Unequal Opportunity Offender

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | THE INDIA FILES

by James Killough

Let me immediately state that, despite the title, there will be no borderline pornographic body parts in this post.  But just the fact I have willfully boxed PFC into a corner where I have to make that caveat is relevant to this article.  I think.

First, take a look at this viral video currently eliciting belly laughs across the Interweb:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IYeETAVsQA&w=425&h=349]

It’s a fake, of course.  The bride sort of gives it away, but the drunk woman herself is also too alert; her face lacks the woozy, careless expression of someone who is no longer in control of her actions.  In a way — in a convoluted, forced association sort of way — the video is representative of what I’ve been doing with the content of this blog.

You Don’t Make Crap

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | THE INDIA FILES

by James Killough

Flipping mindlessly, sleepily through the chattering polyglot channels of Indian TV last night in my hotel room, I landed on a station that screens Hollywood films, the kind I would never ordinarily watch, i.e., the majority of films that are made.  Ivan Reitman’s My Super Ex-Girlfriend was on.  Wow, what a crock of shit.  Unwatchable.  I cannot imagine how Uma Thurman must have made it through a single day of shooting that clownish cack without taking her eye off her mortgage payments.

Uma Thurman rocking the widest, longest red carpet in the whole wild world at Cannes in a damned fine gown. And taking a photo call ass-first.

During a showdown between Uma Thurman’s ex-girlfriend character and Anna Faris’s current girlfriend character, the word “bitch” was bleeped so as not to offend sensitive Indian ears.  The subtitles, which translated American into standard English, substituted “bitch” with “witch.”  That blip of stringent censorship helps to understand why studios are so relentlessly inclined toward making nothing more rattling than a PG-13 film. Even the anodyne The King’s Speech has been modified to take out the whole “fuck” sequence with a view to broadening the film’s marketability, as if an Oscar sweep weren’t enough.  As a result, it has made over four hundred million worldwide, and will continuing pumping money for years to come.