Does anyone know of a reliable place I can watch movies online?

I've never found one for free.

Shit. The good news is I found a video rental store for a $1 a rental. I'm not sure if it's shit or not, but I'm going to visit on my next trip downtown. (Which may be tomorrow at my current rate of boredom).

It looks really shady which means either (1) a random and possibly interesting selection or (2) it sucks. But at the very least, I can pick out random Japanese films and watch them as practice.

Is there a good pay site? If the selection is good and it streams in Japan, I might consider doing it.

i know one. it's not always pristine Dvd quality but sometimes i get lucky like with Salt,You Don't Know Jack and The Experiment. I usually watch movies that won't come out here in Australia for a long time cuz there is a big chance the smaller films get straight to DVD release after it has run it's race in the U.S. (which is around 12-18 months). http://www.qualitymovies.tv/ try that.

just checked out some stuff from the library- gonna be spending this whole month getting caught up on all the films i should have watched years ago. got The Seventh Seal (gonna be my introduction to Bergman), Chungking Express (even the QT fan in me was annoyed to see "Quentin Tarantino's" really big on the DVD box while Kar-Wai got shoved in a corner... not QT's fault, its a marketing thing, but still), Throne of Blood, and Rules of the Game (my intro to Renoir)... both 8 1/2 and Stalker were checked out unfortunately. i also realized ive been listing Kurosawa as a favorite of mine despite only seeing one film (i love Ran so much that it didnt dawn on me that i hadnt seen any others, i just associated AK with making one of my top 3 films of all time)

hopefully by Christmas i will have seen all these:
Stalker, Ivan's Childhood, Mirror, Nostalghia, The Sacrifice
Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Days of Being Wild, 2046, Happy Together
Throne of Blood, The Bad Sleep Well, Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Rashomon, Yojimbo, High and Low, The Hidden Fortress
The Rules of the Game, The Grand Illusion
The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Persona, Fanny and Alexander
8 1/2, La Strada
Pickpocket, A Man Escaped

28 movies to watch in a month in a half... plus i'll probably throw in Hud/Cool Hand Luke/Slap Shot, Richard III (Sir Ian), and The Stepfather in there too.

If the Redux version of Apocalypse Now trimmed the French plantation to its most evocative essence, it would honestly be my favorite movie ever. But man does the full thing slow things down so much that I end up preferring the more oneiric theatrical cut.

i know it's small but my favorite part of apocalypse now is the sound bit in the very beginning before the this is the end scene. Idk why but that shit turns me on like none other

Check out www.stagevu.com
It can take a while to download, though.

I agree that the redux version of AN drags a bit.

If you want a legal place to watch movies, The Internet Archive (their featured films collection is here) is pretty cool for public domain movies. They don't have alot, but they do have a bunch of great movies like "M" and "The General" up (Wikipedia lists a few of the major movies they have here) up for viewing.

Do not watch movies on the internet archive or from a public source even if the film is public domain. Often times the translation is shitty, it's in the wrong aspect ratio, displayed at the wrong framerate, reels are in the wrong order, or scenes are missing. Basically, unless you have Netflix, don't stream movies online, and even then downloading AVIs is preferable. Streaming video often fucks up and adds jitters to the panning. Watch movies properly, you're doing yourself a favor.

All this is true. But I'm trying to watch movies here while I'm in Japan without going broke. I'm not even sure netflix streams over here.

Yeah, I know. The best version of The General they have has no score. Fuck that shit. But its the only place that has a version of "Broken Blossoms" that's any good.

Also, this is going against what Dreww said, I but mentioned this in the Kurosawa thread, and it possibly bares repeating here



So if you have no problem watching it what I assume isn't as good of a bitrate as it could be and possibly with not as good subtitles (only watched like a minute just to see if it was for real) go ahead and watch it immediately.

Why is Pixar spending money on a Cars 2?

Why?

I'd rather have an Incredibles or even Bug's Life 2, and hell, a Finding Nemo 2 seems downright warranted. I've heard their working on a Monsters Inc 2, which sounds good at first until you remember how the first film ended. I can understand why they aren't getting sequels for the great Wall-E, Rattatoulie and Up because they just don't seem sequelly. I'll admit that Cars seems sequely, but only in the sense that it was overly commercialized shit and most sequels are also usually overly commercialized shit. Really though, it's sad to see there seems to be a dearth of promising NEW ideas.

Cars is the only one i havent seen, but i've heard its underrated (some of the cast members involved tend to negatively bring down opinion on it unfairly, or so ive heard)... that said, they've been 100% so far, so i wont doubt them.

also, its not like Pixar has fallen into the traps that most sequels fall into, so far at least. only 2 sequels so far and they are two of its strongest films wouldnt you say?