Savage Popcorn

Wes Craven’s 1972 film, The Last House on the Left has had a chequered history on the UK, to say the least, starting with an outright ban in 1974 when the film was first submitted for a BBFC rating. With the rise of home video in the 1980s, the film made it – briefly – to UK shores until the “video nasties” moral panic started to bite and the film was banned again by the 1984 Video Recordings Act.

The film had built a reputation for itself and, as the 1980s became the 1990s, critics had started to laud the film as an important piece of work. This led, in 2000, to the film being submitted to the BBFC for certification yet again and, once again, being refused.

In 2002, Blue Underground submitted the film and were told that they had to make 16 seconds worth of cuts in order to achieve an 18 certificate. The video distributor appealed and, as part of the appeal, called in Mark Kermode to make a case for the film’s historical importance. Famously, the Video Appeals Committee not only upheld the original cuts, but doubled them.

Finally, on 17th March 2008, the BBFC classified the film, uncut, for video release. And now, as Twitch reports, Metrodome Distribution have uncovered a further 5 minutes and 27 seconds of previously unseen footage which is included on the 3 Disc Ultimate Edition, released on Monday 20th October.

Crack open a bottle of Krug while you watch the original trailer.

It was also disingenuous of Random House to suggest that the novel might incite violence. Certain members of the population might choose to commit an act of violence, but that is not the same as the book itself inciting violence. To pass the responsibility in this way to the novel was a betrayal of the author and of free speech.

- Jo Glanville on the firebombing of an independent publisher.

Based on the graphic novel by Claus Deleuran, Rejsen Til Saturn (Journey to Saturn) tells the tale of what happens when a Danish crew of misfits travel in space to find natural gas. The film is due to be released on Friday and promises a fart and belch fuelled lampoon of a whole host of political and religious beliefs. Except one.

The one Muslim character in the film has been exempted from any religious satire because the director was concerned about his own, and his family’s, safety.

“It’s unfortunately been impossible to make fun of the Muslims’ religion. I think we make many jabs at the person Jamil in the film, but it’s correct that we’re not touching his belief. It’s simply too sensitive an area, that I can’t take the responsibility to get involved. I certainly need to think of both my family and my workplace. I’m not a fighter, and I don’t like to have raging Muslims knocking on my door,” says Thorbjørn Christoffersen.

“I 100% support that people should be able to make fun of everything. but this is not about special consideration for Muslims, it’s about consideration for myself and my family,” says the director.

Brian Mikkelsen, Denmark’s Justice Minister – and former Culture Minister – has expressed sadness at this:

“It’s sad it it’s become so that individual artists censure themselves out of fear of religious fanatics. We have in Dnemark a strong and good tradition of satire, also in connection with religious subjects. And we should hold fast to it.”

From the trailer, the film does look like it could be a lot of fun. It is a shame, though – to put it mildly – that the people behind the film should feel threathened into holding back.

In March, Dr Tanya Byron published a review of the risks faced by children if exposed to “harmful or inappropriate material”" on the internet or in video games and recommended that the rating system for games be changed. She called for a new rating for games aimed at children aged 12 and over - greatly expanding the role of the BBFC in classifying games.

Ed Balls the Schools secretary called the report “ground breaking” and promised to implement all of the recommendations in full.

Culture Minister Margaret Hodge has announced a consultation on whether the recommendations should be implemented in full.

The Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association (Elspa) is still in favour of retaining the industry-backed Pegi scheme became the only rating system. “The compromise that Tanya Byron recommended in her report was not a good one for child safety,” said Michael Rawlinson, managing director of Elspa.

Not content with going fishing for potential copyright violations on YouTube, Viacom are also claiming copyright for videos they don’t own (via).

Juxtaposer is an original animation made by Joanna Davidovich for her senior project. She copyrighted the film in 2006 and says that she “only entered into distribution agreements that were nonexclusive.”

And now she’s received a notification from YouTube that Viacom has made a copyright ownership claim to the film. She is, of course, disputing the claim and has documentation to support her case but – while the dispute is in progress - Viacom gets access to her video statistics.

Digging around a bit, it looks like the claim is a result of over-reliance on automated copyright claiming - either on the part of Viacom itself or a result of YouTube’s Video Identification Tool casting its net too widely. But Viacom does have form with these sorts of claims.

“With Viacom sending more than 160,000 DMCA takedown notices, it may not even be aware which videos it told YouTube to remove,” said the EFF. “If that’s right, then Viacom will inevitably end up censoring some perfectly legitimate videos—surely, the MoveOn/Brave New Films video is not the only example of a fair use that got caught in Viacom’s driftnet.”

