So on Friday I had to drive to Glenwood Springs again, which is my least favorite office to visit. Not because they are mean by any means, but because it's so far away! But I got a lot of music listening in which is something that I don't get to do enough of. Most of you thing I must be crazy due to that statement. I found the song I'm going to play for my family reunion this year. Stare At The Sun from ... You guessed it... Thrice. It will be a hit trust me. The reunion is at the end of august in Grand Junction. I wish it was in Utah or here in Parker like they used to be. We usually go to a cabin up in the mountains where there is no internet or phone service. I am a 21st Century Digital Boy, and I need to have my modern amenities or someone might get hurt. I think my Verizon phone from work might actually have service and I can then use it as a modem. We'll see how that will work, but I'm betting I'll get up there and find that there is no service for even Verizon. So I plan to bring my tablet and my hard drive which is now FULL of movies that Dave and I have ripped.
I formatted my tablet this weekend. It is working so much better, no spyware pop ups, and no slow starting. I think I won't be searching for crack codes on this computer again. Maybe I'll do it on my Linux partition on my other computer and see how the spyware and viruses affect that.
I have been feeling sick the last few days too. I woke up on Friday and my throat was swollen and my head hurt. I have had that every day now since then. I met with my bishop on Sunday, and he is a cool guy. He has been in touch with my old bishops to get the scoop on me. He said that I should be out of my probation, which I have been in since February of 2003, should be close to done. I don't have any big problems like I used to, and I have been 100% attendance for a month. I can keep it up I know. So hopefully I can be cleared to be in good standing again, and then I can have something that I am in control of.
In other news I'm about to be a little political so please pay close attention.
Clean Flix has to shut down!!!! I'm thrilled about this. Here is an article about the decision. For those that don't know what Clean Flix is I'll explain. This is a company that would purchase movies, and then go through and pull the content out that is questionable. After that they would rent the films out to people that normally wouldn't watch them due to content. They thought they were okay on the copyright laws because they purchased it and then it was theirs to do whatever they wanted. But they were wrong. Don't get me wrong the idea of trying to bring these movies to a more conservative audience is a good one, but that is what Hollywood needs to do, not a bunch of conservative do-gooders. I don't think movies should have this sort of content anyway, but the facts are that it is going to happen, and regardless of what is in the film, it is not your creation. You have no right to change or alter it. I hope Hollywood does take an approach that these things aren't entirely desired in movies, but I doubt they will. Truth be known I have never been offended by a Steven Spielberg film, and some of them do have very harsh images and scenes. Those films happen to be docu-draumas though, you know the kind based on real events. I saw an edited version of Saving Private Ryan once at the SCERA theater at an outdoor screening. This version sucked. There was no real portrayal of what happened to these men. I doubt Schindlers List would be as powerful if it was cleaned up for the family. The intention of the movie would be lost. Munich would be a complete failure if the attempt was made to edit. This movie is based on a group of Israeli Jews taking revenge on the people that arranged the Munich massacre. The whole plot is murder, and killing which is historically accurate. I think I'm losing sight of my point. That is don't censor someone else's creation. You can protest and talk about it, but don't cut the junk on Michelangelo's David.
I formatted my tablet this weekend. It is working so much better, no spyware pop ups, and no slow starting. I think I won't be searching for crack codes on this computer again. Maybe I'll do it on my Linux partition on my other computer and see how the spyware and viruses affect that.
I have been feeling sick the last few days too. I woke up on Friday and my throat was swollen and my head hurt. I have had that every day now since then. I met with my bishop on Sunday, and he is a cool guy. He has been in touch with my old bishops to get the scoop on me. He said that I should be out of my probation, which I have been in since February of 2003, should be close to done. I don't have any big problems like I used to, and I have been 100% attendance for a month. I can keep it up I know. So hopefully I can be cleared to be in good standing again, and then I can have something that I am in control of.
In other news I'm about to be a little political so please pay close attention.
Clean Flix has to shut down!!!! I'm thrilled about this. Here is an article about the decision. For those that don't know what Clean Flix is I'll explain. This is a company that would purchase movies, and then go through and pull the content out that is questionable. After that they would rent the films out to people that normally wouldn't watch them due to content. They thought they were okay on the copyright laws because they purchased it and then it was theirs to do whatever they wanted. But they were wrong. Don't get me wrong the idea of trying to bring these movies to a more conservative audience is a good one, but that is what Hollywood needs to do, not a bunch of conservative do-gooders. I don't think movies should have this sort of content anyway, but the facts are that it is going to happen, and regardless of what is in the film, it is not your creation. You have no right to change or alter it. I hope Hollywood does take an approach that these things aren't entirely desired in movies, but I doubt they will. Truth be known I have never been offended by a Steven Spielberg film, and some of them do have very harsh images and scenes. Those films happen to be docu-draumas though, you know the kind based on real events. I saw an edited version of Saving Private Ryan once at the SCERA theater at an outdoor screening. This version sucked. There was no real portrayal of what happened to these men. I doubt Schindlers List would be as powerful if it was cleaned up for the family. The intention of the movie would be lost. Munich would be a complete failure if the attempt was made to edit. This movie is based on a group of Israeli Jews taking revenge on the people that arranged the Munich massacre. The whole plot is murder, and killing which is historically accurate. I think I'm losing sight of my point. That is don't censor someone else's creation. You can protest and talk about it, but don't cut the junk on Michelangelo's David.
