Film Stuff

I guess since I'm here doing a film studies project, I should talk about film.  When people ask me why the hell I am here, I tell them about my project and here is what I have heard about Vietnamese films: boring, amateur, too long, not great, not exciting like Avatar, not progressive, and so on.  I should note that these are mostly young people (under 22).  So as you can see, Vietnamese cinema is not doing so well in their own country, especially with youth.

Nevertheless, I proceeded to find some of these films to actually see them.  Marking my mental map, I plot a path to 5 dvd stores/"professional" rip and burn DVD to see what films I can find.  First store was Fox Movies, a very highly rated store by http://newhanoian.xemzi.com/, a popular expat review website.  "Sorry, we don't have any Vietnamese films."  Hmmm....not a good start but it makes good business sense.  If locals dislike these films, why would expats want them?  Okay, so I proceed to the next stop, Hollywood DVDs.  I was having doubts that a store named "Hollywood" would carry Vietnamese films but it was a much bigger store than Fox.  So I go up to the counter and ask if they have any films and show them a list.  They stared at me strangely and after a mini-conference (Do we? was passed around), they gave a very weak "yes."  So we went up the stairs to the second level and in a small box on the ground was their Vietnamese collection (every wall was covered with burned copies of the latest films).  Out of my list of 10 movies, they found 2 but that is better than nothing.  Strange thing is that they had the entire collection of Doogie Howser MD for 465 K (24 dollar-ish), five copies of WWE Wresting, Lost season 5 but only 2 of my films.  Hmmm.

After that, I decided one more place would be good enough.  I visited Victory CD and they were really nice.  I gave them my list and they found 3 more movies PLUS called another store and had someone run it over - Good service in Vietnam!?!?  All in all, I got 8 movies (I brought some older ones just to watch) for 120 K (6 dollars).  Just FYI, Hollywood movies are about 30 K each if you want to watch Date Night or Hannah Montana.  Yes no pictures.