First off, it's not banned, it's limited and it's not by the governement, it's by a third party entity and wise businessmen.
I think its fair to say that usually a NC-17 rating is a death sentence for a movie (at least in the economic sense), since it will be close to impossible to get it distributed and thus for people to see it. So while it is not technically banned, in reality the end effect is rather close to it.
Also, I would dare claim that it does not matter too much if the "banning" (or more precisely the rating that leads to the cripling of distribution) is not done by government but by a third party, if the end result is the same. Are we any happier that it has been "only" banned de facto by the industry, but not banned de iure by the government?
Secondly, let's look at some other titles that would doubtlessly be NC-17 in the US and see how they faired in the more enlighted countries:
Faces of Death from 1978
Certification: New Zealand:(Banned) / Australia:(Banned) / Finland:(Banned) / South Korea:18 (heavily cut) / UK:18 (cut) / USA:Not Rated / West Germany:18 / UK:(Banned) (1984-2003) / Norway:(Banned)
Hmmm... odd, films that actually got play in the US are banned in some "enlighted" euro countries.
I can't speak for the current censorship laws of the other countries listed, but those two films (or any film for that matter) are no longer banned in Finland. We got a new law/act governing the classification of audiovisual programs on January 1st 2001, which ended the old system that admittedly sucked ass and was a manifestation of sorts of the nanny state.
The new law is a huge improvement, although not exactly perfect (laws crafted by politicians rarely are). I can't remember outright what downsides it has (even though I remember it had some quirks), but the upside is that there is no longer any censorship on video (DVD) distribution and the cinema ratings were redone, simplified and "loosened". From the limited sampling that I have observed (a few hundred movies or so) the new finnish ratings have been consistently lower than their US equivalents. I like to make comparisons every now and then, since I share my time between, and watch movies in, both countries.
How ironic when/.ers piss and moan about bans and censorship in the US that often we're a bit more liberal than most other countries in all reality and the fact is that normally most of what people consider "bans and censorship" is neither a ban nor censorship...
I'll agree with you partly. Sometimes us of European descent like to point out the lack of freedoms in the US a bit too eagerly and occationally in error or without a deeper understanding of all factors affecting the situation. I would imagine we wouldn't be doing it quite so often if you americans wouldn't be trumpeting the "Land of the free" argument so often without a better knowledge of what freedoms one actually enjoys in the Western Europeans countries.
This is not meant as an insult or a flamebait. As I mentioned I split my time between the Old and the New Continent and both have their own advantages and particular freedoms that may be greater than on the other side of the ocean. While I'm myself no censorship law expert, most people seem to take this and any other "country vs. country" comparison in a deeply emotional and nationalistic way. These arguments often degenerate into "my country is better than your country" fights without actually making an objective analysis of the legislation concerning the question.
Here are a couple of links to the Finnish Board of Film Classification's webpage for those two or three of you who are interested enough to actually go read 'em: The Act in a nutshell and the whole act / legal framework.
It would certainly be a rather uncharacteristic or bold move by Cisco as far as their track record of corporate acquisitions go. I touched on this very briefly in my own rejected submission (which imho was slightly more informative than the one posted, however it was probably submitted later, so I'm not complaining).
I'll just post it here too, since it includes a few more links for those interested:
According to today's Sunday Business newspaper, Cisco Systems Inc. is thinking of buying the finnish mobile handset giant Nokia in the aftermath of CEO Jorma Ollila's retirement announcement. In the past Cisco has concentrated more on buying smaller, niche tech companies. But this time its chief is believed to be interested in merging with a wireless infrastructure company, and Nokia would fit this bill. The paper says the merger would help Cisco create "intelligent wireless applications". Convergence is the buzz word of the day and this move would certainly combine the fixed-line and wireless networking capabilities of the companies. Cisco is currently valued at about $123 billion (25.5 times earnings) and Nokia at $71 billion (18.8 times earnings). Neither company has yet commented on the rumour.
