Paramounts new bilingual cover in Canada (2 Viewers)

[Lance Rumbolt]

Play do get there discs from Canada. I recently recieved a copy of Vanilla Sky from thgem with the dual langauge cover, yeh it looks a mess but I'm more concerned with the film so it doesn't bug me enough to want to change my supplier, £14.99 pounds sterling with free delivery.

Lance UK

 

[Neil Joseph]

Does anyone like this, the clutter?

I pose this to our French speaking friends also who may not want English on the cover. It seems to me that the studios are trying to please everyone, but failing to please anyone.

 

[Jay Mitchosky]

Does anyone like this, the clutter?
I pose this to our French speaking friends also who may not want English on the cover. It seems to me that the studios are trying to please everyone, but failing to please anyone.

I've seen a number of comments from French speaking members that support this. It looks terrible and they recognize that. My favorite: John Q. In both languages (even on the spine) John Q. :rolleyes

 

[Dave Gilbert]

John Q. In both languages (even on the spine) John Q.

Same with Blade II. They have a reversible cover where the front cover is actually all English, but they still have the spine printed with Blade II twice.

 

[Louis-Olivier]

Most french canadians don`t care about dual language COVER. What they do want though, is the description on the back to be in french, so they can have an idea what the movie is about (when renting a movie or something).

 

[Eric Sevigny]

Well I can't say it affects me much - I just buy my DVDs through Amazon.com now. I'm the kind of weird nut that likes Original Language for packaging when available (Japanese for Anime, French for french films and English for Hollywood movies). Although, since French is an official language in Canada, I can very well understand the idea behind it. It was just a question of time really - we already have food products and what not in bilingual packagings. Have in mind that still many people do not understand english - would it be fair to just ignore them? Even in a country where their language is an official one? Some of the responses in this thread are puzzling... I really do wonder where that language-hatred originates from.

And also, Star Trek is probably the best example of why translations suck so I wonder who will really miss the french tracks!

That I can completely agree with. I always chuckle when I hear "vitesse exponentielle" Problem is Trek has a lot of technobabble which doesn't translate well or at all, so they end up making another set of technobabble entirely!

 

[Tony Whalen]

I've been one of the more vocal ones about this particular topic...especially with the recent Pulp Fiction release, which I'm ordering from the US.
I wouldn't mind the bilingual covers if they didn't ruin the spines. That is the biggest annoyance to me. I could deal with text boxes on the back in French and English, but if the spine is wrecked for no reason (Blade II comes to mind) I get annoyed.
Don't even get me started about PF not including the Jack Rabbit Slims menu up here. Grrrrrr. Up 'til that happened, I was contect to print my own covers from dvdcoverart.com or other sites like it.
I do think that making Quebec part of R2 would be clever...that way the fracophones would get what they want, and theoretically everyone would be happy.

 

[Mark Palermo]

It's a question of aesthetics. DVD collectors want their packages to look nice. Nobody cares how cluttered the print is on a can of soup.

It was bad enough when they requested that English movies be dubbed in quebecois-french (aren't these people able to read subtitles?), but now DVD cases are defaced with packages that nobody seems happy with. For people in Canada who care about their DVDs, it IS a real problem.

Mark

 

[Eric Sevigny]

I agree it looks bad, and I don't like them - I'd like it better if the studios printed dual covers.

but now DVD cases are defaced with packages that nobody seems happy with

I am wondering who's fault it is though... The government for passing the law or the studios unwilling to please those who would like unaltered packagings? (Okay - the Gov. it is - but they had their valid reasons) I see no reason for Paramount not to go ahead and print french only packagings alongside english only ones - that would please everybody I'm guessing (I know there's the $$$ reasons there).

 

[Mark Palermo]

I would also be happy with different packages for different language (or, reversible covers are fine too).

I only brought up the point of Quebec requiring Quebec dubbed versions to illustrate that I feel their laws are going too far. I'd complain about other parts of the world, too, if they had laws ordering that movies be available in philistine versions (dubbed not subtitled). I'm not implying that the Quebecois are stupid (they aren't), but I feel many of their legalities are questionable when they negatively affect other Canadians--as these new DVD cases do.

Mark

 

[Brenton]

I think that people should call movies by their ORIGINAL title, even if they prefer to watch it dubbed. For instance, I would rather call The Brotherhood of the Wolf by its original title, Le Pacte des loups (unfortunately, if I called it by its original title, people wouldn't know what the heck I was talking about). Even if the average Quebecois can't read and understand English, they could at least learn how to pronounce the English titles. If they would follow this concept, there would be no need to bung up the spine.

 

[Juan C Toro]

I live in Toronto, and like the 99% of you out there, am not happy about this practice (Spy Games, The Man Who Wasn't There, etc.).

So I have the solution to this problem for the studios, so they can please the "language police", and the consumers who want the original artwork:

Keep printing and displaying the bilingual artwork on the cover, BUT, on the reverse side, print the English only cover (a.k.a. the American version). That way, the 1% of the buyers can leave the cover as it came from the factory, and the 99% of us will reverse it. A sticker explaining the reversible cover would be good as well... but we would figure it out.

