It's on tonight on ABC. Some of the afiliates don't want to show it. Worried about the FCC maybe fining them in the post Janet Jackson world. It's a problem because, them that license the movie, included terms, requiring it be shown, without having been edited for content.

I say "Good for them!" That movie just wouldn't have the same impact if it was hacked up making it safe for prime time broadcast.

You don't think that's a bit violent for prime time? And besides, if you're that concerned about the viewing experience of a movie, why do you watch it on network TV?

I'm watching Canadian TV on Satelite. Normally the ABC affiliate is from Boston, but any Canadian station showing the same thing normally takes over the signal. Tonight, the guide listed Private Ryan, but the screen showed Far and Away.

And no, I don't think the movie is too violent for prime-time network TV. War is violent. It's just typically Corporate-American - it's fine for the country to send someone to die, but the people will just be too offended to see anything that paints even a remotely realistic picture. I suppose we're talking about Disney (ABC) here though...

I also don't know if there's a question about preserving the movie "experience" so much as the integrity of the film and its subject matter. That film, if shown, should not be toned down for any audience. If parents don't want their kids watching it, then watch another channel. Or let the kids go play Doom3 on the computer (they can practice for when the next G-Dubya clone sends them off to war in a few years).

Bruno

If you think that yanking the film was because of violence, see, for example, here (it's amazing what obscure publications one can find on Google News )

Quote:
"I understand the f-word is used 11 times in the movie,” said Don Carmichael, vice president and general manager of WBAY.

South Park the Movie? :-)

Rob

Quote:
"I understand the f-word is used 11 times in the movie,”

Which one, 'Freedom' or 'France' ?

pca

Recently I saw Fargo on A&E or some odd channel. My favorite quote is:

How do you split a car you dummy? With a frozen chainsaw?!

My personal favorite is from The Usual Suspects. Unfortunately, I can't remember what it's translated to, but the original line is "Hand me the fucking keys, you fucking cocksucker motherfucker!" They had to be real original to "fix" that many swears, plus keeping the same cadence. It's hysterical. I'll have to listen to the commentary tonight and post the results.

I'm probably the minority on this, but in general I'd rather see the TV movie versions of things. I tolerate language in movies, but I don't like it. For MOST movies I see, the majority of the sex and language can be cut out, leaving the movie intact (and much more enjoyable for me, though admittedly some of the language dubs are rather silly). For certain movies, however, this simply doesn't work. SPR is one of them; I can't imagine what a "sanitized" version of that would look like.

I've always wondered whey they can't release a separate audio track on the DVDs to let people choose. Usually they've already created them anyway (for TV or airplanes) so all they need is add them as separate audio tracks. Perhaps this is more work than I'd think, or maybe the directors/producers/whoever don't want to release their art differently from how they created it. I don't know, but I think it'd be a cool feature for the minority of us who really don't like language in movies.

On a side note: did you hear about the guy who ran a video store renting “clean” movies where he’d legally purchased them, edited them to get rid of strong language, sex, and violence, and then rent them (clearly marked) to people wanting to see the latest movies but with a “G” rating. I don’t remember all of the details, but I’m pretty sure he got sued by the movie companies. It’s legal to edit a movie, but not to charge for it.

Of course, this guy was asking for it, but I wonder why the movie companies haven’t tried to go after the sector of people who would buy into this kind of thing. Maybe it isn’t big enough, but it seems to me this guy was making a living in a single location doing it (as opposed to the national distribution the movie companies could have).

On a side, side note regarding movies with separate more strongly rated versions, have you ever noticed the "director’s version" (or whatever it is) DVD cover for "The Girl Next Door"? I haven't seen the movie, but I find the cover amusing. It's exactly the same as the cover of the normal version where she is wearing skimpy clothing, but in the special version more of her body is covered by the bar across the center. So on the new cover it shows LESS of her than before, but since you can't see any of her skimpy clothing she looks naked. In this case, it seems, less truly is more!

Quote:
I tolerate language in movies, but I don't like it.

Personally, I've found language (preferably english) to be fairly essential to my enjoyment of movies (except silent ones, of course)

pca

pca

I really enjoyed "The Seagull's Laughter" (to use a recent example); It was in Icelandic (but was subtitled). I find that language is incidental to my viewing, but I need subtitles because I'm basically fluent in nothing else

To add to the list, a friend of mine is an enormous Kevin Smith fan, and he regularly watches, in addition to his DVD copy, the TV version of Mallrats. Jason Mewes's lines are great. Must have taken forever to edit him down.

My favorite airline edit is when I watched Love Actually on my flight to Europe. They actually managed to take out the entire storyline of the two soft-core porn people. It slipped my mind until the movie was over and I realized that they hadn't shown up yet

The first time I saw Four Weddings was on a flight to Australia. It wasn't until much later I found out the characters weren't saying "Bugger!" at the start of the film.