Saturday, August 29, 2009

Booby blunder

7:12 PM / Blu-ray / Comments14 Comments

Blu-ray

An eagle-eyed visitor to Land of Whimsy (thanks, Rob) has pointed out to me that Anchor Bay's recent US Blu-ray release of Sunshine Cleaning has been CENSORED!Amy Adams has a brief topless scene at around the seven-minute mark as she scrambles into a bra after some motel room sex... well, at least she does on an unidentified European DVD release. Rob doesn't have the DVD so unfortunately he isn't elaborate on which release this is. He did, however, direct me to a link where a brief clip of the offending scene can be downloaded. Here's what you see should you live in Euro-land:

Sunshine Cleaning European DVD

Sunshine Cleaning European DVD

Sunshine Cleaning European DVD

Scandalous, isn't it? Apparently so. On the US BD, when the shot in question comes along, this is what happens:

Sunshine Cleaning US BD

Sunshine Cleaning US BD

Sunshine Cleaning US BD

Puritanical America strikes again, eh? I don't understand it - the movie is rated "R", and her nipples are visible on screen for a mere six frames (I counted them, such is my dedication). You actually have to go through it frame by frame to even see anything, so fleeting is the exposure. In any event, the scene is so innocuous that I can't see how anyone could possibly complain. (The film opening with a guy blowing his own brains out, though - that's fine.) It's a tiny alteration, to be sure, but this sort of thing rankles me precisely because it is so trivial. Not only that, the altered framing destroys the composition of the shot, making it look completely wonky.

It's the Dawn of the Dead remake situation all over again. It was baffling then and it's baffling now. Why go to so much bother over the sake of a pair of tits in an R-rated movie? I've seen more skin on lunchtime television. Perhaps Anchor Bay thought that the fact that Amy Adams is best known for her appearance in Disney's clean-cut Enchanted precluded her from getting her knockers out? (Ironically, she actually showed more bare flesh in that movie than she does here.) But if that's the case, they clearly didn't consider this a problem for debauched Europeans such as myself.

 
14 Comments

1. FoxyMulder said:

IMDB lists two running times.

One is 91m and a German edition running 102 minutes. Is it possible that a longer edition with many more scenes exists in Germany ?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0862846/

(Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 9:10 PM)

2. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Hmm... I think it's probably more a case of the film being premiered at the European Film Market and then heavily scissored based on audience feedback. I'd be very surprised if a completely different cut exists in different territories, although I admit that it's within the realms of possibility.

(Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 9:13 PM)

3. FoxyMulder said:

The scenes you show do look like they zoomed in on post production of the original scene. Image detail does go down slightly due to the zoom in.

(Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 10:01 PM)

4. Chuck Pennington said:

I'd be willing to guess that the censoring was in the US theatrical version and video releases because it may be in Amy Adams's contract. Many actors shoot scenes fully nude knowing they are protected by their contracts and that only certain things will ever show in the final, finished movie. Why some European release is not censored, I don't know. Could it be an accident? Perhaps she had some say about things and the film was modified in the US but perhaps an unaltered element was sent overseas by accident...

(Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 11:36 PM)

5. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Chuck:

Yeah, I was beginning to think "contractual agreement" too... until I came across this:

http://www.nudography.com/News.aspx?IDNews=3657

(Apologies, it's one of those tawdry "let's report on every instance of actresses getting naked" sites.)

By the looks of it, the full frame version included on the US DVD has not had the nudity obscured either.

(Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 11:51 PM)

6. Chuck Pennington said:

Michael,

Hmmm... This reminds me a bit of the movie THE WOMAN IN RED (1984). It is a PG-13 film and was shot soft-matte 1.85:1. There is a quick shot near the end where the woman in question rushes out of bed, covering her breasts. Well, the open-matte VHS release reveals her bottomless from the front! Surely below-the-belt frontal female nudity isn't allowed in a PG-13 film! The widescreen version crops this out as intended.

Now, I know that is not the situation here as the film looks to be either 'scope or Super35mm matted to those proportions. I just wonder if perhaps the "fullframe" version was supposed to have been altered as well. I didn't see this film in the theater, though I wonder what the scene looked like there.

Chuck

(Posted on Sunday, August 30, 2009 at 12:05 AM)

7. Christopher D. Jacobson said:

That bit of censorship in the Dawn of the Dead remake is bizarre. Never heard about that before. Especially strange seeing as how there ARE bare breasts still present in the film, even in the R-rated theatrical cut.

Maybe it has something to do with the actresses feeling insecure and not wanting people to freeze-frame their nude scenes. Like in Mulholland Dr. There's the scene where Laura Harring's character strips nude and gets into bed. Harring apparently made a request to David Lynch that her genitals not be visible, so her nether region was blurred out on home video releases. Or at least on the US DVD. I heard she did this because she did not want people pausing and taking screencaps and the like.

(Posted on Sunday, August 30, 2009 at 2:14 AM)

8. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Chuck:

Trying to get to the bottom of this issue, I did a search for "Sunshine Cleaning" on the "Nudography" site I linked to in my previous reply, and came across this:

http://www.nudography.com/News.aspx?IDNews=3673

"Amy Adams stars in Sunshine Cleaning. She was topless in the theatrical version but nudity was cut out from the widescreen DVD version of the movie. Try to get your hands on full frame version of the movie to see Amy's boobs in one single frame of the movie"

(Emphasis mine.)

It's not conclusive, but if true, then it definitely suggests that the edit was made specifically for the DVD/BD release.


Chris:

I always thought the Mulholland Dr. situation was David Lynch's decision and had nothing to do with Laura Harring. The interesting thing about that example is that, on a properly calibrated display, you shouldn't even be able to tell that the shot is censored. I saw the film at a one-off theatrical screening years after the DVD was released, and the entire shot was so murky that you couldn't make out her genital area at all. The people who've complained about the DVD for putting a big blurry circle over her crotch are presumably watching on displays with the brightness ganked up too high. Either way, the end result is that the shot should strictly speaking look exactly the same on DVD as it did theatrically.

(Posted on Sunday, August 30, 2009 at 10:59 AM)

9. LGans316 said:

Anchor Bay could have hired the flying arrow Gladiators to digitally erase the boobies :-)

(Posted on Sunday, August 30, 2009 at 12:04 PM)

10. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Ha ha, wouldn't that be something. :D

(Posted on Sunday, August 30, 2009 at 12:18 PM)

11. FoxyMulder said:

I think if it was in her contract not to have the nudity then she would do what most actresses do in that situation and cover her nipples with sticky tape thus ensuring they could not use the full scene and had to edit around it. Since this didn't happen and it's now confirmed it's in the theatrical version i can only assume either two versions were made and at one point they were considering trying to get a PG-13 for the films theatrical debut or someone has made a mistake for the home editions and accidentally included the scene meant for a PG-13 release which never took place.

(Posted on Sunday, August 30, 2009 at 4:21 PM)

12. David Mackenzie said:

You need to write to the people responsible and let them know that this sort of shit is not acceptable.

(Posted on Monday, August 31, 2009 at 2:12 PM)

13. Cinema Squid said:

Fascinating!

She does still spend an inordinate amount of time prancing around in her panties in the film though which seemed to me a little out of place and maybe not strictly necessary. Not that I am complaining though, since my deeply considered thought-process prior to placing this BD in my rental queue was approximately along the lines of "Amy Adams is cute".

(Posted on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 3:33 AM)

14. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Cinema Squid:

Sounds like as good a reason to pick up a BD as any! Although, for me, the main draw was Emily Blunt, one of the best actresses of her generation working in the business today.

(Posted on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 10:53 AM)

 
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