I am so smart, sometimes I scare myself.

JC

 

[MichaelPe]

Juan, I love your idea and I think that it would solve most of the problems. Unfortunately, your solution only applies to DVDs available in plastic keep cases. So, the problem will still exist for DVDs available in cardboard cases (such as "The Sixth Sense: Vista" and the giant "Version française" banner).

 

[Martin Fontaine]

I think that people should call movies by their ORIGINAL title, even if they prefer to watch it dubbed. For instance, I would rather call The Brotherhood of the Wolf by its original title, Le Pacte des loups (unfortunately, if I called it by its original title, people wouldn't know what the heck I was talking about). Even if the average Quebecois can't read and understand English, they could at least learn how to pronounce the English titles. If they would follow this concept, there would be no need to bung up the spine.

Because if people knew the proper title, they'd see it in it's original language... I read in the paper that in 2001, 70% of all admissions in theaters were for french versions. The problem is, the marketing of movies here is backwards, there's the french version and for those who don't understand french, there's the english version! That the latter is the original and better version is something you are apparently not supposed to know... So you see signs in the metro advertising movies with ONLY the french title on it because if they'd put "v.f. de ..." on it, people would see it in english.

Of that 70% of people who went to see their movies in french I think the breakdown is something like this:

20% - don't understand english.

20% - The closest theater to them only play french versions and won't drive an extra 3-4km to see it properly in a better theater.

15% - I don't want to do the additionnal effort in listening to a movie in what is my 2nd language.

15% - My girlfriend/boyfriend doesn't understand english, and I'm so stupid that I believe that seeing it in french is the same movie anyway so I waste the movie because of her. (Those who went to see the movie a 2nd time in french when they saw it correctly the first time don't count.)

 

[Louis-Olivier]

For those who think Quebec should be included in R2. It wouldn`t work at all Since the R2 French Dvds are encoded in PAL and the tvs here are NTSC.

The following is a reply to Martin Fontaine.

While it is true that at dvdenfrancais.com some people prefer to "watch" movie in a dubbed french version, i, the moderator, have always said that movie should be watched with original language, with subtitles if needed. A year ago before i was moderator there was a heated discussion on this very subject.

The reason why i deleted the adress for the malata has nothing to do with being hypocrite or anything like it. Dvdenfrancais does not want to provide link to illegal material be it region free dvdplayer or bootleg material.

 

[Chris Bardon]

While I'd like to say that I don't care as long as I get the movie with all of the same extras, something about the bilingual covers just bugs me. I know that DVD has been a godsent for my relatives in quebec though, since renting and buying movies has become MUCH easier (before all of the english versions would be gone, but plenty of french left). The same thing would probably happen with separate covers.

 

[Martin Fontaine]

The reason why i deleted the adress for the malata has nothing to do with being hypocrite or anything like it. Dvdenfrancais does not want to provide link to illegal material be it region free dvdplayer or bootleg material.

What annoyed me most was that, the Malata is a perfectly legit machine, making it Region-Free does not require doing some illegal mods to it so therefore, there's nothing wrong with mentionning it and people already told how to get it online. What's the difference between writing the URL of an online store and the physical location of a B&M store? Other than it's sometimes more trouble to order something from the US than buy it at a local store, so I felt by trying to hide B&Ms carrying it you tried to just make it more difficult by making it more expensive because of shipping and exchange. And the other thing is that DVDEnFrancais constantly complains that Region 1 releases have only 2.0 french tracks while the Region 2 has 5.1 and sometimes DTS. How can you recommand people to choose the R2 version and at the same time prevent them from knowing how to play these is just so inconsistant.

 

[RaulR]

Is there any way of knowing which future releases will contain these crappy bilingual covers? I pre-order a lot of DVDs from hmv.com and would like to save the trouble of having to return discs if I could know beforehand which ones they are and order those ones from the U.S. Does anyone know if "Beauty and the Beast" will have a bilingual cover?

And where's the cheapest site for a Canadian to order the 5-disc LOTR:FOTR with the cover "unmangled"?

 

[Jay Mitchosky]

Is there any way of knowing which future releases will contain these crappy bilingual covers?

Anything from Paramount, Alliance/New Line, DreamWorks, and Universal as far as I can tell. I now buy these only from the US, and only if non-marginal titles (which I would have gambled on locally if not for the covers).

 

[MichaelPe]

I pre-order a lot of DVDs from hmv.com and would like to save the trouble of having to return discs if I could know beforehand which ones they are and order those ones from the U.S.

Raul,
I'm a little surprised to read that you order from HMV.com. It has been my experience that they are always more expensive than their competitors. Since you're Canadian, I'd recommend the following websites to order DVDs from:
DVD Soon
Link Removed
A&B Sound
C&L Internet Club