South Asia Censorship News

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum is a 2019 USA action crime thriller by Chad Stahelski.
Starring Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry and Ian McShane.

In this third installment of the adrenaline-fueled action franchise, skilled assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) returns with a $14 million price tag on his head and an army of bounty-hunting killers on his trail. After killing a member of the shadowy international assassin's guild, the High Table, John Wick is excommunicado, but the world's most ruthless hit men and women await his every turn.

The film was uncut in the US and UK, with MPAA R and BBFC 15 ratings respectively.

However the film did not fare so well in Australia where it suffered category cuts for am MA15+ cinema release. The reported cuts are:

• After a protracted knife fight John Wick stabs one of his opponents in the eye. But the details of this have been obscure by reframing.
• Edits to a fight with the French guy in the library.
• Edits to a head shot using a shotgun towards the end.

The Australian Censorship Board reveals that the film will be uncut and R18+ for 4K Blu-ray but details for DVD and standard Blu-ray have not yet been published.

Meanwhile IMDb notes that the film has been cut in India for an adults only 'A' rating. The cuts were:

• Cuts to strong violence

• to remove middle finger gestures

• to remove an expletive

• A Smoking kills caption was also included in scenes featuring characters smoking.

One of the Pentagon's most secretive agencies, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is developing custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, video and audio clips.

DARPA now is developing a semantic analysis program called SemaFor and an image analysis program called MediFor, ostensibly designed to prevent the use of fake images or text. The idea would be to develop these technologies to help private Internet providers sift through content.

....Read the full article from rollingstone.com

India's Central Board Of Film Certification (CBFC) now has a new logo.

Chairperson Prasoon Joshi went on to unveil the new logo at an event on Saturday. Along with the logo, Joshi also revealed the new certificate identity of the board.

The event, hosted in Mumbai, was attended by Minister of Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar.

The new film certificate will be based on the template below.

Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood is a 2019 USA / UK comedy drama by Quentin Tarantino.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie.

Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood visits 1969 Los Angeles, where everything is changing, as TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) make their way around an industry they hardly recognize anymore. The ninth film from the writer-director features a large ensemble cast and multiple storylines in a tribute to the final moments of Hollywood's golden age.

Director Quentin Tarantino's new film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, has been passed by the Indian film censors at the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) with an adults sonly A certificate with a couple of curious cuts.

The censor board left multiple instances of the word 'fuck' but has beeped out every usage of the word 'ass', ccording to Pinkvilla, which has access to the censor certificate.

The chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) Amir Azeem Bajwa has called on the government to block social media websites in the country in consideration to the circulation of blasphemous content through these mediums.

Briefing a Senate Standing Committee, Bajwa asked the government to formulate a policy to block social media networks which are being operated outside the country, and in its stead develop indigenous social networking websites, just as in the UAE and China.

Bajwa said that the PTA has blocked more than 39,000 URLs since 2010, and blocked as many as 8,000 websites related to pornography. In addition, the PTA has received over 8,000 complaints regarding blasphemous content on the internet.

Short video-sharing app TikTok came into the spotlight in India in the spring of this year. The app was accused of facilitating the distribution of pornography.

The app was banned for a while but was restored after it introduced a minimum age of at least 13 for new accounts. It also implemented automatic censorship tools that detected and blocked nudity.

Now the app has reappeared in the spotlight. The Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), the economic wing of the Indian ruling party Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has again called for video sharing site TikTok to be banned in India. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the SJM said:

To prevent such applications from operating in India, we would humbly request the creation of a new law that requires testing and also regulation to protect our national security as well as the privacy of Indian users from countries with inimical interests to India. Until such a law is notified, all such Chinese applications, including TikTok and Helo should be banned by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

In recent weeks, TikTok has become a hub for anti-national content that is being shared extensively on the application. We have been notified of videos advocating views that promote religious violence, anti-Harijan sentiments, and mistreatment of women. There have also been various instances of deaths being caused due to TikTok across India.

The essence seems to be that if people are going to communicate with anti state ideas then they could at least use an Indian app rather than a Chinese one.