In Continuum.

I like movies. No, I love movies. No, I have a passion for movies. I respect the medium a lot, perhaps a lot more than the other mediums, because of how it combines all forms of art into one single motion picture. Of course, every once in a while, you get a "17 Again" or "Knowing". However, you cannot deny that you also get the likes of "The Wrestler" and "Doubt". Good movies do come by, though not very often, and they usually have an impact on me that is just different from the other mediums. I enjoy my movies, and I respect the people behind the cameras (as well as the ones in front of) that make it all happen. I like my movies with a combination of the following: a comfortable seat, a comfortable leg resting position, dimmed lights, the absence of physical movements and other distractions, and the entirety of the film itself, with popcorns and drinks being completely optional. Yes, I included the part about the entirety of the film because it is especially so in a country such as Singapore, where people tend to freak out at the sight of a bare butt. It really is just two pieces of meat, what is with the violent reaction? Most often than not, the films that reach your theater and television, they've all been cut one way or another. Oh, not cut - edit. They prefer to call it that anyway.

This is the entry about these editors, the people with the scissors, the ones that tell you what you can or cannot watch. Of course, there is a higher authority who tell you what they can and cannot show, but that is for another entry altogether. Meet Dinesh Pasrasurum, a man whose job is about watching a movie everyday and to cut - I mean edit - shots away from a movie to make it more socially acceptable. I read about him in yesterday's TODAY paper, and he just looks like a random chap you'd run into on the road. You know, smartly dressed, no tie, normal good looking guy. The problem is that he has one of my most hated professions out there, and I wonder how many of my favorite movies has he edited in his career. Just imagine dating a guy who looks like Jude Law turning out to be some bank robber or a pimp - kinda sucks, doesn't it. But anyway, I have this thing against the censorship board in Singapore and the people who work in it. More so for the people who run it though, but these are the people who are actually cutting things out for real. I have no hate for this man of course, but it still pisses me off when it comes to the job. I mean, it is a cool job to have, but you'd never take up a job like that if you are a movie lover. Entirety, after all, is one of the most important aspects of a movie.

It's funny how the article takes about half of it to blame everybody else for all the edits though. For example, the article brought up Lust Caution, a film with a couple of racy sex scenes that received a lot of heavy editing when it first reached the shores of Singapore. The editor brought up a point about how, sometimes, you can't just blame everything on the Board of Film Censorship. There are times when the distributor feel that they want to earn more money with a more "friendly" film rating, so to speak. So, what the distributor does is that they'd edit the film down to have just the friendly scenes left, with everything else left out. This will warrant a much lower rating and, as a result, more people watching it at the theaters. Of course, the full raw and uncut version was released in Singapore later on, but that was slapped with a R21 rating and was released on a later date. Then the article goes on to blame the society - us - saying that what is edited out of a film is, ultimately, a reflection of what is socially acceptable. It is trying to say that their decisions are based upon what we deem as being acceptable, or what we can stomach in a movie theater. But seriously, if you think about it, it's all really stupid.

I was watching one of my favorite films of all time the other day and almost tore a hole in my table. Adaptation is one of the most brilliant movies ever, and you will not believe how much editing went into that film alone. The film does not feature gay sex or full frontal male and female nudity. It has a few nude scenes of women (one in a computer monitor) and a masturbation scene in which we don't get to see anything. All of those were abruptly edited out from the DVD version in a way that could have been mistaken for the work of a seven year old with a pair of scissors. The editing was so rough and unprofessional that you cannot help but be amazed at how little they care about the flow and continuity of a scene! The least they could do was to stitch up the scene and try to give it a continuity, perhaps giving it a less abrupt soundtrack of just carrying it forward. But no, you can tell when there is an edit, because everything ends abruptly and you have to actually guess what happened back there in the scene. I was infuriated with my copy of the DVD, and even more pissed off because I bought it with my own wallet. Even when it comes to DVDs, they have to put a hand on it and ruin everything for me. I want to put my hands around BFC and choke it.

