Someone tried to steal my netflix disc out of the mail. But....

[orangewhip]

.....tossed it aside once they got it open and realized it was Stroszek. 


I was gone yesterday.  I came home this morning to find my newly arrived netflix envelope, not in my mail box...but in this little thing full of rocks next to the mail boxes.  When I picked it up I noticed the disc was missing.  "Fuck, they stole my rental!" I thought.  Then i saw the disc in it's sleeve laying separately in the same thing full of rocks.  Before I found the disc I was cracking up picturing some criminal cretin sitting down to watch a stolen dvd, and getting Stroszek.  That'll teach 'em.

[namethebats]

My disc of "Badlands" hadn't shown up after a week, so I went to the Netflix Web site and marked it as lost. The next day, the envelope showed up at my doorstep with the top ripped open.

[B_Buster]

I'm not surprised. Criminals aren't known for their sense of humor.

[iAmBaronVonTito]

luckily, i was sending my two discs back when they were stolen.  but that hindered my following discs from arriving.  needless to say, we were unaware of flagging dvds as 'stolen' until a year later...








...and we started a new account with our new address.

[dania]

That happened to me with 'Solaris'.  I got that same image of some hoodlum completely immersed in the intensity, eating popcorn, and then having a spiritual breakthrough.  The funny thing was, someone actually mailed it back after a week or two.  Who knew? 

[Bryan]

I've got a plot in a community garden this year. It's in kind of a shady part of town. My mother asked if I was worried about having my vegetables stolen. Could happen, I guess, but I have a hard time imagining people who are temperamentally inclined to steal getting too excited about romano beans, radishes and kale.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

I once found somebody's Netflix movie on the sidewalk, with the paper thing ripped off, so the person was mailing it back and must have dropped it.  I watched it before returning it.

[Laurie]

I'm not surprised. Criminals aren't known for their sense of humor.

I lol'd.

[jed]

I once found somebody's Netflix movie on the sidewalk, with the paper thing ripped off, so the person was mailing it back and must have dropped it.  I watched it before returning it.

Was it Solaris?  Did you have a spiritual breakthrough?

[Emily]

I accidentally "stole" a Netflix movie that didn't belong to me. I stole it on Saturday night when I came in and misread the name on the label. I thought it said my name. I looked at it again this morning and I realized it wasn't mine. I felt bad that the person in my bldg couldn't have watched their movie on a lazy Sunday wake up in the late afternoon. I didn't open it. I just put it back with the other mail this morn on my way to work.

Sorry neighbor!

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

I once found somebody's Netflix movie on the sidewalk, with the paper thing ripped off, so the person was mailing it back and must have dropped it.  I watched it before returning it.

Was it Solaris?  Did you have a spiritual breakthrough?

Note that I admitted my breach of ethics but not the movie, which was slightly more embarrassing.  It was Lost in Translation.  Not a terrible movie, but not really worth holding up some poor schmo's Netflix queue.

Ironically, though, my own Netflix queue was held up for a month by Solaris.  I liked it, but I kept falling dead asleep.

[JonFromMaplewood]

I thought "Lost In Translation" was fairly decent.  Then I told my Japanese sister-in-law that I watched it, and she went ballistic, saying it is the most racist film toward Japanese people that she had watched in a long time. 

I'll admit to being the "stupid American" in this case, having never really thought about it.  She pointed out how the Japanese characters in that film were there pretty much for comedic purposes alone.  I mean, even "True Lies" had a middle eastern protagonist who aids Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Arnold in an effort to balance out the racism (they failed), but "Lost In Translation" has no serious Japanese characters. They are there just to create a weird, alien world for the Americans to move around in.

Now to be fair, I have not re-watched the movie since my sister-in-law made those comments, so I cannot verify anything. Perhaps there *was* a central character of Japanese descent who was not just comic relief. I cannot remember.  I'm not taking any side here...just sharing.

Sorry for the aside.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Your sister-in-law was right.  The ethnic humor in the movie is pretty cringeworthy, right up there with Jerry Lewis or Tesco Vee putting on slant-eye glasses and doing switching their Ls and Rs.  I think this was more noticeable on my second viewing, once Bill Murray's performance was no longer novel for me.

[iAmBaronVonTito]

hm.  i didnt notice japanese characters conveyed solely as comedic relief.  granted, there are a few characters that resemble the idea (i.e., "lip my stockings!"), but i found japenese people in the film portrayed as friendly, outgoing, and more open to the idea of a foreigner/tourist(s) in their country than certain americans can be.

examples of japanese characters not being seen as purely comedic would be:

*the woman who helps scarlett johansson make a flower bouquet
*the photographer at the photo shoot (the language barrier is whats found humorous to me here, not that he's japanese)
*the friends at the japanese party/karaoke
*the old man at the hospital (again, the language barrier is funny, not the old man- and the japanese ladies behind them are giggling like crazy)


i dont know.  maybe i missed something. 

[Gilly]

I haven't watched it since it came out on DVD but I missed that element too. If I remember right it didn't really focus on anybody but Murray and Johannsen. So, it's kind of wrong to say it's racist and that all of the Japanese actors were cast to the side. Isn't it a two person character study? Any movie with two major characters would put the rest of the cast on the back burner for the most part. It just happens that the story is about two Americans in Japan so the cast is predominantly Japanese even though they aren't featured.... and of course it's going to be humorous, it's two American's in Japan trying to connect with the culture and language. It would be the same way if the movie were Japanese and about two people trying to connect to American culture and language. I say those claims are ridiculous, but again I haven't seen it in a few years.