Movies on DVD

There is a movie rental industry here, but not much of one. People just buy b00tlegs, on the street or in stores from a box pulled out from under the desk. It’s illegal to make them, not to sell them, is my understanding. They’re 3 Lira apiece; around 2 bucks. Some are made direct from an original DVD, some are filmed in the theater. When they film it in the theater, it can be pretty grainy. We’ve stopped watching movies because our “cameraman” didn’t have a steady hand.

On one movie, I think it was in a cave part of the time, the screen went greenish every time a dark scene started. Whoever filmed it was switching on their camera’s night vision feature. As the movie progressed they began forgetting to turn it back off, so now the light scenes were hard to see. Then they’d remember, switch it off, and then forget the other way. Back and forth, about half of each scene either nearly black or nearly blank.

These screenshots are from a movie we saw months before it came to theaters here, meaning it was filmed abroad. Twice in this case - first Hollywood went to Bangkok, then someone filmed that movie somewhere other than here, and that copy made it to Turkey first. They show Nicholas Cage, and a guy coming back from the lobby.