Open question: Schrodinger’s Death Match

March 4, 2009

Open question: Schrodinger’s Death Match

I woke up early on Monday morning a week ago so I could watch the Oscarcast on TV. Most of it was fairly standard — Kate Winslet’s dad whistling and Philippe Petit balancing the statuette on his chin were the highlights for me. By my reckoning, that’s slim pickings. My wife missed most of it, so when we watched the retelecast in the evening, I noticed a couple of things:

Dustin Lance Black’s speech (Best Original Screenplay, Milk) was snipped a little bit from the morning, specifically the part where he tells all the gay and lesbian people out there that they are beautiful creatures of value, or something on those lines.
Sean Penn’s speech was also snipped. Which part? The ones where he uses the phrase “You commie, homo-loving sons of guns.”

It turns out that the STAR TV network did this across Asia. Once my commie, homo-loving son-of-gun self got over its outrage, my cynical self told me that I should know better than to expect unbiased coverage. At the very least, I should know better than to expect it twice in a row.

So here’s my open question for the day: If we we have a Celebrity Death Match between Sean Penn and Rupert Murdoch, who will win?

Penn’s experience in tactfully dealing with the paparazzi makes him the odds-on favourite. However, Murdoch’s handiness with a pair of scissors means that, if he has anything to do with it, we’ll never really know how many blows Penn actually landed on him.

What do you guys think?

Ramsu

Actor, Awards, Venus flytrap

10 responses to “Open question: Schrodinger’s Death Match”

pitu

March 4, 2009

I’ll root for Penn and puy mah money on Rupeeboy.

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Ramsu

March 4, 2009

That’s it, lady! No more Jack Black movies for you. He’s clearly a bad influence 😀

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Amrita

March 4, 2009

Un-fucking-believable was what I thought when I saw this first reported. Nobody even asked them to censor the damn thing. They just did it on their own. Star TV is always service-y!

And um, backing Pitu up on the Rupeeboy. While Penn was yelling and throwing punches, he’d find a way to kneecap him. Grandpa didn’t get where he did by fighting fair is what I’m sayin’.

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memsaab

March 4, 2009

Even in the US the “live” telecast has a 7-second delay.

I always wonder what little gems I might be missing too.

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Ma (m)Mon

March 4, 2009

>>”Murdoch’s handiness with a pair of scissors means that, if he has anything to do with it…” As in, the ‘Aamir Khan Nothing’? 🙂

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Ramsu

March 5, 2009

Amrita>> Maybe it’s a good thing Rourke didn’t win. All they could’ve done was show him go up on stage.

It would be like watching a bleeped version of Pulp Fiction, which I did incidentally on Star Movies a couple of days ago. Let’s just say Rupeeboy went medieval on Tarantino’s ass.

memsaab>> btw, you should watch Star Movies when you come to India next and do another post on subtitles. The way they censor swear words shows some serious thought behind the process 🙂

memsaab>> Somehow, despite the delay, things do seem to get telecast. Wardrobe malfunctions and/or alternative programming during the Superbowl, for instance 😀

Ma (m)Mon>> More like Arjun Rampal’s Nothing. Like Amrita says, the guy didn’t get this far by playing fair.

~ramsu

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Adithya

March 5, 2009

It reminds me of days when DD used to switch to ads when some skimpily clad international artists would be performing in Filmfare awards.

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memsaab

March 5, 2009

Actually I think that wardrobe malfunction was a catalyst for the 7 second delay 😀

I’ve never seen subtitles on Indian TV! Does Star really do that? How have I missed it?

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Ramsu

March 6, 2009

Adithya>> You should be thankful we’re not in Iran. When they played Ireland in the World Cup qualifiers back in 2001 or so, they let a small group of Irish women into the stadium after much deliberation. But apparently, when the match was telecast on TV, the crowd shots were replaced by those of the Winter Olympics where everyone was covered from head to toe out of necessity 😀

memsaab>> After what happened in Arizona during this year’s Superbowl, I think we can safely say that any delay is useless 😀

The subtitles now appear on Star Movies, HBO and Zee Studio — it’s a fairly recent phenomenon, maybe a few months old. You can really see them struggling when they try to subtitle a Tarantino or Kevin Smith movie 🙂

~ramsu

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(w)Righting a Wrong

March 10, 2009

Regardless of who wins, Penn’s wife is whom I’ll be rooting for. Remember how she oh-so-valiantly came to hubby’s rescue some four years back, when a bunch of journos slammed Penn with the “trying to pull off a publicity stunt” accusation after his ultra-impetuous rush to rescue Katrina victims in a rowboat (yes, while our then-prez was too busy wagging “bushy” tail elsewhere to react in a timely manner), resulted in his bailing out from the leaky vessel with a red plastic cup or something?

She apparently hurled a barrage of “fuck you”s at them and accused them right back of going to “the bowels of infantile behavior.” Oh I love her!

If nothing else, I’m eager to see how many “fuck you”s she has left in her arsenal, for Rupeeboy and his shifty tactics (after she’s had a chance to first douse hubby with his share, in private of course, for disobeying her dictate of not having anything remotely to do with such scumbags, let along engage in Celebrity Death Matches!).

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