While crying and moaning about dupes and rejected submissions isn't exactly constructive criticism, I have to voice my disappointment with the Slashdot editors, especially Timothy, on this one.
I feel particularly annoyed about this news bit. Why is that? Well, I happened to submit this story early tuesday morning (about 10 am GMT / 6 am EST) and it got rejected. It happens and as such is not a big deal. But the following is imho rather embarrassing.
Not only was this news piece accepted and posted on Slashdot later as someone elses submission, it was actually accepted & posted twice (becoming yet another infamous Slashdot dupe). And in this case the poster of the dupe was no other than Timothy, who rejected my submission.
It seems he initially didn't think this particular news was important and rejected my submission. I knew it was an important bit of news to anyone who follows physics and nuclear stuff, a category which many slashdotters fall into. Potentially and on the long run this could be important news to everyone on the planet who uses electricity.
Anyway, the next day Timothy seems to have decided that a less comprehensive and informative submission on the same subject is worth posting, and as icing on the cake, he does it without even bothering to check the site's own news from yesterday (the already posted story was actually still on the frontpage!) thus creating a dupe story.
Only on Slashdot do you find editors who don't even read their own site's frontpage when posting a news story (to avoid dupes), nor remember that they rejected the very same story yesterday. We're all human and mistakes happen. And I'm sure the editors get swamped by a huge number of submissions, which probably aren't exactly a joy to wade through trying to pick the worthy ones.
However, these sort of things seem to happen a bit more often than they could or should. Perhaps the editors could put a little more time and effort into the process, since many of the previous, similar mistakes seem rather easily avoided (at least to a/. reader like myself).
Ps. Here's my original Slashdot submission about this story just for reference (with a forgotten BBC link added):
After 18 months of wrangling over the construction site of the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) the participants (China, EU, Japan, Russia, South Korea and USA) finally agreed upon Cadarache in France over Rokkasho-Mura in Japan. Japan withdrew its bid after getting a concessions package deal. The 10 billion ($12bn) project will be the 2nd most expensive joint scientific project after the ISS and hopefully a gateway to a commercial fusion reactor prototype. Construction should begin this year and be completed in 2015.
As the title of the post says, I submitted this story 2 weeks ago and it got rejected. It wasn't exactly fresh then, since the IMPS chapter 1 was released on May 25th, but it's a lot less fresh now.
I was certain somebody would submit it again later and it would be accepted. I just didn't want to bother the editors with it again. Oh well, here it finally is and that's good, since it is worth the attention.
Zonk was on shift after CmdrTaco 2 weeks ago (5th) just like on this day (19th), and Zonk rejected it. I would have bet a coke back then that if it had been submitted about an hour earlier to CmdrTaco it would have been accepted. It seems I would have won that bet...
Anyway, the point of this little complain is, I knew it would be of some interest to the slashdot crowd since Troops was and still is a positive exception in the sea of less than memorable SW fan films. Too bad Zonk couldn't realize this, or it would have been a little fresher for everyone (and isn't that what Slashdot is suppose to be about?).
I'm a huge old school fan of Babylon 5. Old school in the sense that I started watching when it was in it's late first season / early second season, was back in 1994/1995 (or thereabouts). I'm sure there are plenty of more "seasoned" folks who started with the initial broadcast of the first episode.
As far as the popularity or "perceived quality" of Babylon 5's seasons go, I think a lot of fans (dare I say most?) would agree that it increased from season one through season three, each successive season being better than the previous.
To me personally this was the case all the way until the end of season four. But I realize not everyone prefers season four over season three. Many seem to like the grander scale of the Shadow War over the civil war.
The good thing about season four was that there were hardly any "filler" or non-arc episodes. I assume everyone knows the reason for this so I won't go into it any further (in short: the series was in danger of cancellation after season 4). This is also, at least in my mind, the root cause of the problem with season five.
