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DEL.ICIO.USPirated movies come with their own surprises
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq - Headless characters. Random heads. Glowing red “Exit” signs. Crunching popcorn. Chatter. And always “Shhhhh!”
Georgia National Guard soldiers never know what they are going to get when they buy pirated movies in Iraq. Some of the DVDs are high quality. Others are so poorly done they are hilarious to watch.
Louie Favorite/AJC
These pirated movie DVDs are for sale at a bazaar at Camp Striker.
For example, in the opening scenes of the comedy “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” a shadow starts to grow on the white shirt of one of the characters.
After a few seconds, it becomes clear that someone’s head got in the way of the film pirate’s hand-held video recorder. Later in the movie, a man wearing eyeglasses walks down the center aisle of the theater and pauses as if he is looking for a seat, blocking almost the entire frame.
Some of the most obvious bloopers are in a copy of “The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement.” The opening credits are cut in half and so are the characters. There is a headless woman in the opening sequence.
“She had a short stay as princess. Her head got cut off part way through the film,” a soldier joked about his copy, a curiosity that has made the rounds among soldiers in his tent.
The pirate for that film must have been sitting too close to the screen or zooming in too close with his camera. Soldiers say they can hear people talking and eating popcorn in other copies.
One soldier at Forward Operating Base Marez in northern Iraq said he saw a DVD where the recorder left his camera on while he took a break and went to the men’s room.
Across Iraq, soldiers buy the movies by the dozens and watch them for entertainment between their high-stress missions. Local vendors here sell them for as little as $3 a disc. Haggling, however, is acceptable. No one seems worried about intellectual property rights.
Salesmen will jam as many as six movies on one DVD without following a particular theme. On one disc, for example, “The Prince Diaries 2,” was inexplicably combined with “Alien vs. Predator,” a horror-action movie.
There is a bonus to all this for the soldiers. They get new movies weeks before they are released in stores back in the United States.
But there is a challenge. The soldiers must have the patience to watch movies like “The Dukes of Hazzard” - with all the pirating defects - all the way to the end.
Comments
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By 48th BCT wife
September 28, 2005 05:07 PM | Link to this
Jeremy Redmon …. are you related to Paul “Mike” Redmon, USA (ret), who worked for Youth Challenge Academy?
By Steve
September 29, 2005 03:23 PM | Link to this
Hey Jeremy, this is your neighbor. We are looking forward to getting you home.