I remember watching The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on channel 5, and it was hailed as the movie event of the year or something along the lines of that. I have watched that movie about thirty times or something, and I know every single line in that movie. I know what music comes up in which scene and in which shot, I know which scene follows which scene, and I can do all of that with the sound turned off. That is how familiar I am with the movie, which is also why it was so easy for me to spot the scenes that were abruptly edited out from the movie for no apparent reasons! Think about it, in Adaptation, masturbation scenes were edited out even though it was on a DVD and it didn't show anything more than moving blankets - fine. What is there to cut in The Lord of the Rings? It's not like they showed elf breasts? Anyway, so I was watching the last part of the Battle at the Black Gates, and it was right after the speech Aragorn gave about shattered shields and men of the West. Then there is a part where Aragorn turns around to look at his friends, and then he goes "For Frodo" before he rushes out to meet the orcs. That part is pivotal because it shows that Aragorn was not expecting them to win, but doing it to avenge Frodo (thinking that he was dead) and die in the course of doing so.

But guess what, THAT SHOT WAS CUT OFF. I was mouthing the words myself when it did not come up, and I was there in the couch, shocked. Unless Aragorn was masturbating while he said those words, I see no reason why anybody would want to cut away such a pivotal moment in the movie. That is like cutting away the last line by Rhett Butler from Gone With the Wind! Or Darth Vader not telling Luke that he is his father! It was incredibly stupid that they decided to do away with that line, and my only explanation was because it is a three-hour long movie and they needed time for advertisements. As if it wasn't bad enough that they split the movie into two and showed it over two days, they interrupted both parts of the movies with advertisements that lasted forever. To make way for even more ads, they probably thought that it'd be smart to cut away little lines here and there from the movie, thinking that nobody would ever notice. Well, I NOTICED IT! And it wasn't even a particularly sensitive line to a bloody religion or race or anything. "For Frodo" certainly is not provocative in racial harmony, and it perhaps encourages racial harmony because we see a fellowship of different races fighting for a little Hobbit! That edit was completely and absolutely retarded.

So, here in Singapore, when it comes to editing films for the general audience, there aren't any rules. No, nudity and all those kinda stuff are not rules, because every rule can be bent, and anything can be edited out for no apparent reasons. More advertisements to make even more money seems like a good reason, but it is not. You are destroying the entirety of the film, and some shots were put into a movie for a reason. You blame us, you say that it is our fault, you say that you edit shots out of a film because we cannot stomach it - seriously? What we cannot stomach is what you haven't been feeding us all along. Nothing against you Dinesh, but more about the organization that you work for that rubs me in the wrong way. I detest the excuses that they give all the time, about how the censorship board censors the things that may be, quote unquote, touchy when it comes to race, religion, sex, homosexuality and vicious violence. OK, that's acceptable, but all you really have to do is to through a tag on the movie poster, or paste a sticker on the DVD cover. Go ahead and have ratings, prevent people under a certain age to watch a certain movie, or buy a certain DVD. You go ahead and do that. Don't rate a movie M18 and then STILL cut things from the movie, because that is just outrageous, and vulgar, if you ask of me.

Here is what they should be doing. If you are going to show a movie on television, then show the whole entire movie. I don't mind if you are going to put advertisements in between scenes, just don't cut my crucial scenes away just because you feel like nobody would notice it - somebody would. If you think a movie is too racy for the general public - DON'T SHOW IT. It's that easy really, just don't show it. On one hand, you respect the social tolerance of certain sensitive materials, and on the other you respect the entirety of the film. It is a win-win situation which I don't understand why they don't get it yet. When it comes to DVDs, sell it to the people who are above a certain age limit, like at the movies, don't edit anything out from my damn DVDs. If you are afraid that the children may pick it up at home, then it is the problem of the parents and not really yours. If you have labels and clearly stated reasons why a film is rated in a certain way, then people going into the theater would be prepared. If you are going to watch into a film called Lust Caution and not expect sex, something is very bloody wrong with you. If you are offended, blame yourself for paying for a movie and then walking right into it. That's like complaining that a Haunted House in a theme park is too scary even though you bought the tickets yourself and walked in. COME ON.