JMS, having the initially well laid out and pre-planned story arc completed by the end of season four, was suddenly faced with the fact that the show was renewed for season five (thanks to TNT picking it up from Warner) and he had a very limited timeframe to come up with scripts and some sort of a mini story arc for the last season.
Add the very last minute leaving of Claudia Christian from the show (which forces JMS to toss out Ivanova's character and come up with a replacement) and you have a recipe if not for disaster, then at least for a "not so great" season. Under the circumstances I would say JMS did a decent job (I remember reading on the usenet B5 newsgroups that 4 or 5 hours a night was pretty much a good night's sleep for him at the time).
Now don't get me wrong, I hated (and still do) the whole Byron / Tragedy of telepaths subplot. A lot. I don't know anyone among my friends who likes it (and they're pretty much all big fans of B5). Imho the only good part about it is that the annoying teeps get what's coming to them. But the whole thing takes up only about eight episodes from the start of the season (which some will argue is 8 episodes too many). That still leaves almost two thirds to take care of the pretty decent mini arc dealing with the shadow tech and the Drakh's plot concerning Londo and the Centauri.
I think season five overall is a bit underrated. It has a host of good episodes (including one of my favourites, The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father) and the latter part of the season is pretty good with a nice build up to the Fall of Centauri Prime. Also, at this point in the series the "weight of history" (for lack of a better term) of the character's and their actions gives a lot of the scenes and drama some extra gravitas, which I like.
With this rather long and boring rambling I've hopefully arrived somewhere near my actual point. Which is that Babylon 5's main strength in my view is the pre- planned, conceived and written story arc that tells a great story and a bunch of smaller stories intertwined over a (long) period of 110 episodes. It allowes for such wonderful foreshadowing that carefully builds up to the dramatic and climactic events. This is very hard to replicate in the time constraints of a motion picture.
And this is the reason I believe the four TV-movies haven't been the best B5 can offer (although I personally like In the Beginning a lot). Also this fundamental issue or problem probably can't simply be undone with a larger budget (which the big screen adaptation will likely have compared to the TV-movies).
So with a somewhat spotty track record of B5 (TV) movies so far and the aforementioned problem my expectations are moderate at best. Having said that, I'll probably be in line to get a ticket to the premiere..
Btw, in case you already haven't done so, remember to check out The Lurker's Guide's page for The Memory of Shadows @ http://
While the comment is funny, it doesn't have much to do with reality. The reason there are so many passenger ferries sailing between Stockholm and Helsinki is the tax-free shopping. You get the cheap booze from the ship, not from ashore.
Helsinki actually has (and has traditionally had in the past) higher alcohol prices than Stockholm. Very few people in their right minds would travel from Stockholm to Helsinki to buy booze from Helsinki, instead they buy it tax-free from the ship.
The whole tax-free status of the ferries will be removed within 5 years (or sooner, I can't recall the specifics) due to EU regulations, unless I'm mistaken. And that is why the ferries currently do a very brief visit at the Åland island (to sustain the status until the transition period expires).
Another relating matter is the recent lowering of the alcohol tax and thus prices in Finland. Which was (and had to be) done because Estonia joined the European Union at the beginning of May.
Estonia's capital Tallinn offers alcohol at a fraction compared to the prices in Helsinki, and with a lot of boats and ferries going between the cities daily (there must be one leaving about every 15 minutes), "alcohol turism" would have skyrocketed unless they had cut alcohol taxes. It'll still probably increase substantially, it's just too early to get actual statistics yet..
Well I don't know if MOO1's music is somewhere available, but you can find the entire MOO2 soundtrack here (in MP3 format): http://dvc.f2o.org/moo2/moo2.htm
Slashdot Mirror
First off, it's not banned, it's limited and it's not by the governement, it's by a third party entity and wise businessmen.
