Arab audiences won't be seeing Adam Sandler's comedy about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as You Don't Mess With The Zohan is being blocked by regional film censors. The film has been banned in Egypt, Lebanon and the UAE.

Sandler plays a former Mossad agent who escapes to New York and ends up working in a Palestinian-American woman's hair salon,

It is 99% likely that the film will be banned in all Arab countries, says Bassam Eid of the film's distributor.

Zohan has already been released in Israel where it has been one of the year's biggest hits bringing in over 200,000 admissions. There wasn't any controversy over the subject matter, says distributor Amnon Matalon: Israelis like to laugh at themselves.

Morgan Spurlock's documentary Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? has also been banned in the UAE. It will surely have a very hard time in the rest of the Middle East too.

Malaysia's state censors have banned two books on Islam saying they gave a misleading view of the religion.

The Home Ministry banned the English-language Muslim Women and the Challenge of Islamic Extremism and the Malay-language Strange but True in Prayers.

An official with the ministry's publishing unit confirmed that the books had been banned but did not elaborate.

The activist group Sisters in Islam, which published the book on Muslim women, criticized the ban. Norhayati Kaprawi, an official with the group, said the book was an academic work in which female activists and scholars studied the impact of extremism on Muslim women's lives: For me, it's very ironic that the book itself is a victim of extremism. Does that mean women cannot even discuss extremism? What do they want us to do? Lie down and shut up?

Chinese television drama turns 50 this year. To mark the occasion, a feature in the current issue of Oriental Outlook magazine takes a look at the history of TV drama and how programs make it to air. This includes an interesting article on the workings of CCTV's censors.

Much of the time, it seems like SARFT is to blame whenever people are upset with film and TV censorship. But television stations are ultimately responsible for what they broadcast, so they too employ censors to eliminate objectionable content.

The definition of objectionable content varies: CCTV has strict standards, but local TV stations often get away with airing envelope-pushing content and borderline-scam infomercials until there are enough complaints to draw a smackdown from the central authorities.

The two censors interviewed for the Oriental Outlook article provide a number of entertaining examples of things that displeased CCTV, including:

• A ribald folk tune had to be removed from a period piece
• The mother of a Japanese soldier in a war drama expected him to fight to his death in China, implying that the Japanese people fully supported the war
• None of the four main characters in a drama about car racing was motivated by the love of the race
• A series in which a party secretary was accused of rape only to be cleared in the final episode could mislead viewers who didn't watch the show all the way through to the end.

...Read full article

The Nutter Society for the Promotion of Community Standards was today granted leave to appeal against the classification of the Grand Theft Auto video game.

The society wants to appeal the R18 classification given to Grand Theft Auto IV (unedited US version) by the Chief Censor's Office.

It will apply to the Film and Literature Board of Review to review the classification.

The action driving game which features beatings, drugs and prostitutes has drawn fire from nutters and politicians.

Subha Punja who ruled the roost in Tamil films for most part of the eighties is on a comeback mode with Suttapazham.

Recently, the Censor Board is said to have objected to some 'objectionable' scenes in the movie and has reportedly cut those scenes, measuring around 60 feet.

The director  said that there was indeed some cuts by the Censor Board of scenes involving the lead pair in a bedroom scene and a kissing scene.

The film hits the screens on the 18th of July 2008.

After some 11th-hour suspense, China is ready to unwrap Universal’s The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

We now have a certificate giving us permission to release the film in China and outside, said Bill Kong, producer and Universal’s distributor in Hong Kong and China.

Last week, China’s State Administration for Radio, Film & Television told Daily Variety that it was seeking unspecified changes before giving the pic a release permit for the mainland.

Kong said the changes demanded by Chinese authorities were so minor that they scarcely amounted to a cut. Remember, China doesn’t have a rating system; films have to be passed so they are suitable for children, he said.

Indeed, it was a coup that the film was approved as a Chinese co-production in the first place since themes involving ghosts are usually taboo in China.

The computer game Manhunt 2 was classified on 12 June 2008 by the New Zealand Office of Film and Literature Classification as objectionable due to the manner in which it depicts and deals with matters of sex, horror, cruelty and violence. This classification means that it is illegal to import, sell, supply or possess this game in New Zealand.

Manhunt 2 was not submitted by the game’s producers. A pirated copy of the game was seized by Customs, and submitted for classification under section 13(1)(a) of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993.

The game was examined under the criteria set out in the Act and was classified as objectionable. In its classification decision the Office noted that the game is constructed around fatality moves which involve vicious and bloody action, with a more gory death resulting in a higher score.

This classification means that it is an offence to import, sell, distribute, supply or possess this game . The penalty for doing so is, in the case of an individual, a fine not exceeding $10,000 or a term of imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, and in the case of a body corporate a fine not exceeding $200,000.

Rated as 12A in the UK

Hindus do not seem to be pleased with Singapore Board of Film Censors classifying Hollywood movie The Love Guru with “NC16” [16+] rating. They are demanding this be raised to R21 [21+].

Bhavna Shinde, who represents Hindu Janjagruti Samiti and Sanatan Sanstha, has appealed to Singapore Censor Board to assign The Love Guru its highest “R21” rating. She said that the film blatantly ridicules and denigrates Hinduism and Hindu concepts.

While writing to Singapore Media Development authority, she wrote: Cinema is a powerful medium and it can create stereotypes in the minds of some audiences, especially in the minds of younger audiences, who are passing through an impressionable phase. We do not want the next generation of Singapore growing up with a distorted view of Hinduism and Hindus.

The Love Guru is reportedly scheduled to be released in Singapore on September 4, 2008.

A lot of the New Zealand censor's reasoning just doesn’t stand up. Does the image demean the woman depicted? Looks like she posed for it to me. Does it demean women generally? I don’t read the T-shirt to suggest that all women are sexually insatiable. Anyway, this interpretation goes against the recent attitude of the Film and Literature Board of Review. Does it denigrate the Virgin Mary? Um, I’m not sure that the Virgin Mary was the sort of “person” Parliament had in mind when it passed the statutory criteria. Does it use a term for a woman’s vagina as a derogatory slur? Yep. Like calling someone a prick or a cock. (Okay, but worse).

The office really has no place deciding that something is “blasphemous”, and using that to support a ban. That’s not part of its statutory criteria. It should also be careful about how it throws around the word “offensive” except in the context of the provision dealing with swearing, which does use the word “offensive”. So the T-shirt is “crude” and “vulgar”. What of it?

...Read the full article

The New Zealand chief censor has banned a T-shirt that shows a sexually degrading image of a Roman Catholic nun and blasphemous language directed at Jesus Christ.

The top, advertising an album for British extreme metal group Cradle of Filth, also used Satanic images.

I have to say, I can't remember seeing a stronger T-shirt than this one, chief censor Bill Hastings said.

Hastings said the office had banned other T-shirts, but the issue did not come up often.

It's hard to know what to do with them, to be honest. If we were to make them R18, for example, does that mean you have to be 18 to wear it or do you have to be 18 to see it coming down the street? So generally with T-shirts it's all or nothing, it's unrestricted or banned, so the medium just doesn't lend itself to an intermediate restriction.

In its decision, the censor's office said a fair interpretation of the message on the T-shirt was that Christians should be vilified for their religious beliefs, and that women, including chaste and celibate women, could not stop themselves engaging in sexual activity.

The Society for Promotion of Community Standards president John Mills praised the decision as bold, morally courageous and legally sound.