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Tribe wrote:

tryavna wrote:It's also not quite true tat the "movies never made their way over here," either. In fact, during the early days of the Disney Channel (back in the mid-1980s), they imported and showed several of the Asterix movies -- dubbed, of course. The two I remember seeing most frequently were Asterix and Cleopatra and Asterix in Britain, though I remember seeing one or two others as well.

You're probably right. But the point is that neither the series, nor the characters ever acquired any iconic significance in the USA so that any significant portion of the population would recognize them. Even Tintin, which I think is better known around the world than Asterix, is relatively unknown in the States.

tryavna wrote:"Probably"? I cited a source, for goodness sake. (Here's another, and here's another.) My point is not to demonstrate that Asterix is or is not iconic to the majority of Americans, but there appear to be quite a few Americans who remember the movies. So Asterix is not a completely unknown quantity over here, as a number of posters are suggesting.

tryavna wrote:People who sit down to watch this film may not have much specific knowledge of Asterix (or Le Pen), but they likely wouldn't be nonplussed if they encountered those names. I think that some of the cultural and historical references in Kurosawa's Kagemusha are far more obscure for American audiences.

Their language is verlan, an old form of backslang (which inverts syllables) revived in the 1970s. Some verlan words have entered the national vocabulary, such as feuj (juif, Jew), keuf (flic, cop), meuf (femme), and of course beur [arab]: in fact beur is so common that a further form of verlan has transformed it into rebeu. But the degree to which the boys use verlan designates their language as banlieue gang-speak. The recurrent sexually aggressive insults of nique ta mère (literally "fuck your mother") and bâtard (bastard) are relatively new additions to French slang, which speak of both Mediterranean and American influences.

Michael Kerpan wrote:Surely it's not too much too expect Criterion to do at least as well as an anime distributor.

Michael Kerpan wrote:Kinsayder -- I wonder if Criterion bothers to acknowledge the distinctive way language is used in this film in its backgground materials?

Gregory wrote: Maybe you didn't see my post on the previous page, but when there are conflicting reports in the thread, it's often not reliable to just take one person's word as a given. Again, I've noticed multiple Asterix books in the children's section of a lot of public libraries. I'm not sure if juvenile readers would be considered "comics connoisseurs," but if these books didn't get checked out, in most cases they would be withdrawn.
I simply don't think the posts above are accurate that say that there is nothing in print in the US or that publishers' attempts to make it catch on in the 1980s and 90s failed. Checking Amazon.com right now I see that recently published books are available for every Asterix title I'm familiar with, and then some. Every single one of the ones I scanned through had been reviewed by multiple people. Also, there are between 50 and 75 used copies for sale of each title from Amazon sellers. There normally are not that many used copies around of books that are really obscure. If there is a glut of books that didn't sell, the price on Amazon is usually very low, whereas most of these used Asterix books are priced at about half of cover price (plus shipping).
I'm not arguing that Asterix is as well known here as in Europe, or anything like that. The point of this discussion, as far as I see it, is whether or not Asterix is so obscure in the US that the subtitler for La Haine was justified in substituting Snoopy. I've already stated my position, and have suggested that people who would sit down and watch a film like La Haine are generally part of a more cultured minority who either would already be familiar with these references or wouldn't mind having to look them up if they were interested enough to do so. I know a lot of people who probably would not be at all familiar with Asterix or Le Pen, but many of these same people would not be interested in watching La Haine, or even any film with subtitles. ("If I'm watching a movie, I want to just watch it, not sit there reading the whole time" is something I've heard from numerous people.)

soma wrote:Again I must insist the idea that Asterix and Obelix are so culturally oblique is absurd.

colinr0380 wrote:I wonder what might happen with the subtitles to L'Esquive, if it ever gets released with them!

skuhn8 wrote:How would you label them? 'Subs for Dummies' and 'Subs for Smarties'?

oldsheperd wrote:Just curious. Does Kassovitze explain how he got the crane shot when the DJ starts up his turntables in the projects. I'm sure you are all familiar but the camera goes from inside his apartment out the window and like flies over the projects. I've always been curious as to how he did that.

oldsheperd wrote:I thought that Kassovitz might have used the trick that Welles used in Kane when he went from the outside of the club to the inside in what appeared to be on continuous dolly, but Welles actually used a quick flash of lightning to disguise the cut. Obviously Kassovitz didn't do this.

GringoTex wrote:Just watched this for the first time and was fairly disappointed. I found it formulaic and derivative of American "ghetto" films of the late 80s/early 90s. Kassovitz seemed to be reaching into his little bag of Spike Lee tricks for each scene. Great performances, though, and can't deny its cultural importance for France.

macaca wrote:

GringoTex wrote:Just watched this for the first time and was fairly disappointed. I found it formulaic and derivative of American "ghetto" films of the late 80s/early 90s. Kassovitz seemed to be reaching into his little bag of Spike Lee tricks for each scene. Great performances, though, and can't deny its cultural importance for France.

I was just about to post the exact same thing. For all the hype, I wasn't really impressed.