Category Archives: Japan

BBFC refuses classification for Japanese horror film “Grotesque”

WHITEHOUSE, Your Happy Place, Wednesday (NNN) — Japanese horror film Grotesque has been refused an 18 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) because of its graphic torture scenes.

Japanese television mankini guysBBFC director David Cooke said it presented “little more than an unrelenting and escalating scenario of humiliation, brutality and sadism. And no, that’s not a marketing feature.”

The plot is minimal. Two censors are snatched off the street and wake up shackled in a basement. With no explanation, a sadistic Internet degrades, tortures and mutilates them. The film features graphic dismemberment, extreme anal dilation, two girls and one cup. Special effects are apparently by Barbra Streisand.

The refusal of classification means it is illegal to sell or even distribute the film in the UK at all. “This will completely protect the UK from this filth, as people will certainly not ship in a DVD from Japan or get friends in other countries to burn a copy. Nor will they BitTorrent it just because it’s in the news and treasure their download of this odious lump of grot they’d have paid no attention to whatsoever except for us — oh, my promotional fee? Thank you! — and horror fans won’t swap it amongst themselves as if it’s precious. By the way, we’re in discussions with the Internet Watch Foundation about how to keep the BBFC relevant and well-loved in the twenty-first century world of Steampunk Britain.”

The BBFC has drawn criticism for allowing films such as the Danish horror Antichrist and the American “torture porn” films Saw and Passion of the Christ to be distributed in Britain. “But this is, after all, Japanese. I think I speak for all Britons when I say: Dear Japanese people, please — just stop it. Love, British people.”

Sony unveils less huge PlayStation 3

GAMESCOM, Ichiyaga Camp, Tuesday (NNGadget) — Sony is releasing the new PlayStation 3 Slim across Europe in early September, in the hope that anyone will remember the PS3 still exists.

Sony PlayStation 3 Black MonolithThe new light-weight version is two-thirds of the size and weight, only requiring a single, much smaller, extra room built onto your house, fitted with 13-amp 405-volt three-phase power. The new, more compact enriched uranium fuel rods are not supplied.

PlayStation chief Kazuo Hirai made the announcement at the GamesCom conference in Cologne, in a move widely seen as an attempt to regain momentum in the battle against rival Microsoft and put off having to ritually disembowel himself with a sword. “Our competition is absolutely the XBox 360. That’s the one to beat! Thank God they didn’t build hardware that worked, we’d have real trouble if they had.”

The PS3 has struggled thanks to its high price and lack of games, not to mention competition from the Nintendo Wii, which, apart from costing half as much, is actually fun. The Sony console did, however, have spectacular launches in Japan and America, with tens of fans queuing through the night to get their hands on the console, particularly with their Sony employee discount. The machines sold at only half the price on eBay soon after.

3D Blu-Ray coming to the home

CURRY’S ANALOGUE, The High Street, Tuesday (NNGadget) — 3D movies could be coming to your home cinema. A standard for three-dimensional content on Blu-Ray discs has been proposed by Panasonic.

Peter Murphy bowled over by 3D Maxell custard pie“Standards wars, patent monopolies and the like would seriously interfere with the widespread adoption of any 3D image standard,” said Panasonic’s Masayuki Kozuka. “So give us your bloody money and don’t argue.”

The systems will require new players, introduced at £500, and new high-definition televisions. Existing high-definition televisions will be rendered obsolete by the proposal, much as the pre-Blu-Ray “HD-ready” sets were. “Another few thousand is a small price to pay for the very latest in gadgetry. If we dub it ‘the third generation of HD,’ it should distract the early adopters long enough from lynching us. We’ll tell ’em Apple’s interested or something.”

To keep the “analog hole” closed, viewing will require an orange jumpsuit, handcuffs and sensory deprivation goggles with the displays in the eyepieces. “Any Vista user should be quite accustomed to this.”

Blu-Ray discs make up a fantastic 4% of the physical video market, as compared to those old, clunky and frankly rather stale-smelling DVDs which only make up 96% of sales and can’t be taken seriously by anyone.

In unrelated news, BitTorrent is now 40% of all Internet traffic, only exceeded by penis spam, while YouTube plays better on 64-bit Linux than Windows Vista.