If I may gently step in here with an observation, those of us in the deaf community love those subtitles...
R.
I might also add that if the film is in a foreign language, the subtitles do tend to enable one to understand the plot... unless the whole thing is T&A and then I guess most fellas wouldn't care much. :O)
I find it really annoying when the subtitles are almost the same tone as the background, and too small to read even if they did contrast enough ... besides, my mom used to work in voice-over, so I have a bias towards dubbing anyway -- and it's way funnier when the voices don't match the actors at all ... : )
I was watching kingdom of heaven and they started mumbling blah blah.. so I turn on the subtitles and the first thing I read is 'the cheese cake is yummy'..
I was watching Tommy for the first time on my computer and couldn't hear any speech when the characters were talking, only background music. I tried to ages trying to find proper sound drivers, checking all channels were playing, cleaning the DVD, trying different software, etc etc, until I finally decided to put subtitles on, only to read:
The first time I watched "Amores Perros" (Love's a Bitch) it was the UK version and subtitles were fixed (couldn't be turned off) it was at the same time ridiculous and hilarious how they translate half of the movie. Yikes!
ETA: on the other hand it is the only way we could enjoy international cinema (German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, etc...)
I especially enjoy it sometimes when you rent a DVD and the subtitles are automatically on AND in the same language as the movie and they're WRONG! Makes me laugh!
Great thread. I was just thinking the other day how hard it was to enjoy the ancient Aztec dialog of Apocalypto without the constant distraction of the printed english at the bottom of the screen.
The first time I watched "Amores Perros" (Love's a Bitch) it was the UK version and subtitles were fixed (couldn't be turned off) it was at the same time ridiculous and hilarious how they translate half of the movie. Yikes!
ETA: on the other hand it is the only way we could enjoy international cinema (German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, etc...)
When I lived in Brasil, I met this kid who was working his way through South America. He had only been in the country for a couple of weeks and his Portuguese was minimal at best. I nearly died laughing when he told me that his job was writing Portuguese sub-titles for American movies. 'splains a lot. 8)
If I may gently step in here with an observation, those of us in the deaf community love those subtitles...
yeah, and also for foreigners who cant catch the spoken english language fast enough without reading the subtitles. but on dvds, i agree there should be an option to turn them off as one wished.
