Script Censorship…Chinese censors edit storyline to Hollywood zombie film, World War Z

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See article from thewrap.com

Executives at the Hollywood studio, Paramount have been worrying about a minor plot point in the $175 million zombie film, World War Z , which stars Brad Pitt. In the ‘offending scene’, characters debate the geographic origin of an outbreak that caused a zombie apocalypse and point to China, a Paramount executive told TheWrap. The fast-rising prominence of the Chinese market, state censorship and the tight quotas for U.S. releases, the studio advised the movie producers to drop the reference to China and cite a different country as a possible source of the pandemic, an executive with knowledge of the film told TheWrap. The change was made in recent days in the hopes of landing a deal for one of Paramount’s biggest summer movies to play in China.

GI Joe Banished to the Cellar…Evil Dead remake easily tops the US box office

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See article from best-horror-movies.com See IMDb box office chart .

The box office returns for the weekend are in. While many expected G.I. Joe to hold firm in the top position but Fede Alvarez’s reboot of Sam Raimi’s beloved 1981 classic, Evil Dead chopped through the competition over the weekend. Evil Dead , which was reportedly shot on a $17 million budget, pulled down $26 million domestically, to clear the top slot by a clean $5 million. Alvarez’s thrilling rendition pretty much disregards the comedy that Raimi’s original infused, instead leaning on a very dark mood. The film moves at a terrific pace, offers outstanding loads of gore and, in the end, proves to be a completely unforgiving picture. In short, it’s the horror film we’ve all hoped for.

Bad Language…US TV censor bins 70% of queued complaints and reconsiders its censorship of fleeting nudity and strong language

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See gobbledegook news release from fcc.gov

After the US Supreme Court’s decision in FCC v. Fox Television Stations in September 2012, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has initiate a review of the Commission’s broadcast indecency policies and enforcement to ensure they are fully consistent with First Amendment principles. In the interim, the Chairman directed the Enforcement Bureau to focus its indecency enforcement resources on egregious cases and to reduce the backlog of pending broadcast indecency complaints. The Bureau has reduced the backlog by 70% so far, more than one million complaints, principally by binning them on the grounds that it had taken so long to process them that they were too stale to pursue. The FCC now seek comments on whether the full Commission should make changes to its current broadcast indecency policies or maintain them as they are.

Green Policies…Green Band Trailers adopted by the US games rating body

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See article from giantbomb.com

The US Entertainment Software Ratings Board has implemented changes that will impact the way Mature-rated (17 rated) games are advertised on the Internet. Most notably, video games marketing will be following the lead of film. Publishers now have an opportunity to produce and distribute trailers for Mature-rated games at a much larger general audience. As per green band trailers for movies, trailers suitable for all ages will have a green slate that airs before the trailer rolls, and is required be on-screen for at least four seconds. Such green band trailers will not require an age gate on websites, but have to be approved by the ESRB prior to release. Green band trailers will also be allowed for in-game promotions in games with a lower rating. This concession is not allowed for 18 rated, Adults Only games. Another small change is that the ESRB will now allow promotional material to display both US ratings and international ratings such as PEGI. The previous prohibition had undesirably resulted in international promotional material being stripped of rating information entirely.

High Noon…MPAA president forewarns White House that Hollywood will oppose any proposals to censor films in the name of gun control

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See article from hollywoodreporter.com

On the eve of the entertainment industry’s White House meeting to discuss gun violence in films and video games, Motion Picture Association of America president Chris Dodd told The Hollywood Reporter that his industry will consider voluntary guidelines but will vehemently oppose any government restrictions on content. Dodd and spokesmen from various sectors of the entertainment industry will meet with Vice President Joe Biden, who has been charged by President Barack Obama with recommending legislation to curb gun violence. Dodd said: We want to explore what we can do to provide parents and others with the information for them to make choices on what they want to see and what they want their children to see. That’s a legitimate space for us to be in. It’s all voluntary. What we don’t want to get involved with is content regulation. We’re vehemently opposed to that. We have a free and open society that celebrates the First Amendment.

Parents TV Council Recommends…TV-14 rated The Walking Dead

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See article from parentstv.org See The Walking Dead on AMC from parentstv.org

