Dubbing Iwo Jima

I tried to watch Letters from Iwo Jima on the American Movie Channel last night. It's an excellent flick, kind of depressing, but I was surly and out-of-sorts so it matched my mood.

I gave up after five minutes. The English dubbing was distracting; it was like watching a low budget kung-fu movie.

Okay, it's not accessible in Japanese, and who wants to pay attention to television by reading subtitles. The Lowest Common Denominator thing. But Eastwood made it that way, and for me that's an important part of the experience.

It's not like colorizing old movies; I never got too excited about that. Well, except for a few that were intentionally made in black and white for cinematic effect. Other than that, no big thing. In fact, my wife doesn't particularly like B&W movies; I couldn't get her to watch Casablanca until there was a colorized version.

But these people would colorize the beginning and end of The Wizard of Oz. I didn't need to blacken my mood even more by participating in the dumbing down of our culture.

You're probably thinking it's really not that important in the grand scheme of things. True enough. Maybe you're chuckling about my elitist attitude. Sure, call me an Obama.

So you probably won't mind when they colorize this movie too. After all, the muted color is too much like black and white.

(And yes, next time I'll rent the video-- not a pirated copy either)