Attack of the Clones Cut in UK 481
MartyJG writes "The British Board of Film Classification has demanded a cut in Ep2 AOTC for a head-butt. I don't know which is more extreme: UK viewers insisting on viewing the US version for 1 second of extra film, or that a 1 second cut means the difference between a '12' (~PG-13) and a 'PG' certificate. For some reason the distributors must think fewer people would see the film if it was a '12'. The film report is on the BBFC website."
No big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
Acc. to the site, run time is 2 hours, 22 minutes. A good long film... one second will likely not be missed.
How nitpicky can they get? (Score:3, Insightful)
But even on the other side, this is one of those things where ignorance is bliss. If this was never reported, no one would have complained, since one second is a trivial amount of footage.
I'd have to side with leaving the footage in. After all, there's much worse violence than a lousy head-butt.
Does anyone else find it interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
American censors and the film ratings boards seem to believe that it's OK for people to see violence because it won't affect them at all. Hey, the country was founded in a pit of blood during the Revolutionary War. But it's a hell of a lot better to have that on screen than it is to see two people who love each other show it intimately. Better that we have teenagers running into their school brandishing easily-purchased assault rifles than it is to have them falling in love with someone and spending time with them.
I'm just curious when the culture of violence and hate that the United States pushes on its citizens will finally become tiresome or offensive to them. Look at crime rates in Europe, where guns are near impossible to get hold of and where there are no restrictive anti-sex laws on television. Is it any wonder that their crime rates per capita are significantly lower than the US?
Let's keep producing more violent movies and glorifying war, like Platoon, Saving Private Ryan and all the Rambo movies do. That'll make everyone safer...
Head-butt is a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, there's plenty of "dirty moves" in "professional" wrestling (quotes mine,) perhaps we should label those as innapropriate for children under 13 as well? (The fact that I think it IS inappropriate is at my discretion as an adult, I wouldn't presume to stick a label on the show because I find it distasteful.)
Movie ratings are such a goof in this country and abroad. At least they made the cut over an act of violence, not sex. I mean, what's worse for a kid to know about? Everybody (at some point, hopefully) has sex. Everybody does NOT perpetrate violent crime on society. Yet shows like "Walker: Texas Ranger" are considered reasonable "family" viewing fare, despite long brutal hand to hand combat sequences in every show. Some of the moves Chuck Norris does in that show would kill a man if applied by an untrained person.
What's worse: Your kid seeing a breast, or your kid being given a video tutorial on how to kill somebody?
(FLAME OFF: The question is rhetorical for you to consider for your own lives and families...)
Re:How nitpicky can they get? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just glad to be in the USA where movie ratings aren't enforced by law.
Re:PG vs. 12 certificate (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:PG vs. 12 certificate (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't really have a problem with the BBFC's decision. The film makers are perfectly entitled to say "Fuck you, the headbutt stays". It's just that they have to accept a 12 certificate. Which means lower revenue (gee, a whole $20m less that $5b) in the UK.
Now we get to see whether artistic integrity will triumph over filthy lucre...
--Ng
Re:Does anyone else find it interesting... (Score:2, Insightful)
and, BTW the reasons of our culture come from 2 points.
1)we are a country that has been born and defined by its conflicts over its young life
2) Puritans and other sexualy represive religions founded this nation back in the 1600's and stayed relevent in our country up until the 1960's, so we still have a lot of growing to do in the sexual realm. remember, Europe is the place that did not want the folks that first setteled the US, so we will be diffrent from them just because of that.
Re:Does anyone else find it interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)
I always found All Quiet on the Western Front to be so much more terrifying and really helping me to realize what war is more than any movie. I think that being a book, plus written by someone who was there really made a big difference, and some of the scenes he describes and takes you through are much more horrendous than just severed limbs.
Moral Guardians? (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole censorship thingie has been flying around for years now, the BBFC class themselves as the moral guardians of modern british society...which frankly has annoyed more people over the years than our goverment has, and thats saying something.
Tbh, i dont think a 1 second cut will affect the film at all, but still its the principle of the matter...why do we have a legally binding orginisation that can tell us what we can and can't watch? Freedom of choice doesn't exist in all aspects of life it may seem.
Just my $0.02 on the subject, i did media studies at college and i think i have a good look on the system...but prove me wrong if u feel u want to :)
Re:Does anyone else find it interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
>glorifying war, like Platoon, Saving Private
>Ryan
Uh... You honestly think Platoon or Saving Private Ryan "glorif[y] war"?
Have you SEEN Saving Private Ryan? Have you actually WATCHED Platoon? There's nothing in either of those movies that glorifies war. They both attempt to portray war as the horrible nasty hellish nightmare that it is.
After the release of SPR, military recruiters all over America reported a drop in inquiries. This from a nation that was ALREADY largely apathetic about military service. This was almost exclusively in response to the opening D-Day scenes.
