Rockstar Games' Manhunt 2 Has Been Rejected By The BBFC

The BBFC have passed their judgment on Manhunt 2 from Rockstar Games - and they've denied it a certificate. Expect the Daily Mail to be reporting on this tomorrow - with a very different bias.

Any of those Hostel 2 haters out there want to weigh in on this one? There must be one or two cliches about moral decline you haven't belaboured entirely yet.

Do you think the fact that Manhunt 2 is a game has affected the outcome here? I know several parents who wouldn't let their kids watch, say, Hustle and Flow but let them play Grand Theft Auto.

I Don't Really Know How To Review The New Fantastic Four Film

What can I say about Fantasic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer? It wasn't too hot, I can tell you that. You can probably guess the entire plotline from the trailers. And all of the jokes and major character beats. So, was anything unexpected?

Yes - here's the list of surprises I encountered while watching the film on Tuesday night.

I attended a 'regional premiere', starting just ahead of the big deal in London. We had live link up via satellite to the red carpet in London where Edith Bowman struggled to hold it all together. The cinema we were in - the Vue in Oxford - did an embarrassingly bad job with the digital projection of these segments, however. The images were in black and white, there was ghosting, all in all, it looked rather dreadful. Which is a crying shame because, while the Vue's projectionists clearly have no idea how to use the digital projector and were too proud to ask for help and get it right before hand, it is typically the one cinema in Oxford that offers the best presentation of the lot.

After over an hour of red carpet interviews that never quite happened the link up announced that we were now about to see the film. The manager of the cinema disagreed, however - there was to be an intermission of fifteen minutes for us to pop to the loo. This was a very good idea, but a better solution would have been to limit the outside broadcast to ten minutes or so in the first place. There wasn't ten minutes worth of actual content, but I think we could have just about stomached it stretching that far. Over an hour? I'm a little surprised that none of the thirty or so people in the audience snapped and killed the rest of us.

And then, the film and the next surprise: according to the BBFC title card, this film is simply called 4 - Rise of the Silver Surfer. No Fantastic. How prophetic.

The plot is pretty straightforward - Reed and Sue are to get married but Reed is distracted with a Surfer-monitoring project. The Surfer is coming to herald Galactus' destruction of us all. Doom starts knocking about again (his first few scenes were the most empty, boring scenes in an empty, boring film - simply there to remind us he existed and grasp at some kind of suspense). The Surfer is incarcerated by the military, Doom gets his board and powers, Sue bonds with the Surfer, they set him free and then there's a chase about for a bit, he gets his board back, tells Galactus to shove off, the end. Basically.

There's plenty of attempts at comedy but I didn't hear a single laugh from the little audience. Not even the kids. Maybe it 'works better' in a full auditorium. Which reminds me: the effects, particularly in an early 'funny' nightclub dance sequence with a CG Reed, were often sub-Ally McBeal. The rubber Surfer suit - seldom seen as it was, and stiff-faced too - looked fairly good, though.

I was surprised by the sequence in which the Surfer is incarcerated. It seemed like political subtext was bubbling up and that wasn't expected - even such ham-brained dumb-fisted attempts at subtextual relevance as this. It adds nothing and will convince no-one, which makes it seem rather sincere. I'm sorry, but this was probably a genuine attempt by Tim Story and writers to 'say something' - and that's the most damning thing I can say about this film, if you think about it.

There are a few action set-pieces and they're just mediocre, really. Like a late 70s Bond film or an 80s Arnold film that had nought to do with Cameron. The trailer that showed the Johnny/Surfer chase looked to be a bit choppy, and I was surprised to see that, actually, many of the cuts in the film were the same as in the trailer, that it hadn't been hacked down for the promo. Skillfully wrought stuff this was not.

Ultimately, this was an exercise in lowest common-denominator dreck, speckled with the odd attempt to convince the audience that they were watching something slightly more worthwhile than they actually were (only slightly - they don't even set this fake bar very high).

