Pink Stripes

Tonight I was over at Glyn's apartment and watched Catch Me If You Can, a movie starting Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. It is a great story about a guy who pretends he other people and writes fraudulent checks for over $4 million. Supposedly it is based on a true story.

I am not going to write a movie review...I want to talk about the DVD. We were watching the movie on a pirated DVD. By pirated, I mean, it is not the official DVD that was released by the studios. From what I hear, sometimes the movies are shot with a video camera in the movie theater. As I walk down the street in the city here, I see DVDs for sale of movies that I know are still in the theater or just stopped being in the theater. I know then, that these are pirated movies.

Catch Me If You Can was released in 2002. The DVD that we were watching was copied from a preview version of the movie. I assume that movie studios have these previews for the movie reviewers...or for Academy Award voters. My guess is someone gets a hold of them and makes a lot of money on the black market.

Since it is not an official copy of the DVD, the subtitles are the same as you would get. Glyn and her family watch DVDs with the English subtitles, because it helps them understand everything that is being said in the movie. However, the subtitles for this movie must have been added by someone who was not a native English speaker, so in this case, I can't see how the subtitles actually helped.

I laughed throughout the movie, but it was not always from what was being said or done by the actors. The subtitles were cracking me up. Sometimes the subtitles said things that were wrong...different than what was actually said. Now, at times, these errors were minor...like getting the grammar wrong. No big deal. Other times, the errors were getting peoples' names wrong. One of the main characters, played by DiCaprio, goes by a fake name throughout the movie. One of the names that he uses is Frank Connors. However, the subtitles kept referring to him as Frank Connell. This, despite the fact that they show his name several times on a plaque on a desk and on a door!

They also had "system prosecutor" instead of "assistant prosecutor" and "Bonds California" instead of "the Bar in California".

Sometimes, there is no subtitle at all, I assume because the non-native English speaker doing the subtitles couldn't guess what was being said.

My favorite subtitle goof is towards the beginning of the movie. It was kind of a critical juncture in the movie. The father of DiCaprio's character is trying to convince a bank into giving him money. He gets a store to loan his son a suit so he can help him go to the bank. In explaining the importance of wearing the suits the dialog goes like this:

You know why the Yankees always win, Frank?
'Cause they have Mickey Mantle?
No, it's 'cause the other teams can't stop staring at those damn pinstripes.

However, instead of "pinstripes", the subtitles had "pink stripes"....HA HA HA

I could not stop laughing about this throughout the movie. It was such an important point that was being made in the movie...however, most non-native English speakers probably are wondering why the Yankees wear pink stripes! Well, if it helps them win...

Like the tagline of the movie...it is a true story of a real fake!