GagWatch

Members of the Russian Communist Party have demanded that the new Indiana Jones film to be banned in the country because they say it distorts history.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, set during the Cold War, sees Harrison Ford’s character battle Cate Blanchett’s evil KGB agent.

Sergei Malinkovich, the rather paranoid chief of the St Petersburg Communist Party told Reuters that the film’s plot was “rubbish” and then went on, bizarrely, to claim that if the film is allowed Russian cinema goers might end up believing that the communists were running around with crystal skulls back in 1957.

Moscow Communist official Andrei Andreyev was being equally paranoid, claiming: “It is very disturbing if talented directors want to provoke a new Cold War.”

Protestant groups in Russia are urging (via) the Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to shut down the cartoon channel 2x2 for broadcasting shows they claim promote homosexuality and religious intolerance.

The Consultative Council of the Heads of Protestant Churches in Russia sent a letter to Chaika on Wednesday, accusing 2x2 of promoting “cruelty, violence, homosexual propaganda, religious hatred and intolerance” by airing cartoons such as “South Park,” said Vitaly Vlasenko, a spokesman for the group, which unites several Protestant denominations

The channel, which broadcasts Western cartoons aimed at adults has already pulled two of its shows - “Happy Tree Friends” and “The Adventures of Big Jeff” - after a receiving a warning from the government media watchdog. A second warning letter could result in the loss of the channel’s broadcasting license.

The Moscow Times (via) reports that Coca-Cola has called off a promotion after offended Orthodox believers lodged a complaint with prosecutors.

Hoping to tap into a growing tide of patriotism, the U.S. beverage giant had placed pictures of religious sites together with its logo on fridges in kiosks and shops in Nizhny Novgorod, the country’s third-biggest city.

In mid-December, a group of Orthodox believers sent an angry letter to the Nizhny Novgorod prosecutor’s office, the local bishop and the regional governor complaining about the promotion, which it claimed was blasphemous.

The protesters had wanted Coca-Cola to face charges of “inciting religious hatred,” claiming that “large corporations have to take into account the local context, particularly the Christian context.” They changed their mind about pushing for a prosecution after Coca-Cola pulled the ads.

Irina Monakhova, a spokeswoman for the Nizhny Novgorod prosecutor’s office, said investigators were conducting an inquiry into the claims at the request of the residents and would make their findings known by the end of January.

Destricted, a compilation of films that attempts to lluminate the points where art meets sexuality, is now playing in Moscow. But, as the Moscow Times (via) reports, it almost didn’t.

The film was shown at this year’s Moscow International Film Festival in late June, but its planned cinema release later that month was repeatedly postponed, amid rumors of a ban from the Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency.

Sem Klebanov, president of the movie’s Russian distributor, Cinema Without Frontiers, said Wednesday that he submitted the film to the cinema agency a few weeks before the Moscow International Film Festival to obtain approval for general release. However, “they said it couldn’t be shown because it was an amoral film, it was pornography,” he said. He declined to name the officials he had spoken with.

In July and August, newspapers speculated on the reasons why the release of the film, whose Russian title is “Banned from Cinemas,” was pushed back. “Employees of the Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency perceived the name of the film as telling them how to act,” Izvestia suggested on Aug. 20.

According to the agency, the reasons for the delay were merely procedural, but Klebanov maintains that his company filed all the usual documents and pointed out that in previous cases certification had only taken two weeks.

Strictly News (via) reports that both Russia and South Korea have given up trying to deal with the various social and economic issues they are facing and are cracking down on porn instead.

Russian politicians and public figures at all levels have been releasing regular, but ineffective, statements demanding an end to pornography for several years. But now the Russian culture ministry is drafting a bill to limit the distribution of erotic and pornographic products which they expect to be submitting in the second half of this year.

Meanwhile, the South Korean government has declared war on “obscene material” and has announced plans to block access to foreign pornography on the internet.

Ministry of Information and Communication information safety department head Lee Tae Hee also said measures would be taken to step up surveillance of the internet.

That’s handy.

It had to happen somewhere. Russia has Banned Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy, Borat which has been accused of poking fun at Moscow’s neighbour and close ally Kazakhstan.

The film, which has proved to be a big hit in both the US and Europe, follows Kazakh reporter Borat (played by Cohen) as he encounters a series of unsuspecting Americans and makes increasingly outrageous, sexist, racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic comments.

A Russian culture ministry official told the BBC that it had refused to issue a distribution licence because the film could potentially humiliate different ethnic groups and religions, but refused tio give any further details.

The controversy following Madonna’s Confessions tour has taken a turn for the seriously nasty with the news that the Russian mafia have threatened to kill the singer and her two young children.

“She is unbelievably nervous and is worried about performing in Moscow. Because of that she wants to get home as soon as possible and doesn’t want to be away a minute more than is necessary,” a source told the [Czech daily Blesk].

(via Freemuse)

Madonna’s Confessions tour reaches Russia on September 12th, and - predictably enough - the Orthodox Church has described the concert as “blasphemy” and is urging believers to stay away.

Members of a radical Russian Orthodox group however, have gone further, demanding that the show be banned.

“We will never allow her to desecrate our greatest icons. We demand to drive Madonna out of Russian territory,” Leonid Simanovich-Nikshich, head of a group calling itself the Union of Orthodox Religious Banner Bearers, told about 100 supporters at a central Moscow square.

Simanovich-Nikshich and a couple of supporters then speared a portrait poster of Madonna with a wooden pike, ripped it up, tossed the pieces on the ground and stamped on them.

I wonder if all that jumping up and down has made them feel any better.

Following the lead of an umbrella organisation of Indian Islamic clerics in seeking to ban The Da Vinci Code, Muslims in Russia and Azerbaijan have leapt onto the bandwagon.

In Russia, the Central Spiritual Directorate of Muslims (CSDM) has called the film “blasphemous” and called for it to be banned.

“We equal this film with the recent Prophet Muhammad extremist cartoons as the novel and the film desecrate the Prophet Isa (Jesus Christ) worshipped by the Muslims,” the CSDM statement received by Interfax on Thursday reads.

They go on to demonstrate a complete lack of any sense of proportion by claiming that Russian Muslims regard “public and mass provocative showing of such hack work” to be “an highly sophisticated form of spiritual genocide against the peoples of Russia.”

Admittedly, I wouldn’t disagree with the description of Dan Brown as a hack, but the rest is bonkers. Which leads us nicely to Azerbaijan where Gadzhiaga Nuriyev, head of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan has called for not only the film, but also the book, to be banned.

“Lack of respect for the feelings of believers, whether they are Muslims, Christians or representatives of other world religions, is inadmissable.”

Sorry mate, but if you can get this worked up about a very bad film based on a not very good book then any respect I may have had for your beliefs goes straight out of the window.

(via MediaWatchWatch)

The Sakharov Museum and Public Center is planning to exhibit the entire series of Muhammed cartoons that have been used to provoke riots throughout the Islamic world.

Yury Samodurov, director of the museum, said on Russian television that:

“We must show the whole world that Russia goes along with Europe, that the freedom of expression is much more important for us than the dogmas of religious fanatics.”

The exhibition is expected to open in March and laywer, Yury Shmidt has said he will invite French philosopher Andre Glucksmann and French novelist Michel Houellebecq to the opening ceremony to read lectures about the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

(via MediaWatchWatch)