Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Tancred]

I rented Pulp Fiction the other night...not that i haven't seen it before, i've seen it possibly 10 times already, and not that it is even particularly one of my favourites, i just watch a lot of movies.

Anyway, as I was watching it, I noticed something a little strange...as if something was missing...and indeed it was...the whole scene regarding the foot massage was edited out...and it was a fairly long scene with John Travolta and Sam Jackson exchanging witty remarks with one another. Not only that, but a later reference to the foot massage scene was also cut out. What the hell is that all about? I stopped watching the film in a fury after that so heaven only knows how many other scenes were spliced.

I mean I hate censorship with a raging passion, Itreally fucks with my head you know...and had I known that the movie was going to be edited i never would have rented it. Apparently it happens a lot here...violence and sex and evidently conversations about foot massages are cut out of the films...never mind if it is integral to the plot or develops the characters...there'll just be none of that. So, I'll never watch another movie in korea unless I use kazaa which i've been doing more often lately. So film fans beware...you're probably not seeing everything if you're seeing it in korea...

[Magog]

yea I noticed that too.

[Marathe]

Censorship's worse in the older movies (from the early 90s). Stuff that is cut out of them will be present in movies from now.

Example i'm thinking of is in Carlito's Way: there is a scene where a huge mound of cocaine is present: in the Korean version they cut this out by extending a shot of a boat from about 2 seconds to about 45 seconds.

Yet in boogie nights, all the references and shots of cocaine usage are present (the two movies are about 4 years apart).

Still its right annoying isn't it?

If you think the cuts in pulp fiction are annoying don't rent Reservior Dogs: most of that movie is cut up.

[Dan]

the stupiest thing is, some korean movies have the most gratuitous sex scenes that bare just about everything in all manner of poses for painfully long periods of time. yet, i distinctly remember a woman's back side shot cut out from a Bond movie. so stupid.

[The Den]

When I was there the big story was the movie Falling Down and how it had been banned because of its nasty portrayal of Korean shopkeepers in LA.

[kimcheeking]

[Tiberious aka Sparkles]

I was extremely annoyed to rent Boogie nights and find that some of the dialogue -- and not the sex -- was cut from the film. My only guess is that inane chatter (such as Reed and Dirk's conversation about how much each other can bench press; "people tell me I look like Han Solo" -- that kills me!) is seen as annoying, because perhaps, to Korean viewers, it distracts from the movie (I know this is a flimsy excuse, but it's all I can think of to explain why Boogie nights and Pulp fiction are edited as they are).

The real kicker is that there seems to be no standard for editing movies. They cut out the *suggested* sodomy scene in Pulp Fiction, but then in another movie (a good example excapes me at the moment) you may see something a lot more shocking.

That said, I believe that what passes these days is becoming more and more flexible. I just saw 8 Mile yesterday, and the sex scene in that movie is definitely up there in terms of raciness. And films such as Basketball Diaries have been released in recent years, apparently unedited.

This reminds me of an article I read a few weeks ago. Apparently, in England, scenes from Hollywood movies that showed headbutts or nunchucks were edited out. It seems that too many youths were terrorizing the streets of jolly old England, brandishing nunchucks and headbutting their rivals. Perhaps a Briton in this forum could clarify. I can't remember whether the article mentioned the ban on headbutts and nunchucks being lifted. It also claimed that A Clockwork Orange was withheld from release in England until only a few years ago for just this reason.

Another thing I'm reminded of was what I saw on OCN a couple of weeks ago. Now, I'm fairly certain I've seen my fair share of nudity on OCN, however, as I was watching the Wesley Snipes movie The Art of War (thumbs down, by the way), there is a scene where an attractive Chinese girl changes her clothes in a car that Snipes is driving. In the scene, the woman's breasts were blurred out (even though I seem to remember watching the movie when it was first released on video and don't remember being able to see anything 'revealing'; only some slight cleavage). Anyway, I sincerely hope this wasn't done because the censors felt that because Snipes is a black man, having a naked asian around him was indecent.

[matko]

about the British ban on nunchucks and headbutts. Check this out
http://www.suntimes.com/output/answ-man/sho-sunday-ebert26.html

scroll down a bit for the answer

[elmer]

[Dan]

DVDs are much better on censorship, because rarely is a DVD released only in Korea, but multi released also singapore, taiwan, and some other south east countries.

the DVD version of pulp fiction has everything that i recall.

[justagirl]

ha! This reminds me of when I rented Amistad. There was this black spot chasing all the men's willies around the screen--rather hard to accomplish much when there's a whole slave ship full of naked people...then they made the black dot a blob and blocked out most of the screen. Finally, they got all the men covered and a woman exposes it all as she is running to save her child. At that point I was so distracted from the movie that I was trying to figure out of the "black dot" had missed anyone.

The whole seriousness of the movie was distracted by "censorship". Can you imagine what would happen if Schindler's List was here? Half of the movie would be a black screen with only audio.

Why do they censor anyway? It's not like you can't find an entire 2 aisles of porn in every video store...disgusting.

[exportedhabster]

I think there are two versions on Amistad in Korea. When I saw it, it wasn't censored. And the 2 aisles of porn in the local video store is usually soft and doesn't show much of anything. Porn --- yum!!!

[mack the knife]

and yet in several porn flicks i rented here (yeah i have a sex drive, so sue me) there were disturbing rape scenes (two korean porn/one chinese). go figure...

[mokpochica]

But it's not porn, right? Just erotic movies. They aren't actually having sex in the movies. Maybe they think whatever topics are o.k. then. As long as the actual 'private' body parts aren't shown in all their glory.

[khyber]

so i rented hanibal, anxiously waiting the "let's eat his brainy brain" scene. Much to my chagrin, it was blobbed...i mean, enough was implicit.....what the hell could i have really missed?

i saw falling down. IT was full on...no censoring and no cutting.

re: pulp fiction.....odd and stupid.