I think its fair to say that usually a NC-17 rating is a death sentence for a movie (at least in the economic sense), since it will be close to impossible to get it distributed and thus for people to see it. So while it is not technically banned, in reality the end effect is rather close to it.
Also, I would dare claim that it does not matter too much if the "banning" (or more precisely the rating that leads to the cripling of distribution) is not done by government but by a third party, if the end result is the same. Are we any happier that it has been "only" banned de facto by the industry, but not banned de iure by the government?
Secondly, let's look at some other titles that would doubtlessly be NC-17 in the US and see how they faired in the more enlighted countries:
Faces of Death from 1978
Certification: New Zealand:(Banned) / Australia:(Banned) / Finland:(Banned) / South Korea:18 (heavily cut) / UK:18 (cut) / USA:Not Rated / West Germany:18 / UK:(Banned) (1984-2003) / Norway:(Banned)
Deep Throat 1972
Certification: UK:18R / Australia:X / Canada:18+ (Quebec) / Canada:R / Canada:XXX (Nova Scotia) / Chile:18 (2001) / Denmark:15 (video rating) / Finland:(Banned) (1993) / Ireland:(Banned) / Italy:X / Sweden:15 / USA:X
Hmmm... odd, films that actually got play in the US are banned in some "enlighted" euro countries.
I can't speak for the current censorship laws of the other countries listed, but those two films (or any film for that matter) are no longer banned in Finland. We got a new law/act governing the classification of audiovisual programs on January 1st 2001, which ended the old system that admittedly sucked ass and was a manifestation of sorts of the nanny state.
The new law is a huge improvement, although not exactly perfect (laws crafted by politicians rarely are). I can't remember outright what downsides it has (even though I remember it had some quirks), but the upside is that there is no longer any censorship on video (DVD) distribution and the cinema ratings were redone, simplified and "loosened". From the limited sampling that I have observed (a few hundred movies or so) the new finnish ratings have been consistently lower than their US equivalents. I like to make comparisons every now and then, since I share my time between, and watch movies in, both countries.
How ironic when /.ers piss and moan about bans and censorship in the US that often we're a bit more liberal than most other countries in all reality and the fact is that normally most of what people consider "bans and censorship" is neither a ban nor censorship...
I'll agree with you partly. Sometimes us of European descent like to point out the lack of freedoms in the US a bit too eagerly and occationally in error or without a deeper understanding of all factors affecting the situation. I would imagine we wouldn't be doing it quite so often if you americans wouldn't be trumpeting the "Land of the free" argument so often without a better knowledge of what freedoms one actually enjoys in the Western Europeans countries.
This is not meant as an insult or a flamebait. As I mentioned I split my time between the Old and the New Continent and both have their own advantages and particular freedoms that may be greater than on the other side of the ocean. While I'm myself no censorship law expert, most people seem to take this and any other "country vs. country" comparison in a deeply emotional and nationalistic way. These arguments often degenerate into "my country is better than your country" fights without actually making an objective analysis of the legislation concerning the question.
Here are a couple of links to the Finnish Board of Film Classification's webpage for those two or three of you who are interested enough to actually go read 'em: The Act in a nutshell and the whole act / legal framework.
It would certainly be a rather uncharacteristic or bold move by Cisco as far as their track record of corporate acquisitions go. I touched on this very briefly in my own rejected submission (which imho was slightly more informative than the one posted, however it was probably submitted later, so I'm not complaining).
I'll just post it here too, since it includes a few more links for those interested:
According to today's Sunday Business newspaper, Cisco Systems Inc. is thinking of buying the finnish mobile handset giant Nokia in the aftermath of CEO Jorma Ollila's retirement announcement. In the past Cisco has concentrated more on buying smaller, niche tech companies. But this time its chief is believed to be interested in merging with a wireless infrastructure company, and Nokia would fit this bill. The paper says the merger would help Cisco create "intelligent wireless applications". Convergence is the buzz word of the day and this move would certainly combine the fixed-line and wireless networking capabilities of the companies. Cisco is currently valued at about $123 billion (25.5 times earnings) and Nokia at $71 billion (18.8 times earnings). Neither company has yet commented on the rumour.
