Kudos to Team I-Man, as both Ian and Isley correctly surmised that the last post was a description of Beowulf, aka Beaiowufu. We’re going to crank up the difficulty here a little bit, and instead of providing box copy, this one will be based on the English subtitles of the film’s pivotal scene. Check out this fiery speech given by the protagonist!

4 Cowards
You saw It
I Was Taught
should Have Told My Mom
Bing Jitti here, show them
Nowhere Else
Only The Jurks
I Can Only say
Do What I Like
I Don’t Understand You
Useless Trash
Raise Your Hands
Let’s Get Him
This Is Funny
6 Days Without shower
smell Like shits
Fuck His Dad,
Fuck Everybody, No sight
Fuck This shelter
Just Look At What We Do
Come Down, Come Down
The Champion
At this House, Take Off Clothes

Because Ian shat where he at, comments are closed. Send your guesses to chris AT cobr.as by midnight Thursday!

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
I omitted the opening lines of this speech, because I thought they’d make it too easy and obvious. It’s apparently very hard to guess correctly without them. Here are two additional hints:

1. This film won an Oscar.
2. The protagonist of the film is called Robby in the subtitles, but not in the film.

I’m going to switch this up a bit. For the next week or so, I’ll just post the description of films from the back of these DVDs. People are allowed to guess, but no fair if you’re one of the two people I already showed this one to. I have no idea if there will be prizes. Rules subject to change.

Let’s start with an easy one.

… BEAST THE NIGHT RAID . ALL AROUND BLOODY SLICE OF PALACE . BANQUET HALL HAVE REPEATED BECOME PERMANENT TABOO . BEAIOWUFU (THUNDER * WINSTON) . ONE SWEDEN SOUTHERN PART ARE TALLER THAN YOUNG NOBLEMAN OF EXCEPTIONAL RACE. NIGHT OF INDULGING IN WILLFUL PERSECUTION . BELT LET 1 4 WARRIORS SAIL ACROSS A SEA COMING TO AID EACH OTHER IN STORM . AFTER BEIAOWUFU AND COMPANIONS ASK FOR KING’S PERMISSION THAT NIGHT,PUT UP THE BANQUET HALL BEING REPEATEDLY PLUNDERED BY BLOOD FOR THE NIGHT . HOLD GRAND CELEBRATION, AS EXPECTED, MONSTER GELANDAIER FORCE ENTRANCE SEIZES FOOD SINGH ONCE AGAIN! NAKED BEAIOWUFU AND GELANDAIER ONE HATE A DIPPER, WEAKNESS HAVING FINALLY DISCOVERED A MONSTER, THE FORCE PULLS ONE ARM CUTTING OFF GELANDAIER , GELANDAIER WHO HAS SHOULDERED A VITAL WOUND HAS TO RUN AWAY WITH EXCEPTIONAL ARM, BEAIOUWUFU BECOMES THE IMPORTANT HERO THAT PERSON KNOWS AS ALL AS POSSIBLE , THE KING FULFILLS WITH GENEROUS GIFTS, BUT MASSACRE HAS NOT CEASED YET! IT THE MOTHER WHO IS GELANDAIER (FIN DGED SWORD AND THE KING RESISTING

UPDATE: I guess I will moderate comments for some period (24-48 hours) so that everyone can guess blindly. Then when I post the answer, the comments will magically appear and scores tallied.

Yesterday we looked at the Alpha Bootleg, and today we look at the Omega: my father last visited China a little under a year ago, and among the DVDs he brought back was a collection of Flaming Lips videos:

It’s a pretty perfect recreation of the US version of V.O.I.D., which I had already purchased legitimately. The contents of the actual disc appear to be identical. But when you take a look at the back cover, there are still baffling errors:

The US edition has the following description:

Video Overview in Deceleration is a compilation of our promotional video clips, most of which were previously only available for viewing on the internet. Masterfully re-mastered by Dave Fridmann and Michael Ivins in stunning 5.1 Surround Sound. V.O.I.D. chronicles our sometimes crudely experimental style of filmmaking. our sometimes unabashedly commercial MTV-esque montages and our sometimes disturbingly sad or funny homemade movies. We have, over the years, sometimes delighted in and sometimes dreaded the making of these cinematic song-stories. But I can truly say that without the aid of these little visual vehicles, The Flaming Lips would not have been able to express their uniqueness to the unsuspecting world.

I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what happened here. Why didn’t they just cut and paste the description? They did use a shoddy OCR program. They appear to have remade the cover to the exact specifications of the the original design, but opted to lazily transcribe the text by hand.

Even more baffling is the boilerplate warning along the bottom:

WARNING: The progran for private home use only and other use including makingcopies of the film causing it to be seen or heard in public or broad casting it to be rtansmitted to besubsonbears to a diffusion service or selling letting it hire exchanging it otherwise dealing with it in whose or in part is strictly prohibited unless express expressly authorized any export of video compact disc outside the ternitones of Hong Kong and Macau is strictly prohibited by the copyright proprietor.

Again, so close! Plus, this should appear on every single DVD this outfit produces, and likely appears on legal DVDs. Why not cut and paste it, too?

This will be a recurring theme during Bootleg Month. I don’t even think it’s a matter of no one involved understanding English; I think they just don’t really care.

which ends up, in an identical font as position, as this:

Video Overview in Deceleraion is a compliation of our promotional video clips,most of which were previously only available for viewing on the intermet.Matserfully remastered by Dave Fridmann and Michael Ivins in stunning 5.1 Surround Sund.V.O.I.D.chronicles our sometimes curdely experimental style of filmmaking*oursmtimes unabashedly commercial MTV-esque montages and our sometimes disturbingly sad of funny homemade movies.We have,over the years ,sometimes delighted in and sometimes dreaded the making of these The Flaming Lips would not have been able to express their uniqueness to the unsuspecting would.

My dad’s old job had him travel to China regularly, and he amassed a large collection of bootlegs in the process. When he first started bringing them home, they were a real crapshoot. Look at this cover:

Obviously that’s Robocop front and center, and I believe those are the titular Starship Troopers preparing to fire on Officer Alex Murphy. But what movie’s actually on this five inch “Laserdisc” (actually two VCDs)?

FILM: Lost in Space
FORMAT: 2x VCD
QUALITY: Looks like it was ripped off a VHS copy
SUBTITLES: Hard-coded Chinese
FEATURES: Zero
DID I ACTUALLY WATCH THIS?: Not a chance

There’s not a lot else to say about Lost in Space; it’s only interesting as a starting point of my family’s history with Chinese VCDs/DVDs. I wish it was actually Robocop.