censorship Tagged Articles at Cinematical

When it comes to Hollywood movies, Chinese censors have always been a little strict. Case in point: The State Administration for Radio, Film and Television tells Variety that the upcoming release of The Mummy 3 Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is still pending until Universal makes unspecified changes to the flick. The censors didn't give any details about what would have to be cut from the film, but speculation has it that the source of the problem is "usually themes involving ghosts are taboo in China".

Emperor sets the new and improved O'Connell family (Brendan Fraser, Luke Ford, and Maria Bello) smack dab in the middle of another adventure battling a tyrannical emperor (Jet Li) and his legion of undead armies. Universal already made some concessions to the Chinese government in exchange for permission to shoot on location. According to Variety Universal was urged to make the film, "less political and more focused on fantasy than real history" -- Less political? Now that's a word I would have never associated with the Mummy franchise.

A flack for Universal has already released a statement saying, "Universal does not anticipate any obstacles to clearing the film for China and looks forward to releasing "The Mummy: Tomb of The Dragon Emperor" in the country where it was set and shot." Translation: We just spent $145 million bucks on this movie, and we want some of those Chinese box-office dollars. Emperor is just the latest Hollywood production to get a rough deal from Chinese censors, but at least they are in good company. On the upside, I guess the Chinese will never know what they're missing.

The Mummy 3 Tomb of the Dragon Emperor opens on August 1st, 2008.

And the battle continues. In the beginning of March, I posted about how the Canadian government is looking to increase restrictions on which films get tax credits -- all to keep money from those lowest-of-low sorts of movies -- you know, the ones with "gratuitous violence, significant sexual content that lacks an educational purpose, or denigration of an identifiable group." Under those terms, it would mean any action film or thriller, most films that discuss sex, and any comedy that teases well, anyone.

Now those within the industry are fighting back. The CBC reports that Sarah Polley, the actress and filmmaker behind the Oscar-nominated Away From Her, and others in the industry have descended on Ottawa to have their say. Polley says: "It's the job of artists to provoke and to challenge. Part of the responsibility of being an artist is to create work that will inspire dialogue, suggest that people examine their long-held positions and, yes, occasionally offend in order to do so." Meanwhile, the Conservative Party of Canada issued a press release reportedly attacking Polley's political ties and stating that artists shouldn't tell "hard-working Canadians" how tax dollars should be spent.

Oh, the neverending and never resolved wars with taxation and censorship. Won't we ever learn?

UPDATE: The Daily Variety story was incorrect; the MPAA actually rejected a trailer for Taxi to the Darkside, and not the poster. Here's the Variety clarification: "The MPAA did not approve a theatrical trailer for Alex Gibney's documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side" that contained scenes with nudity and images that the org deemed inappropriate for all audiences. ThinkFilm has not yet officially submitted the one-sheet art referenced in a Dec. 19 story, but Daily Variety failed to indicate that it was the trailer that was rejected and not the one-sheet artwork."

ThinkFilm is prepping an appeal to the MPAA, but this one doesn't concern a film's rating. It's about a poster. The poster art for Taxi to the Dark Side -- a documentary about the pattern of torture practice that is on the short list for Academy Award consideration -- is causing a stir due to its depiction of a hooded man being led by American soldiers. The original news photo was taken by photographer Shaun Schwarz, and had been censored before -- when the military erased it from Schwarz' camera. (He later retrieved it from his hard drive.) Variety is reporting that the MPAA has officially rejected the poster, and if ThinkFilm goes forward with the marketing, they could have their "R" rating revoked. Taxi to the Dark Side is due for release on January 11th.

An MPAA spokesman says "We treat all films the same. Ads will be seen by all audiences, including children. If the advertising is not suitable for all audiences it will not be approved by the advertising administration." Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), the film's writer, producer, and director says, "Not permitting us to use an image of a hooded man that comes from a documentary photograph is censorship, pure and simple. Intentional or not, the MPAA's disapproval of the poster is a political act, undermining legitimate criticism of the Bush administration. I agree that the image is offensive; it's also real." I've got to side with Gibney on this one. This isn't horror movie imagery cooked up to sell tickets, this is really happening in the world today. And considering the explosive subject matter, I feel the poster is tastefully done. What do you guys think?

Here's your ironic story of the week, folks: According to a story from Reuters/Hollywood Reporter, The Weinstein Company (TWC) issued a press release late Thursday lambasting NBC for refusing to run an ad for the film Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing!

The documentary tells about the period three years ago when the Chicks stirred up mountains of controversy after lead Chick Natalie Maines said during a London concert that the Chicks were ashamed President Bush is from Texas.

TWC also released documents that appeared to be from NBCs advertising standards division with handwritten remarks about the film having material that "disparges President Bush."

Airlines have traditionally not shown controversial films on flights, making sure to stay far away from anything that might be slightly objectionable. That's why you've never seen a disaster movie (although you've probably seen movies that have been disasters) while jetting across the continent. That may all be changing soon as airlines have decided to show more mainstream fare like Brokeback Mountain and Transamerica in an effort to upgrade in-flight entertainment, and provide more choice, variety, and current releases to passengers.

Airlines edit films for content even more stringently than television networks do, cutting out language, sexuality, and anything that might even suggest that an airplane has a problem. According to the World Airline Entertainment Association, films are edited "because airlines carry young children as well as a diverse population of passengers from diverse cultures, many airlines require movie edits for language, sex, violence and political or religious content. The film distributor generally handles this process."

