They are there, they come and go, so how guilty should an American who can’t watch these Italian films any other way feel about watching them?
When I think about international film distribution laws (which I am not even going to pretend to understand), it reminds me when Napster sued the 12-year-old girl for downloading music. The music industry was so out of touch with what people wanted and so unwilling to change, but change came anyway and with a vengeance.
Will change come for international film distribution? It has to; right?
I have a big pile of money in my hands, and I am saying to the Italian film industry, “Here’s my big pile of money; I want to watch your movie.”
The answer? “Sorry, you can’t. It’s not available in your country.”
So if I find that movie on YouTube, how guilty should I feel for watching it?
The internet has opened up a can of worms that international film laws will not be able to keep the lid on forever, so why not start looking to change the laws? Why is no one having this conversation?
In the meantime, here are a couple of fun movies I’ve found on YouTube. There are no subtitles, and they’ll be taken down when someone catches up with them, so watch them or don’t, depending on your definition and sentiments of movie piracy.
Everybody gets that I WANT to pay for the movies; right?
Here’s Mio Cognato, a film that’s been compared to Scorsese’s After Hours because the stories are played out on similar stages. “After Hours” takes place late at night and into the morning in the seedy parts of New York and “Mio Cognato”, in the underbelly of Bari. In “Mio Cognato”, when Vito’s (Lo Cascio) car is stolen his brother-in-law, Toni, (Rubini) helps him pull an all nighter, searching for it.
I love it and I own it, bought it in Italy in PAL Region 2 DVD form, but owning a region free DVD player is technically illegal too, or so I have been told.
And here’s the very adorable Paola Cortellesi in Un Boss In Salotto. Paola plays a “June Cleaver” with a Southern Italian edge in this comedy from Luca Miniero (Beneveuti al Sud), one that again takes a look at the differences between northerners and southerners in Italy.
Paola plays Carmela, who has changed her name to Cristina and tells everybody that her brother Ciro (Rocco Papaleo) is dead in an attempt to “northernize” herself. Her transformation is overzealous and her beautiful family, though it is truly beautiful (two cute kids and married to Luca Argentero? That’s pretty perfect) everybody is cracking under the strain of trying to live up to her idea of perfection.
Again, I have paid for this movie, but I had to send away to Italy for it and play it on my illegal DVD player to do it.
Does anybody want to tell me why this has to be so difficult?
I Love Italian Everything 