While crying and moaning about dupes and rejected submissions isn't exactly constructive criticism, I have to voice my disappointment with the Slashdot editors, especially Timothy, on this one.
I feel particularly annoyed about this news bit. Why is that? Well, I happened to submit this story early tuesday morning (about 10 am GMT / 6 am EST) and it got rejected. It happens and as such is not a big deal. But the following is imho rather embarrassing.
Not only was this news piece accepted and posted on Slashdot later as someone elses submission, it was actually accepted & posted twice (becoming yet another infamous Slashdot dupe). And in this case the poster of the dupe was no other than Timothy, who rejected my submission.
It seems he initially didn't think this particular news was important and rejected my submission. I knew it was an important bit of news to anyone who follows physics and nuclear stuff, a category which many slashdotters fall into. Potentially and on the long run this could be important news to everyone on the planet who uses electricity.
Anyway, the next day Timothy seems to have decided that a less comprehensive and informative submission on the same subject is worth posting, and as icing on the cake, he does it without even bothering to check the site's own news from yesterday (the already posted story was actually still on the frontpage!) thus creating a dupe story.
Only on Slashdot do you find editors who don't even read their own site's frontpage when posting a news story (to avoid dupes), nor remember that they rejected the very same story yesterday. We're all human and mistakes happen. And I'm sure the editors get swamped by a huge number of submissions, which probably aren't exactly a joy to wade through trying to pick the worthy ones.
However, these sort of things seem to happen a bit more often than they could or should. Perhaps the editors could put a little more time and effort into the process, since many of the previous, similar mistakes seem rather easily avoided (at least to a
Ps. Here's my original Slashdot submission about this story just for reference (with a forgotten BBC link added):
After 18 months of wrangling over the construction site of the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) the participants (China, EU, Japan, Russia, South Korea and USA) finally agreed upon Cadarache in France over Rokkasho-Mura in Japan. Japan withdrew its bid after getting a concessions package deal. The 10 billion ($12bn) project will be the 2nd most expensive joint scientific project after the ISS and hopefully a gateway to a commercial fusion reactor prototype. Construction should begin this year and be completed in 2015.
As the title of the post says, I submitted this story 2 weeks ago and it got rejected. It wasn't exactly fresh then, since the IMPS chapter 1 was released on May 25th, but it's a lot less fresh now.
I was certain somebody would submit it again later and it would be accepted. I just didn't want to bother the editors with it again. Oh well, here it finally is and that's good, since it is worth the attention.
Zonk was on shift after CmdrTaco 2 weeks ago (5th) just like on this day (19th), and Zonk rejected it. I would have bet a coke back then that if it had been submitted about an hour earlier to CmdrTaco it would have been accepted. It seems I would have won that bet...
Anyway, the point of this little complain is, I knew it would be of some interest to the slashdot crowd since Troops was and still is a positive exception in the sea of less than memorable SW fan films. Too bad Zonk couldn't realize this, or it would have been a little fresher for everyone (and isn't that what Slashdot is suppose to be about?).
I'm a huge old school fan of Babylon 5. Old school in the sense that I started watching when it was in it's late first season / early second season, was back in 1994/1995 (or thereabouts). I'm sure there are plenty of more "seasoned" folks who started with the initial broadcast of the first episode.
As far as the popularity or "perceived quality" of Babylon 5's seasons go, I think a lot of fans (dare I say most?) would agree that it increased from season one through season three, each successive season being better than the previous.
To me personally this was the case all the way until the end of season four. But I realize not everyone prefers season four over season three. Many seem to like the grander scale of the Shadow War over the civil war.
