A bit late for an opinion on the Oscars...

But that's what I've got, and that's what you're getting in the next paragraph or so.

I guess the closest thing to a surprise at the Oscars this year was Melissa Leo (who the folks at The World Wasn't Meant called "Hollywood's Dick Nixon") taking Best Supporting Actress.  But I hardly had an opinion of that at the time.

I was pleased with the breakdown of awards between The King's Speech, Inception, and The Social Network.  I can't say anything one way or another about True Grit.

What I really came here to talk about was this: The Weinstein Company's decision to re-edit The King's Speech to a PG-13 rating.  If you've seen the movie, you know what scene they censored.  If you haven't seen it, it's the one where Colin Firth drops fourteen f-bombs.

The advantages of a more accessible rating for the movie, in light of its new publicity, are obvious.  What strikes me as ironic is that if the Weinstein Company had thought anyone was going to see a movie "about a man who--against all odds--talks for three minutes" (as my friend Bryan put it), they would have aimed for the lower rating first and I wouldn't be talking about this.   The King's Speech, fourteen frictive fulminations lighter, would still have won Best Original Screenplay, and all the rest.

But context is all-important.  Now the version of the film in theaters will not be the version that won scads of awards, even if it would have.  If I went to see it again, I would not see the same movie I saw over Christmas.  And I'm most concerned with the question of the DVD release.  NATO president John Fithian (not that NATO, the National Association of Theater Owners) described "The Weinstein Company's commitment to ... to remove all prints of the earlier version."  I've looked at a number of articles without being able to get a clearer picture of the company's intent.  Will they simply remove the old reels from theaters, or are they going to bury the old version like Disney did Song of the South?  I don't think I'm the only person who feels a visceral disapproval of that sort of suppression of a piece of art.

It's worth pointing out that, in spite of because of the scene in question, The King's Speech is about the only movie I can think of that depicts cursing as something classy people don't do.  I would say anyone old enough to sit through the movie is old enough to watch it without harm to their moral person.  The Boston Globe aptly points out, "It's hard to understand any criteria that yield the same rating for The King's Speech as for No Country for Old Men."  And if Kate Winslet's breasts are innocuous enough for thirteen-year-olds, I think there's a good case to be made for the Duke of York's therapeutic tirade.  I can tell you which of those would have had the more corruptive effect on thirteen-year-old me.

I do hope I will be able to buy the version of the movie that I saw in the first place on DVD.  If the censored version is the only one that gets released, I think I'll pass.

P.S. Hyperlinking is one of the peculiar joys of web publishing.