I have my own thoughts about Clean Flicks. I agree that it should be the content creators that are doing the editing. BUT THEY AREN'T! Do you remember when DVDs were first being sold? The movie industry bragged about all the great things that the DVD format would do for us. One of the many things they bragged about was content filtering. You were supposed to be able to choose a rating on the movie, and the movie would play according to that rating. Well? Where the hell is it? If the movie industry would try to give consumers something that's worth their $20, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Instead they release sup-par content on DVDs and nickel and dime us out of it. They do the opposite of content filtering by releasing unrated versions in widescreen format. If you want the rated version, you have to buy it in fullscreen. Degraded content for people who don't wish to see what they think is acceptable. I applaud the little guys who tried to do what all the big guys are too cheap to do. They tried to give consumers what we want. This ruling is just another win for the movie industry and another loss for consumers.
Awesome comment. I have to be honest and say I didn't take that approach when I thought about my own personal ideas. I do remember the content editing on DVD's. In Fact I remember seeing a few DVD's with that option, I don't remember which one though, and I don't think I even used it. I agree that you are seeing the special features sort of starting to fade away. More and more DVD's don't have all the cool stuff they used to have. I still think Clean Flix is a bad thing though. I guess it's my distate for people telling me what is appropriate and what's not.
That's just the thing. The first time I saw Kingdon of Heaven was at a friend's house. He was your do-good peter priesthood type, which was cool, but the clean flicks version drove me f'ing crazy!
They cut out so much that was significant to the storyline. I didn't need someone to decide what was too grotesque or unclean for me. I'm a big girl, I can decide that on my own.
Until a company comes out that will let you the consumer decide what you can and can't handle, then stop censoring. period.
But, somehow Clean Flicks closing makes me a little sad. Now there will be a whole generation who won't watch some must-see movies, simply because there isn't an appropriate version available for them.
Does that make sense?
Kr5is, awesome post! You are dead on.
<< This is a company that would purchase movies, and then go through and pull the content out that is questionable.
Hmm. Isn't that kinda like picking the shit out of your brownie?
Clean flix allowed people to watch rated R movies and not feel bad. If you want to see the real version, rent the real movie. If you want to see the censored version, rent the censored version. That's called choice.
I just hope the boys behind the stores doing the editing don't go to hell for watching nudity. It was after all, for a good cause.
I agree with you Matt. Although, I cannot say that I have ever seen a movie that gave you a rating option version of the film. They are all what they show on the cover.
I have to say awesome post and you point of view made me think.
I personally have never rented a clean flix movie and probably never will - i feel i seen and done worse in my life, so what am i afraid of. Also i'm almost never interested in thethe movies that are rated r or becasue of sex and nudity and such so no problems there.
But i applaud clean flix because they allow someone to hear a story and not be offended by the things they don't want to see or hear.
However edidting a movie like saving private ryan or schindlers list is complete idiocy
and there's my rant
One thing that never seems to come up in these discussions is: Clean Flicks isn't the only one doing this! They aren't even the first ones to do this. Why is it that no one ever makes a big deal about TV and airlines editing movies? They've been doing it for years! No matter what anyone thinks, this "win" by the movie industry is not to protect intellectual property. It's because they didn't do it first, and they're not making any extra money from it.
Matt you have a point. Clean Flix isn't the first company to do this. In the article it says there are about 90 companies in the nation that will be closing based on this decision. I thought that the air line companies got the edits from the distributer who also leases the films to television stations for syndication. In all honesty that is what I assumed and I think I will have to look this up.
That's probably true about how the edited films are distributed. I don't see why the distributors won't sell those copies to consumers? It seems like doing that would open the doors to a lot more sales for them. The fact that Clean Flicks was around as long as they were and the fact that there are 90 companies out there doing this proves that there is a market for edited movies. And I don't believe that it's just the Mormon community either. I think there are a lot of people out there that don't want to watch the unrated/directors cut/whatever versions with all the language, sex and violence that the movie industry can squeeze into two hours. Just further proof that they are out of touch with consumers. 90 companies are thriving off of this edited content and the movie industry is giving us unrated cuts.
Incase anyone is still interested in this, Slashdot has a round up of good comments on this subject.
Thanks Matt I'll re-post it.