The good thing about season four was that there were hardly any "filler" or non-arc episodes. I assume everyone knows the reason for this so I won't go into it any further (in short: the series was in danger of cancellation after season 4). This is also, at least in my mind, the root cause of the problem with season five.
JMS, having the initially well laid out and pre-planned story arc completed by the end of season four, was suddenly faced with the fact that the show was renewed for season five (thanks to TNT picking it up from Warner) and he had a very limited timeframe to come up with scripts and some sort of a mini story arc for the last season.
Add the very last minute leaving of Claudia Christian from the show (which forces JMS to toss out Ivanova's character and come up with a replacement) and you have a recipe if not for disaster, then at least for a "not so great" season. Under the circumstances I would say JMS did a decent job (I remember reading on the usenet B5 newsgroups that 4 or 5 hours a night was pretty much a good night's sleep for him at the time).
Now don't get me wrong, I hated (and still do) the whole Byron / Tragedy of telepaths subplot. A lot. I don't know anyone among my friends who likes it (and they're pretty much all big fans of B5). Imho the only good part about it is that the annoying teeps get what's coming to them. But the whole thing takes up only about eight episodes from the start of the season (which some will argue is 8 episodes too many). That still leaves almost two thirds to take care of the pretty decent mini arc dealing with the shadow tech and the Drakh's plot concerning Londo and the Centauri.
I think season five overall is a bit underrated. It has a host of good episodes (including one of my favourites, The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father) and the latter part of the season is pretty good with a nice build up to the Fall of Centauri Prime. Also, at this point in the series the "weight of history" (for lack of a better term) of the character's and their actions gives a lot of the scenes and drama some extra gravitas, which I like.
With this rather long and boring rambling I've hopefully arrived somewhere near my actual point. Which is that Babylon 5's main strength in my view is the pre- planned, conceived and written story arc that tells a great story and a bunch of smaller stories intertwined over a (long) period of 110 episodes. It allowes for such wonderful foreshadowing that carefully builds up to the dramatic and climactic events. This is very hard to replicate in the time constraints of a motion picture.
And this is the reason I believe the four TV-movies haven't been the best B5 can offer (although I personally like In the Beginning a lot). Also this fundamental issue or problem probably can't simply be undone with a larger budget (which the big screen adaptation will likely have compared to the TV-movies).
So with a somewhat spotty track record of B5 (TV) movies so far and the aforementioned problem my expectations are moderate at best. Having said that, I'll probably be in line to get a ticket to the premiere..
Btw, in case you already haven't done so, remember to check out The Lurker's Guide's page for The Memory of Shadows @ http://
While the comment is funny, it doesn't have much to do with reality. The reason there are so many passenger ferries sailing between Stockholm and Helsinki is the tax-free shopping. You get the cheap booze from the ship, not from ashore.
Helsinki actually has (and has traditionally had in the past) higher alcohol prices than Stockholm. Very few people in their right minds would travel from Stockholm to Helsinki to buy booze from Helsinki, instead they buy it tax-free from the ship.
The whole tax-free status of the ferries will be removed within 5 years (or sooner, I can't recall the specifics) due to EU regulations, unless I'm mistaken. And that is why the ferries currently do a very brief visit at the Åland island (to sustain the status until the transition period expires).
Another relating matter is the recent lowering of the alcohol tax and thus prices in Finland. Which was (and had to be) done because Estonia joined the European Union at the beginning of May.
Estonia's capital Tallinn offers alcohol at a fraction compared to the prices in Helsinki, and with a lot of boats and ferries going between the cities daily (there must be one leaving about every 15 minutes), "alcohol turism" would have skyrocketed unless they had cut alcohol taxes. It'll still probably increase substantially, it's just too early to get actual statistics yet..
Well I don't know if MOO1's music is somewhere available, but you can find the entire MOO2 soundtrack here (in MP3 format):
http://dvc.f2o.org/moo2/moo2.htm