One final surprise: after the screening, my girlfriend claimed to have enjoyed it more than Spider-Man 3 because Spider-Man 3 'took itself too seriously'. There were countless things wrong with that (surprising) statement, not least that actually, she spent the entire Fantastic Four 2 rolling her eyes, tutting and mocking it with the odd funny comment. During Spidey, she laughed and didn't offer any snarky put downs at all. She must have just been trying to make a point.

Which Death Proof Is Set For UK Cinemas?

Death Proof has been passed by the BBFC for its UK theatrical release so, finally, there's a hard fast answer for how how long a cut we'll be getting (of course, there's still no concrete news about Planet Terror at all).

The 'good news' - and some people won't be pleased with this at all - is that the version of Death Proof released in the UK will run to 113 minutes and 32 seconds. The film was given an 18 certificate and passed without any cuts.

There's tree months until the currently scheduled release date, however.

The Continuing Adventures Of John McClane

The BBFC have certificated a 14 minute featurette called The Continuing Adventures of John McClane. Either they're getting ahead on the Die Hard 4.0 supplementary material, and this is a first glimpse of what the DVD will contain, or this is a promo piece, very possibly to be given away with a newspaper.

There's been countless publicty DVDs attached to the rags over the years, but some were truly worthwhile. The Kill Bill disc that came with The Times being a particularly good example.

More Die Hard 4.0 hype is going on with chocolate bar promotions - I saw some kind of logo on a rack of Kit Kats earlier. Are people really going to care that much about this film? In the UK? I thought we just sort of shrugged the Die Hards off over here.

Spider-Stuff

Here's a round up of some Spider-Man 3 stuff, just to get it all covered and out of the way.

Firstly - the film has been passed uncut with a 12A certificate in the UK. Spider-Man 2 had a headbutt removed before it was submitted to the BBFC, essentially meaning it was cut for a PG certificate.

Lots and lots of new Spider-Man 3 video snippets have gone online: there are two (one, two - count 'em) Taiwanese TV spots and Slashfilm have a German TV spot. IGN do best of all, unsurprisingly: they have a whole range of clips. The clips in particular are very compelling.

[EDIT: IESB have done a better job with the clips]

I've been sent a new poster that shows, in a series of seperate images, Peter's red and blue suit getting covered by the symbiote - you can see it at the bottom of this post. Click upon it to make it much, much bigger.

Spider-Man 3 - the best film of 2007? - is just over two weeks away. Two weeks!

Knocked Up Rated

The BBFC have rated Knocked Up with a 15 certificate, compared to the MPAA's R rating in the US. I can't wait to see this film.

New York Ripper's Slashes Still Slashed

The BBFC have again today certificated Lucio Fulci's New York Ripper as an 18 certificate for DVD release, this time with 'just' 34 seconds of compulsory cuts. What has been removed? In their words: "a naked and bound woman's stomach and breasts being mutilated with a razor".

Now, why is it that I can write that phrase, put it out into the world without having to run any censorship gauntlet, knowing full well that just about anybody who reads the words is capable of imagining the scene vividly, while a filmmaker still isn't permitted to show the scene to a UK audience? Now, don't get me wrong, I can't think of many images that, in isolation, I'd like to see less than this one - but in the context of a narrative? I can imagine a thousand ways in which it might be justified, and frankly, Fulci isn't just some lunatic hack. (You might win the argument that he is a lunatic hack, but never that it's all he is).

I like that the BBFC is ostensibly a body for film classification, not censorship - but when it comes to DVD releases in the UK, they are censors, in effect if not name. Nothing can be released to the UK market without a certificate from them, and they can make their requested cuts compulsory. Surely a final step, a beyond-18 'anything goes' unrated option, as per the US, is a better solution? Shouldn't it be possible for distributors to release anything they want onto DVD at all - providing the content is not, indeed, illegal in it's own right.

And, of course, providing it's only available to adults. Which should have gone without saying, but I thought, like the BBFC, I'd baby you and hold your hand for a moment.

I resurrect these age old arguments simply because they're never going to get old. Never. Not until we are treated like adults and allowed free choice over the films we watch, books we read and conversations we hold.