I remember flying from Los Angeles to Dallas and watching a cut of the Jennifer Lowe Hewitt film Heartbreakers that featured a digital insert over the cleavage of one ghost whispering actress. This reflects an oddly reciprocal effect between films edited for American vs. European airlines; Europe edits out violence, and America edits out sex. Apparently breasts might incense an American passenger to hijack the plane and fly to Club Med, but a bullet-riddled body will lull them into complacency.

I suppose I can understand the need to edit films on flights, because in a way it is forced viewing. You can't exactly get up and leave the theater if something on the screen bothers you. It is also understandable that you wouldn't want to watch anything that features a spectacular plane crash on a flight, for obvious reasons. However, more planes are starting to feature in-flight entertainment that allows each individual passenger to choose what they want to watch. What happens if the person next to you on that JFK-to-SFO flight wants to watch something featuring ultra-violence and you find that objectionable? It's hard to go through a flight with blinders on, but perhaps the next-generation of flight entertainment will feature a digital alternative.

What do you think? Should films be edited for airlines, or should you be able to watch whatever you want?

Last month at TIFF, I reviewed a film called Out of the Blue, about the massacre that took place in the quiet town of Aramoana, New Zealand in 1990. David Gray, a lifelong resident of the town whose mental health had been deteriorating for some time, snapped and killed 13 of his neighbors, including four young children. The film is extraordinarily well-done and handles the events of that awful day with considerable restraint; even so, it was difficult for me to watch, and I wasn't a part of the tragedy. Director Robert Sarkies, a New Zealander who lived in a town near Aramoana at the time of the massacre, was very aware of the need to be sensitive in making this film, and as part of the process he met with residents, allowed representatives of the victims to read the script before filming began, and agreed to the conditions the people of Aramoana requested, including that he not film within the town itself.

When Sarkies spoke before the screening of his film at TIFF about working with the people of Aramoana in the making of Out of the Blue, and noted that, for the most part, the people who thought the film shouldn't be made were people who weren't directly impacted by the tragedy. Several of the actual survivors, in fact, met with the actors who were playing them. The New Zealand Office of Film and Literature Classification has given the film an "R15" rating, and Chief Censor Bill Hastings has added a descriptive note that "violence and content may disturb."

Despite the fact that Jackass Number Two is the most popular movie in America this week, some people around the country aren't all that happy to be showing the crude new release. Over the weekend, I told you how a theater owner in Hoopeston, Illinois closed his cinema for two weeks because he didn't want to book the movie (or anything else), and now comes this photo from a fourplex in Orange City, Iowa. Apparently the people running the theater aren't familiar with a certain four-legged animal let alone the watering-down of its impact as a curse word.

I wish I could have seen their marquee when it featured the following titles: Buttbuttins; The Buttbuttination of Richard Nixon; Baadbuttttt! and the Ron Jeremy classic Girls Who Take it Up the Butt 21.


[via Fark.com]

A software-based company in San Francisco has released a new program that can censor DVDs on the fly. It uses an online movie database of existing "safe cuts," or you can upload your own. Their player then uses these cuts to generate a "cutlist," which plays the movie according to that list in real-time, effectively censoring it. This process does not create or leave behind a hard copy of the altered film, it edits everything in the background, splicing together a new version of the film as you watch it, leaving you with the original movie intact after viewing.

This differs from an earlier lawsuit against a company called CleanFlicks which was upheld in court because it was decided that they caused "irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies," by actually taking your DVD, and creating a "clean" copy of it with all the sex and profanity edited out. Basically, they sent you a duplicate that they created, with none of the bad stuff in it, meaning they physically alter the original movie content on the actual media.

Another company, ClearPlay, provides a similar service through a standalone DVD player that has filters built in to screen out portions of the movie the viewer finds objectionable. Since they don't change the movie itself, they have been safe from lawsuits, so far.

Charlize Theron has taken some chances as an actress, and now she's moved into the heady world of producing documentaries. In a fascinating interview with The Guardian, Theron discusses her role producing doc East of Havana, which recently premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival. The film focuses on the issue of censorship in Cuba, told through the story of three young hip-hop artists struggling to create in a climate of poverty, censorship and restricted access to travel. Theron says in the piece, "the foundation of Cuba is censorship. You have to ask: would I take the free healthcare and education and accept being a prisoner in my soul?"

The interview covers the ground of Theron's growing up in South Africa, where, much like the artists in East of Havana, she faced issues of censorship that made her appreciate that much more the freedom she has in America. She says of screening the film in America, "Everybody grasps on to Cuba, but as soon as the conversation comes round to America and you see how this material reflects on the US, it's quite devastating. People are very scared to say anything that might come across as unpatriotic." It's a pretty interesting look at an actress who is clearly way more than just another pretty face. You can read the full piece here.

[ via Movie City News ]

Captain Jack Sparrow and the rest of those pirates may be raking in gobs of treasure around the globe, but they won't be seen in China -- for now at least. The Chinese Ministry of Keeping All Things Fun Under Wraps has apparently rejected Mouse House flick Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest for its "violent and supernatural content", according to local media. Though, why they even bother, I don't know. Pirated DVDs of the flick were probably available on the black market across China before the film even opened here.

At any rate, the Beijing News reports that if the film passes a second round of examination the film might still be shown in China.  Apparently the first-round censors didn't like the portrayal of dead souls in film, and looked askance at octopus-faced Davy Jones. The first Pirates flick screened in China, but only earned about $3.4 million, a fraction of its total take.

 [via Hollywood Elsewhere]