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on 2006/8/26 4:24:53
Want to see all those scenes that are snipped by the Censors and do not make it to your movie screen? We take you beyond the editing table and tell it all
THE BREAK-UP
(UA WITH ONE CUT)
What's Changed: Coming as it did after her much-ballyhooed break-up with Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston's romantic romp whipped up mega excitement at the time of its US release in June this year: The Friends femme 'lost' all her clothes in a scene in the film. As fanzines and webzines went ga-ga, a youtube.com user even uploaded a video of the minute-long scene, allowing all net-crawlers to share Ms Aniston's act of bare-dare. But, predictably, our censors have elected to 'reinstate' the lady's already-shed inhibitions. Here's how:
After waxing off all her body hair, Brooke (Aniston) looks at herself in the bathroom mirror and coquettishly coos 'Who loves ya, baby' (a line popularised by Kojak star Telly Savalas known for his shaven pate). Dropping her towel, Brooke breezes into the living room where Gary (Vaughn) is playing a boxing videogame. As she sashays over to the fridge, removes a soda can and heads back to her room, Gary, distracted from the sparring on screen, stares open-mouthed, 'knocked out' by her brazen performance.
A couple of shots of Aniston's bare back (above the waistline) have been removed. So also another full-length shot where her soft-focus backside is juxtaposed against Vince's head in the foreground (see picture). But(t) that's all there is to it… with the total deleted footage lasting barely 10 seconds.
Why: An industry source privy to the functioning of the Censor Board explains, "It all depends on the whims and fancies of the examining committee. A lot also depends on the filmmaker's ability to convince them. In this case, the scheduled release date was close and so the distributor accepted the cut without pursuing the matter. But like American Beauty and Crash - both of which had fleeting nudity - The Break-up too could have got an 'A' without a cut."
SANDWICH - DOUBLE TROUBLE
(UA WITH FIVE CUTS)
What's Changed: Like a dusty old curio retrieved from museum archives, director Anees Bazmee's hugely delayed film Hum Do Hamaara Ek makes its theatrical appearance, refurbished and rechristened Sandwich - Double Trouble. Originally certified in September 2004, the name-switch warranted a fresh approval from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) which legitimised the change without re-examining the film.
Interestingly, while five cuts were ordered in the original film, the new avatar has many more - and for once, nobody's blaming the CBFC. Executive producer Prakash Pange elaborates, "To make it more acceptable to contemporary tastes, we've trimmed the film's second half, cutting out some scenes and songs. In fact, one of the censor-cuts required us to delete shots of Shweta Menon's cleavage in a song sequence. That song has been deleted in the theatrical prints though it remains in the home video version."
Not just Shweta's but Mahima Chaudhry's body parts too underwent scrutiny with "close visuals of bare thighs and cleavage" in the song Sayonee finding their way into the censors' skin-bin.
Other deletions were of cuss words such as "behn ke takke", "haraamzaade" and "maa ki". "Govinda plays a loud Punjabi character whose vocabulary includes such slang," explains Pange. "You really can't call them 'bad words' because they are commonly used by many Punjabis. However, we had no problems abiding by the censors' directives."
source:mumbaimirror