US nutters of the Parents TV Council (PTC) waxed lyrical about The Walking Dead series shown on AMC cable network: This program contains violent content which may be too intense for some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised. announced the warning before The Walking Dead Should a program which is so filled with violence, bloodshed, and gore that it requires a disclaimer be considered appropriate for 14 year olds? Cable network AMC thinks so. Yet another zombie apocalypse story — well, the word inspired isn’t exactly appropriate, but modeled after — movies like Night of the Living Dead , the program features a tiny group of human survivors trying to survive in a world filled with animated, flesh-eating cadavers. While the critical establishment lauds the show’s intense character interaction and emotional drama, one suspects that far more of its popularity originates with the program’s horrifically gory and realistic violence. To be stopped, the zombies must suffer trauma to their brain — thus giving the program an excuse for graphic scene after graphic scene of people being decapitated, impaled, and otherwise smashed in the head with axes, makeshift swords, arrows, tire irons, baseball bats, and whatever other implements come to hand. Naturally, each such incident must be shown in extreme (and explicit) close-up, with blood spraying, bone and brain matter splattering, and the attackers being covered in gore. Now the PTC has embarked on a letter writing campaign: Last week, the PTC took the entertainment industry and the TV ratings oversight board to task for their laxity! Thousands of PTC members from around the country got no response to the letters they sent the AMC cable network, asking it to reconsider the inaccurate TV-14 rating on The Walking Dead. As a result, PTC President Tim Winter wrote to former Senator Gordon Smith, Chairman of the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board, and urged the organization to address the blatant mis-rating of the AMC program.

We Fight Censorship…US House of Representatives votes against UN control of the internet

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See article from arstechnica.com

The United States Congress may be a mess and the most unruly and uncompromising bunch in the land but they all apparently think that the UN should not be setting policy on the Internet. To that end, members of the House of Representatives – Democrats and Republicans – voted unanimously (397-0) against the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the United Nations’ efforts to push increased government control over the Internet. The vote is a declaration against the goings-on at the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai. The goal of the conference is to update telecommunications regulations that haven’t been updated since 1988. Those International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) do not address the Internet and other growing technologies. The fear among advocacy groups is that counties that want to control their population’s access to a free internet such as North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, and Syria will use the conference as a way to push their own agendas. Those agendas include eliminating anonymity from the Internet, limits on free speech and the surveillance of internet traffic they deem to be bad. This also includes everything from prohibitions on copyright violations and pornography to prohibitions on defamation and political speech.

Sharing Ratings…US games rating groups adds symbols for personal data sharing characteristics of online games

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See  article from  ubergizmo.com See article from esrb.org

The US games rating group, Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) has announced three new badges describing online play. The three new symbols show whether a game shares games location, other information and whether gamers interact. The official explanations are: Shares Info - Indicates that personal information provided by the user (e.g., e-mail address, phone number, credit card info, etc.) is shared with third parties Shares Location - Includes the ability to display the user’s location to other users of the app Users Interact - Indicates possible exposure to unfiltered/uncensored user-generated content, including user-to-user communications and media sharing via social media and networks The ESRB has also added ‘Unrated’ statements: Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB - Warns those who intend to play the game online about possible exposure to chat (text, audio, video) or other types of user-generated content (e.g., maps, skins) that have not been considered in the ESRB rating assignment Music Downloads Not Rated by the ESRB - Warns that songs downloaded as add-ons for music-based games have not been rated and that their content has not been considered in the ESRB rating assignment

Nutter Romney…Republics adopt a policy line threatening to enforce anti-porn laws

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See article from cnbc.com

The US Republican Party is calling for a crackdown on pornography. As they prepare to nominate Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate for the Nov. 6 election, Republicans have added language to their official platform that anti-porn nutters said would encourage the federal government to step up prosecution of pornography involving adults. Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced, the platform says, according to a draft obtained by Reuters. Republicans are planning a Tuesday vote on the document, a nonbinding statement of principles that tackles everything from monetary policy to abortion. This appears to be the first time that the party has called for a crackdown on sexually explicit material involving adults, a multi-billion-dollar industry. Adult obscenity cases have been exceedingly rare over the past 20 years. Though the administration of George W. Bush promised a crackdown, only the most extreme forms of pornography have been targeted. Anti-pornography nutter Patrick Trueman said the language in the Republican platform would bolster a broader push against the type of sexually explicit material that is sold by convenience stores, by hotels via pay-per-view television programming, and satellite and cable TV providers. According to Trueman’s group, Romney promised earlier this year that he would push for strict enforcement of obscenity laws, as well as the broader use of blocking software to screen out Internet porn.

Looking Back…Kirk Douglas speaks about Spartacus, censorship and Mccartheism

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See  article from  bworldonline.com

Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas earned a standing ovation from a packed Los Angeles theater as he introduced a screening of the 1960 classicSpartacus that included a previously censored scene. When you’re 95 years old, you don’t look forward. You look backwards, you take inventory, Douglas said, as he sat on stage to talk about the film that immortalized him as a movie legend. Douglas said that Spartacus challenged censorship during an era when Hollywood actors and screenwriters were blacklisted due to their alleged communist sympathies. Douglas hired Dalton Trumbo, a blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter, who wrote the script under a pen name. Douglas however put Trumbo’s name in the film credits. You have no idea how terrible those years were when we had the blacklist, said Douglas. The complete Spartacus, which was restored in 1991, includes a homoerotic scene that censors cut out when the movie first screened. In the scene, Laurence Olivier’s character, a wealthy Roman, comes to his slave, a young, half-naked Curtis and asks him to enter the tub and help bathe him.