> > I've only once seen a subtitled movie where the subtitles were physically so difficult to read that I thought they detracted significantly from the movie. (This was "The Red Violin", and I saw it on video, so perhaps it made easier reading on the big screen.) There were far too many scenes where white titles appeared on a light or white background and were simply unreadable. No matter how good the movie and how well translated the titles, this sort of thing is what puts people off subbed movies.
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> White subtitles are the worst possible way to subtitle a movie. Yellow, yellow, and yellow are the only colors that subtitles should be. Even on bright backgrounds, the yellow subs will show up.

Incidentally, this reminds me of a personal experience: In one literature class, we watched Pasolini's version of the Gospel According to Matthew, in the original Italian with English subtitles.

Now, granted, it's not hard to find the source material for the dialogue here, but that's not the point. The point is that the subtitles were in white with as thin a border as possible around them; and, as Murphy's Law would suggest, Pasolini filmed a LOT of scenes with a rather bright patch near the bottom center of the screen. It might not have been too bad in a theatrical screen, but it was absolutely awful on video. I had to squint at about half of the subtitles just to figure out which Biblical passage was being read, and I didn't even bother trying to actually *read* the subtitles in such cases.

And that was painful enough with a *familiar* story. I can't imagine what it'd be like with *unknown* dialogue. ;-)

I agree, yellow subtitles tend to be the best. But a close runner-up, I think, is how I've seen it done on a number of documentaries: though the text is in white, the area behind it is darkened, as in closed captions.

Incidentally, I second everyone's comments on the Crouching Tiger dub. Not half as bad as I was expecting it to be-- quite an unusual situation, as I too tend to dislike dubbed versions.

-- codeman"now if someone could explain why the Encore movie channel runs the dubbed version of Life Is Beautiful, I'd be really enlightened"38