Reading Cable Chops Up Movies To Placate Advertisers made me angry:
Spike TV, the Viacom-owned cable network aimed at men, is hyping how it will run all three “Godfather” movies uncut this month.But Spike has a funny definition of uncut. While it will show every scene in all three movies, the language will be edited, and nudity or sex scenes — of which there are only a handful in all three movies — will be blurred.
At least with “The Godfather” movies, the edits won’t be too annoying to viewers, since the films are relatively tame by today’s standards. But for other movies Spike tries to run “uncut,” the end result is often a big mess. That was the case recently when the network showed “Raging Bull,” the Martin Scorsese classic starring Robert DeNiro as troubled middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta. The network dropped the audio on the f-word and other expressions more than 100 times, rendering the movie almost impossible to watch. While Spike could be commended for not actually cutting scenes from the movie, the end result was still painful.
I can’t help but think, “You nerd!” That is what Spicoli calls Mr. Hand, isn’t it?