Entertainment Nooz

[40cakes]

The Libertine is a film about debauchery and sex and lying and 17th century naughty people.

According to CleanFlicks, the Libertine is about The Earl of Rochester is a poet and falls in love with a struggling young actress.

According to a federal judge in Colorado, ruled that such companies cannot independently edit films and resell them as "clean". "Clean" includes removing profanity, violence, nudity, sexual dialogue, and also includes "homosexuality, co-habitation, and perversion." By that definition, The Libertine should come up at about 5 minutes total run time.

It's a post and rant for another time, but man do I think censorship is dumb.

Comments

[lightningspark.livejournal.com]

that movie is PORN. capital PORN. have you seen it?! hehehe.

anyway, i agree. dumb censorship. that is totally not what the movie is about. there's not much love in it. it's lust, baby.

[fadingembers.livejournal.com]

I have not seen it, but know exactly what it's about and I figured it's not the love story between a poet and an actress.

But seriously, what type of person says, "Gosh, I'd like to see Johnny Depp in a film about an Earl who lived a debaucherous, manipulative life until he died, but I don't want to see any naked bits or hear any curse words or hear any references to people having sex or being gay or anything naughty." And don't say it's so you can watch with your family. Something can be perfectly clean, and still not be meant for children. Gosh.

[jerseyfabulous.livejournal.com]

i'm surprised the libertine would be even 5 minutes if you take out all the profanity, violence, nudity, sexual dialogue, homosexuality, and perversion. it's pretty much the whole movie. (did this cleanflicks outfit even watch the original?)

[fadingembers.livejournal.com]

That's what I wonder. If you hate that sort of thing, why would you WANT to watch the movie? You can take out profanity and nudity and sex and violence, but one assumes that a movie would still contain the themes therein of "Yay pr0n!!!"

[jerseyfabulous.livejournal.com]

i'm also puzzled as to why anyone who wants clean movies would want to watch this one, even in a completely butchered version. if you took out all the nudity, sex, and violence, i think you might have maybe half an hour of footage that you could voice over (and you would need to), but still not enough to make it into "poet falls in love with actress."

i'm also insanely curious as to how they've edited it without fadeouts or cuts that make no sense or completely voice-overing the entire thing. i've seen the movie and i'm trying to picture it cleaned up in a non-noticable way and failing utterly.

[fadingembers.livejournal.com]

I just watched the "Love Conquers All" version of Brazil last week, so I wonder if maybe they butcher and rearrange it in a similar fashion. They changed the beginning and the endings, made use of freeze frames, cut out entire scenes, dumbed it down (so you'd know the scenes of a man dressed as Icarus WAS JUST A DREAM SEQUENCE), and dubbed in lines. I have a feeling this operation might be a bit more amateur, so I admit my curiosity is piqued. Maybe they have a 2-week free trial, like Netflix :)

[phanatic.livejournal.com]

I think censorship is dumb, but I also think that if I purchase a copy of a movie on videotape, I should be able to do what I want with it, even if that includes cutting the videotape to pieces, splicing it back together, and then renting it to a third party who knows that I did that to it.

[fadingembers.livejournal.com]

I'd have to double-check the article, but I believe the legal pressure was coming from the Director's Guild of America, not the studios (though I'm sure they were glad to stop someone else making money off of them). From an artistic standpoint, I can see the problems one would have with cutting out the "bad bits" of a movie and repackaging it, even when the intended audience knows it's cut. That's like painting a canvas that depicts the struggle and pain of, say, life in the midst of third-world military coup, then having someone say, "Hey, I'd love to buy a print of your art. Of course, I'm just going to cut out that picture of that one girl who sort of looks like she's smiling and sell it as a postcard to people who don't like to dwell upon terrible things. What do you mean you're not okay with that?"

I also realize it sounds silly to talk about artistic merit when we speak of things like "Failure to Launch", but I can't stand up for one movie without standing up for them all. I may not like your stupid romantic comedy, but I shall defend your right to release it as the focus groups wish.

