Scrubbed Films

July 10, 2006 at 6:04 am (Movies)

An interesting news item. I’ve been following this one for some time as it’s a very interesting topic.

There are several companies who make a business of taking Hollywood films, editing out objectional sex, violence, etc. and burning the edited movie onto DVDs and selling them. They claim they are doing it for family values.

Hollywood is up in arms of course and sued for copyright infringement claiming that these companies had no right to change the film and resell it.

This week the court ruled in favor of the Hollywood studios and ordered the companies to turn over all their inventory to the studio within 5 days.

I’ll stand up next to you on the soapbox about how there’s no good movies, too much sex, blah, blah blah. This is why I am careful about what movies I view and ESPECIALLY what movies I let my kids view.

But what those "clean" companies were doing is breaking a law in order to hold up their moral standards. Huh?  The fact that they were burning copies of the DVD was  the first clue that they were breaking the law, never mind that they were changing the content.

For a lot of families this will mean that either they will have to lower their standards, or see fewer movies. Aaaah, the horrors!

My husband found a cool little contraption a year ago called "Curse Free TV". It filters out about 95% of offensive words and works with your TV, DVD, VCR or satellite. When he was teaching he used it in his class when he was showing Gettysburg. It’s been sitting in the closet until last week when I pulled it out so we could hook it up. The kids are getting to an age where there are some "family" (read non-animated) movies that I would like to watch with the kids but I know probably contain a few words that are on our no-no list.

In the mean time, if you’re looking for really great movie reviews, check out the web site for Focus on the Family. They’re pretty objective (very seldom will say whether or not they think you should see the movie). The discuss the content (spiritual, violent, sexual, drugs, profanity) and the negative and positive elements. I check any movie that we plan to see in the theatre these days.