and Grandpa!). Obviously in no particular order....
I was able to see the movie and enjoy a small popcorn, candy, and drink for about $6! I returned some of my textbooks yesterday (several books netted $45, which is not nearly what I bought them for, but you take what you can get, right?) and I returned a Victoria's Secret bra that didn't fit AT ALL. So I ended up with only $5 actually spent today: I brought $20 with me and "spent" exactly that, but I got around $14 back, hence a $6 movie day!
There's a store at the mall where the Shoe Pavilion used to be. It used to be just a small "hole in the wall" sort of store, with a small selection of anime DVDs, models, and a few "Ichiban-kan" style home items and school supplies. It expanded, and now has about six purikura machines, Keyboard Mania and DrumMania 3rd Mix, and a few other games, along with a bigger selection of anime DVDs, manga, models, and housewares. But...I still won't shop there because their stuff is pirated. I feel kind of awful every time I walk in, hoping I'll find something that I'll like enough to buy. I want the store to stick around, because there aren't enough stores of that kind in this area. The people are nice, but I just can't condone the used-looking, second-hand (maybe), pirated stuff they sell! I'm always halfway tempted to ask them about it, or to ask the manager, or to maybe go to the mall manager, but that seems so stupid.
Fact is, a lot of places do it, even those with the "legit" air, like the stores in Japantown. I'm kind of ashamed that, with a fairly strong suspicion that the Sailor Moon DVD boxed set I got at Japan Video was bootleg, I still bought it. Ever since then, I'm more careful with what I buy, whether it's online or at stores/conventions. And I'd rather not see stores marketing themselves as places to get that kind of stuff for cheap when the fact is, it's crappy-quality bootleg. Yeah, it sucks that there are no official licensed copies of "Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon" around, and I realize that not everyone can download torrents or even watch streaming video, but you have to draw the line at doing something illegal.
Of course, I could be completely wrong. I used to think that if I saw an "All-Region" DVD, it meant it was fake, hands-down. But that's not true: you don't always need the hardware to be special or modified to watch something "out-of-region." A perfectly legit Sarah Brightman DVD I bought in Japan was all-region. It's meant to be so it can be sold around the world without reprint issues. While it's cool and probably convenient, it's not like Sarah Brightman is losing money by not having region encoding on her DVDs. I doubt sales of her DVD are as massive as, say, Death Note on DVD. If she does have pirating concerns, they're probably not big enough to warrant issuing region-specific DVDs. I'm guessing anime and manga companies can't afford to think that way, especially when there have been companies pirating this kind of stuff for at least a decade. So I figure, if it's All-Region and has Chinese AND English subs and I haven't heard about a license deal, or I have and it looks completely different, it probably is a bootleg. Nothing I've seen in the store, "Sugoi Life" looks legit, and it just makes me sick enough to not want to shop there. It's sad, because otherwise I'd be in there a lot more often, supporting the store in this region and the nature of the items.
Anyway, it's good that "summer's" officially begun. I still don't know for sure what I'll do or where I'll go, but it'll be experiential, like always! :)
"Ghosts of Girlfriends Past." Like some reviews said, Michael Douglas kind of stole the show. I was concerned that Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner wouldn't have ANY chemistry, but given McConaughey's character (a playboy, more or less), they pulled it off splendidly. I thought it was adorable how the same girl who played Jennifer Garner's younger self in "13 Going on 30" did the same thing for this movie. I suppose she really does look like Jennifer Garner when she was younger!
Next up on my movie watch list: The Brothers Bloom, Public Enemies, My Sister's Keeper, Terminator: Salvation, 17 Again, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Star Trek (on Wednesday with Baba and Grandpa!). Obviously in no particular order....
I was able to see the movie and enjoy a small popcorn, candy, and drink for about $6! I returned some of my textbooks yesterday (several books netted $45, which is not nearly what I bought them for, but you take what you can get, right?) and I returned a Victoria's Secret bra that didn't fit AT ALL. So I ended up with only $5 actually spent today: I brought $20 with me and "spent" exactly that, but I got around $14 back, hence a $6 movie day!
There's a store at the mall where the Shoe Pavilion used to be. It used to be just a small "hole in the wall" sort of store, with a small selection of anime DVDs, models, and a few "Ichiban-kan" style home items and school supplies. It expanded, and now has about six purikura machines, Keyboard Mania and DrumMania 3rd Mix, and a few other games, along with a bigger selection of anime DVDs, manga, models, and housewares. But...I still won't shop there because their stuff is pirated. I feel kind of awful every time I walk in, hoping I'll find something that I'll like enough to buy. I want the store to stick around, because there aren't enough stores of that kind in this area. The people are nice, but I just can't condone the used-looking, second-hand (maybe), pirated stuff they sell! I'm always halfway tempted to ask them about it, or to ask the manager, or to maybe go to the mall manager, but that seems so stupid.
Fact is, a lot of places do it, even those with the "legit" air, like the stores in Japantown. I'm kind of ashamed that, with a fairly strong suspicion that the Sailor Moon DVD boxed set I got at Japan Video was bootleg, I still bought it. Ever since then, I'm more careful with what I buy, whether it's online or at stores/conventions. And I'd rather not see stores marketing themselves as places to get that kind of stuff for cheap when the fact is, it's crappy-quality bootleg. Yeah, it sucks that there are no official licensed copies of "Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon" around, and I realize that not everyone can download torrents or even watch streaming video, but you have to draw the line at doing something illegal.
Of course, I could be completely wrong. I used to think that if I saw an "All-Region" DVD, it meant it was fake, hands-down. But that's not true: you don't always need the hardware to be special or modified to watch something "out-of-region." A perfectly legit Sarah Brightman DVD I bought in Japan was all-region. It's meant to be so it can be sold around the world without reprint issues. While it's cool and probably convenient, it's not like Sarah Brightman is losing money by not having region encoding on her DVDs. I doubt sales of her DVD are as massive as, say, Death Note on DVD. If she does have pirating concerns, they're probably not big enough to warrant issuing region-specific DVDs. I'm guessing anime and manga companies can't afford to think that way, especially when there have been companies pirating this kind of stuff for at least a decade. So I figure, if it's All-Region and has Chinese AND English subs and I haven't heard about a license deal, or I have and it looks completely different, it probably is a bootleg. Nothing I've seen in the store, "Sugoi Life" looks legit, and it just makes me sick enough to not want to shop there. It's sad, because otherwise I'd be in there a lot more often, supporting the store in this region and the nature of the items.
Anyway, it's good that "summer's" officially begun. I still don't know for sure what I'll do or where I'll go, but it'll be experiential, like always! :)
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Date: 2009-05-18 04:44 pm (UTC)