That all being said, the only legal training I have is some mock trial in high school. This fell under copyright law, but the blog that linked to the article pointed out that this really isn't a copyright issue. So you may have a point that if you purchase a copy, it is up to your discretion whatever you do with it.

[phanatic.livejournal.com]

From an artistic standpoint, I can see the problems one would have with cutting out the "bad bits" of a movie and repackaging it, even when the intended audience knows it's cut. That's like painting a canvas that depicts the struggle and pain of, say, life in the midst of third-world military coup, then having someone say, "Hey, I'd love to buy a print of your art. Of course, I'm just going to cut out that picture of that one girl who sort of looks like she's smiling and sell it as a postcard to people who don't like to dwell upon terrible things. What do you mean you're not okay with that?"

If you as a director don't want people doing with their property, then don't sell them copies of your work.

The only problem with that is that it's not the director's work. The director was hired by the studio to direct the film, and the copyright on the film is owned by the studio, not the director. The studio gets to edit that film as it sees fit prior to release, even if the director disagrees with them. Yes, I know, sometimes directors manage to negotiate contracts giving them final cut authority, but fundamentally, that's just another aspect of the studio's control. They're paying for the film to be produced, they get to decide things like "We're going to cut out Natalie Portman's crotch shot."

So the director gets paid for his time, and the studio owns the copyright. His claims that his artistic integrity are damanged by further edits don't really have anything to do with copyright law. The studio will, in fact, sell the the broadcast rights to that film to a broadcaster, and the broadcaster will edit it for television, removing profanity and such. The broadcaster bought the right to do that when it bought the right to broadcast the film.

The directors' "rights" here are a red herring. The directors work for hire, they do not maintain copyright of the finished work anymore than the actors or the foley artists or anyone else who works on the project in exchange for pay. The studio is the one who holds the rights, and so far as I can tell, this is just another example of copyright holders being allowed by the courts to dictate what individuals may or may not do with their own private property, and that's ridiculous. Copyright exists for a specific purpose, and try as I might, I can't find "artistic integrity" anywhere in the Constitution.

[imre-nico.livejournal.com]

ha, that film? We were actually disappointed at how yawningly tame it was.

I mean, come on, a giant penis statue on wheels? Is that pushing the envelope? Because like, Malcolm MacDowall kills an old lady with an enormous pop-art penis statue in A Clockwork Orange, and that was pretty racy...almost forty years ago.

There are a lot of earlier films that captured the era's debauchery a fuckton better with no controversy at all. Off the top of my head, Marquis, Marat-Sade and several French softcore movies on Skinemax at 3 AM.

Ironically, they had the "cleaned up" version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off on TV yesterday. What a fucking joke.

Censorship is absolutely pointless.

[fadingembers.livejournal.com]

Well not so much being shocked at "OMG IT'S SO HARDCORE!" but pointing out the blatant hypocracy this service gives ya. The Libertine is not a family film. It is not meant to be a family film. Since children and tweens and teenagers are a billion dollar business, there are PLENTY of things to watch as a family. If you don't want to see nudity and sexual situations, don't watch a movie with nudity and sexual situations. Don't watch a movie ABOUT nudity and sexual situations. There are plenty of options out there.

[imre-nico.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely, I agree. That's how I felt about Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Either you like movies like that, or you don't, but don't destroy the whole relevancy of the movie by cutting out every line down to "You wear too much eye makeup. My sister wears too much. People think she's a whore..

When you meet someone and you don't really like their nose, you don't lop the end off and call it good.

You either deal with it, take it as part of their context, or find someone else to date. Seems pretty simple really. >_<.

In my comment before I was just pointing out the irony of how many highbrow art films don't get tarred with the same brush, despite being exponentially "worse" in terms of lascivious content.

I find it funny sometimes what exactly they decide to flip out over.