Pirates of the Baltics
I recently read that a DVD store in Riga was fined a staggering 25,000 lats for renting out a pirate copy of "Les Triplettes de Belleville." Such a sum of money will no doubt have put the store straight out of business, and then some. These kinds of stores do not exactly rake it in.
As someone who regularly watches rented DVDs, I know only too well that the practice of renting out pirate copies is still commonplace, despite a noticeable crackdown by the authorities.
I use my local store a lot (I won't say which one), and am very friendly with the people who work there, who are nice enough not to fine me when I always return my films a day or two late.
But many was the time I rented a film, excitedly stuck it on, only for a huge sign to suddenly appear on the screen, boldly proclaiming: "THIS IS THE PROPERTY OF MIRAMAX" or "FOR SCREENING PURPOSES ONLY."
That's annoying enough, but it's even worse when you watch a film that was simply copied straight out of a movie theater auditorium. Such films are dark, grainy and largely unwatchable, unless you don't mind the effect of the whole film being shot at nighttime.
But what really annoys me is the pitiable lack of good films that are available on DVD. It's nearly all Hollywood trite.
I once rented a Russian film that I had heard was very good. To my surprise, the case said that it had English subtitles. But when I put it on to watch it, I realized after about three minutes that the subtitles had been written by a friend of someone's uncle's neighbor's cousin. "Don't it on table put," said a character, and I ejected the film straightaway with a sigh.
No doubt the fact that a DVD store was fined so severely for renting pirate copies will have had all the other DVD stores doing some premature spring-cleaning. I only hope that they replace the many blank spaces on their shelves with some quality films.