Obviously, copyright owners do have every right to protect their intellectual property. However, the approach being taken by groups such as Viacom and YouTube is to assume that everyone is stealing everything; and when they start automating on this basis, these sorts of false positives become inevitable.

Being on the receiving end of a baseless accusation isn’t pleasant and this sort of behaviour is going to deter creators from sharing their content.

Ultimately, the burden of proof has to be on the copyright owner, not the accused, and accusing everyone and hoping for the best is neither a viable nor a reasonable approach to protecting intellectual property.

The actress who played Judith Iscariot in Monty Python’s Life of Brian became the mayor of Aberystwyth this year. And in one of those quirks of fate, it turns out that the film has been banned in this particular seaside resort for the past 30 years.

Not surprisingly, Sue Jones-Davies (for it is she) is seeking to overturn the ban.

It appears that the ban was recommended back in 1979 by a committee made up of church leaders and, once the fuss had died down, no-one in the council’s licensing department remembered it was in place. But it’s always useful to remind ourselves where pandering to religious sensitivities leads - doubly so as Aberystwyth was where I spent my student years.

Found at Pharyngula

Smoking is bad for you, it causes all sorts of nasty diseases and it makes you smell. It’s quite reasonable, therefore, that the British Medical Association is keen on reducing the numbers of smokers.

However, their demand that the BBFC take “pro-smoking content” (whatever that is) into account when vetting films does strike me as being both bizarre and disproportionate. It also seems pretty pointless when the only example they can come up with is one scene in Independence Day, a film that was released in 1996.

Film and TV makers already bend over backwards to avoid accusations of glamorising smoking so I really don’t see what the BMA expects to achieve with this. The cynic in me suspects that they don’t really expect to achieve anything and are motivated more by a desire to be seen to be “doing something” than any genuine belief that teenagers are taking up smoking because Will Smith lit up a cigar twelve years ago.

Last week I mentioned that, after losing the pointless and frivolous court case against the BBC, Stephen Green wrote to the targets of his antics to ask them to let him out of facing the consequences for his actions.

Green started a petition to have his court costs waived, which prompted Roger Utting (via) to start a counter-petition calling for the costs not to be waived.

Green started the legal action that he now claims he can’t afford and is, quite rightly, liable for the costs.

Everyone is entitled to free-speech - but no one’s religious beliefs should put them above the law, or be paid for by the tax payer without the tax payer’s direct consent.

Click here to see or sign the petition and, if you have a Facebook account, you can also show your support by joining the Facebook group.

Christian Voice, the one-man campaign led by Stephen Green, is a group with a rather sordid history of resorting to threats and blackmail in pursuit of their aims. One of these aims was Green’s campaign to ban Jerry Springer: The Opera, which he lost rather spectacularly.

Now he’s facing bankruptcy.

At a hearing a fortnight ago, the BBC’s Mark Thompson and Jonathan Thoday, producer of JSTO, were awarded costs totalling £90,000 against Green. The BBC’s solicitors were awarded £55,000 and Olswangs Solicitors, who acted for Thoday, got an order for £35,000.

The money was due to be paid yesterday, but Stephen Green is pleading poverty.

And in an incredible display of bare-faced cheek he has written to both Mark Thompson and Jonathan Thoday asking them to waive their costs “in the interests of goodwill and justice”.

Goodwill? Justice? This man has no idea what these words mean. This is the man that heads a nasty little group (membership: Stephen Green) that has been willing to blackmail a cancer charity into refusing money raised on its behalf by JSTO, and has repeatedly used harassment and intimidation in its fanatical campaigns against JSTO and gay organisations it disapproves of.

I shall attempt to resist the temptation to gloat and suggest instead that if Green really does believe in his god, he should start praying.

The latest film to fall foul of exaggerated religious sensitivities is Mike Myers’ latest comedy, The Love Guru which has become the target of a petition, even othough none of the people objecting to it have actually seen it.

Even though both Myers’ and Paramount Pictures, who produced the film, have pointed out that religion portrayed in the film is purely fictional.

Mike Myers himself has described the religion he lampoons as a “mythical creation - it’s like the Force in Star Wars”.

I can’t help but wonder whether Myers has accidentally identified the real sensitivity behind this premature outcry: that deep down the religious know as well as the rest of us that all religions are as fictional as the Force in Star Wars.

According to Bhavna Shinde of the Sanatan Society in the US: “They should draw a line when it comes to people’s faith.”

They shouldn’t, of course, especially when the faith in question is more made up than most. Or should we expect to see Christians complaining about being lampooned in Cthulhu?