If you're looking for a movie that glorifies war, go find a copy of The Longest Day (B&W, please, none of that Turnerized colorized crap). Watch the Omaha Beach landing sequence. Compared to SPR's, it's about as violent as an episode of Seinfeld.
For a more modern movie (yet set in an older war...), go get Mel Gibson's "The Patriot".
Neither SPR nor Platoon try to be "feel good" movies. Neither is a chest-thumping rah rah "we kicked their sorry asses" movie.
Oh, and I can't let this one go...
>Look at crime rates in Europe, where guns are
>near impossible to get hold of
That kid in Germany sure seemed to have his share. I won't mention terrorist groups like the IRA, Red Brigade, ETA, 17 November, or any of a hundred splinter groups...
-l
Re:Does anyone else find it interesting... (Score:2, Insightful)
I think women are more willing to accept seeing other women naked, than guys are in seeing other guys (and who has the power?). Guys are just too easily intimidated by bigger dicks... so it's kept offscreen.
--
Re:Does anyone else find it interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
>behaviour of those of us who make the headlines
>across the pond.
And we Americans would appreciate the same courtesy.
-l
Re:Does anyone else find it interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)
From "Spilling the Spanish Beans" (september 1937) "The logical end is a régime in which every opposition party and newspaper is suppressed and every dissentient of any importance is in jail. Of course, such a régime will be Fascism. It will not be the same Fascism Franco would impose, it will even be better than Franco's Fascism to the extent of being worth fighting for, but it will be Fascism. Only, being operated by Communists and Liberals, it will be called something different."
Orwell likens regimes like the USSR to a fascist regime with a different ideological mythology, run by people at least in name claiming to be communists.
1984 and Animal Farm are anti-fascist. They are also anti-USSR. But they are not anti-socialism, and only anti-communism to the extent that communist ideology and symbolism has been used (or abused, depending on your view) to legitimise a regime that for all intents and purposes share the traits of a fascist regime.
If anything, 1984 and also Animal Farm makes a strong point about societies divided by class, whether by default (the farmers in Animal Farm) or by a coup d'etat shrouded in symbolism drawn from socialist and communist ideology (the pigs in Animal Farm, or the ruling party in 1984).
This is really the core of why some people considers 1984 as a work promoting communism: It underscores Orwells position that class divide was bad regardless of what name was put on the regime it is found in. This is something even Marx argued
That is also what made many stalinists join the choir and complain about Orwell being anti-communist: He pointed out that class divide is class divide whether it is between the working class and the bourgeoisie or between the working class and a party claiming to work for the interests of the working class.
Socialism and "real" Marxist communism has at it's core the goal of abolishing the class divide, and with it the classes, and a major part of the stalinists hold on the left was that they pretended that what had happened in the USSR was somehow better than the class divide in capitalist countries.
Clearly the USSR and the stalinist "Communist" parties didn't do anything to get rid of the class divide, and Orwell was one of the extremely few well known socialists that had the guts to not only criticize the right but also criticize dangerous tendencies on the left.
To finish with another quote from Orwell himself: "Indeed, in my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of Socialism as the belief that Russia is a Socialist country. [...] And so for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the Socialist movement." [CEJL vol. 3 p. 458]
(Note: The USSR claimed to be socialist, not communist, but with the goal of developing into a communist society)
Re:Does anyone else find it interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)
American censors and the film ratings boards seem to believe that it's OK for people to see violence because it won't affect them at all.... But it's a hell of a lot better to have that on screen than it is to see two people who love each other show it intimately
Oh, lighten up!
Different cultures are going to have different taboos based on different experiences. You might find it difficult to sympathise with, but it's generally the Americans' problem to deal with, just as European hangups are for Europeans to deal with. British and Irish attitudes to sex are not that far removed from Victorian times, even today
It's only when people start visiting their hangups upon people whose culture doesn't share those hangups' bases, that we end up with serious problems
Oh, and Switzerland has a huge gun owning constituency, and very low firearms crime rates. Is it just possible that a nations culture dictates the scope and severity of anti-social behaviour, rather than how many weapons can be found?
--Ng
Lucas - most violent director in history (Score:4, Insightful)
Few objected, because it wasn't "graphic violence".
Re:PG vs. 12 certificate (Score:2, Insightful)
The rating scheme assumes all children are identical.. which there not.. unless there all clones and im blind.
Re:PG vs. 12 certificate (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does anyone else find it interesting... (Score:2, Insightful)
>>near impossible to get hold of
>That kid in Germany sure seemed to have his share. I won't mention terrorist groups like the IRA, Red
>Brigade, ETA, 17 November, or any of a hundred splinter groups...
I have to throw in my 2c..
I am no gun lover but common sense and the facts dictate crime rates reflect violent societies not gun ownership levels.
Look at crime rates and gun ownership rates in Switzerland and Norway (about 30% gun ownership)
and Finland (about 25% gun ownership).