Sunday, October 11, 2009

The revolution begins...

1:10 PM / Blu-ray / Comments8 Comments

Toy Story 3D

....with removable BBFC and IFCO logos on Optimum's new range of Studio Canal Collection Blu-ray Discs. I'd really like to see this become the standard. Particularly when you have cover art as tastefully designed as that of the titles in this collection, the last thing you want is a crude, ugly emblem of censorship to destroy the illusion of class and distract from the overall effect.

 
8 Comments

1. BobaFett said:

If the British logos bother you, take a look at the new logos that were recently introduced in Germany: our Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth Ursula von der Leyen had the great idea that oversized ugly rating symbols that take up a lot of the available space on the front cover would be a great improvement for protecting our youth from evil influences.

This is the result:
http://www.kinowelt.de/material/news/BelleDeJourSCC_BluRay.jpg
http://www.bluray-disc.de/files/filme/Ice-Age-3.jpg
http://www.bluray-disc.de/files/filme/Australia.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WKyPesaKL.jpg

Fortunately at least some companys now issue their DVDs and Blu-ray discs with covers which you can turn around to have the cover art without any rating symbols whatsoever. In case of "Belle de jour" the German Blu-ray comes in a paper sleeve which you can take of to reveal the book-like packaging that is used internationally without any logos.

Still this is a nuisance if you care about aesthetically pleasing cover design. You can't just buy a disc in Germany without prior checking the cover situation for that title - which for me is a reason to buy even more discs from other countries as I don't care about an audio track with a German dub anyway.

(Posted on Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 2:03 PM)

2. David Mackenzie said:

Even though PS3 games are region free, I've ordered the US version of Brutal Legend. Those covers still have ratings icons on them, but the ESRB ones are thoughtfully designed in black and white. The European PEGI logos are ugly multicoloured blocks and the BBFC ones on video games are like huge, ugly zits.

(Posted on Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 2:24 PM)

3. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Bobafett:

Yikes, those German logos look atrocious! Reversible artwork does seem to be the way to go if censorship boards insist on putting giant-ass graffiti on covers.

(Posted on Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 3:31 PM)

4. Kram Sacul said:

Why can't the rating be on the back like here is the US?

(Posted on Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 4:20 PM)

5. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Well, in the case of our friends at the BBFC, the ratings are on the front, back and spine. Drama queens.

(Posted on Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 4:23 PM)

6. Olly said:

When I was in Australia I bought their special edition tin version of Serenity because I'm a big fan of the series and wanted it for the collection, and was quite dismayed to see how huge the age ratings on the front actually are - a quick Google turned up this as an example: http://www.serenux.com/~hyrax/snaps/BlurayMovieInserting.jpg

What I liked, though, was that the cover was actually reversible and the other side had no age ratings at all, and was just the artwork on the front and the usual guff on the back. I know double-sided printing is more expensive, but that seemed like a nice way to do it and a small victory in the battle against overzealous censors.

(Posted on Monday, October 12, 2009 at 12:08 AM)

7. avanze said:

Tacky BBFC logo, still the Irish one is even worse.

(Posted on Monday, October 12, 2009 at 2:01 PM)

8. David Mackenzie said:

I'm amazed that the Irish one even has the word "CENSORS" in it. Why the fuck would I want that on my DVD cover.

Rip it off and throw it in the garbage where it belongs :)

(Posted on Friday, October 16, 2009 at 3:02 AM)

 
To combat spam, commenting is automatically disabled on entries older than 30 days.

Did a comment you tried to post accidentally get eaten by the spam filter? It happens from time to time. I get upwards of 200 spam comments every day and unfortunately don't have the time to weed through all of them in case something genuine ended up there by mistake. If one of your posts gets incorrectly flagged as spam, email me at whiggles[at]ntlworld[dot]com and I'll do my best to retrieve it.

 
Archives
Categories
Recent posts