I just sat through the movie Eagle Eye. It was pretty awesome... I think. It wasn't one to hold any punches... I think. I say this because I don't currently consider myself as one who has actually watched Eagle Eye. Why? Because the freshman running the movie night had a Cussbuster, or as my not-from-the-South-or-Midwest-like-everyone-else-here dialect would put it, a Swearbuster. Let me explain.
To those who have never even heard of a swearbuster before, prepare to be initiated in the ways of hyperconservative movie going. In theory, a swearbuster connect to a DVD player and cuts out the audio when it detects a naughty word. Depending on who you ask, it's either unnecessary censorship or the completely necessary protection of fragile, warpable little minds. I lie in the "happy medium" camp, and think they're very annoying, but understand that some people sue and withdraw their kids from schools over this kind of crap.
The box of the Swearbuster boasts the number it censors in several major movies, for instance, "Spiderman- 13." Aside from the fact I counted roughly 4 a-words in Spiderman, what the packaging conveniently neglects to mention is that it also censors half of the rest of the movie.
This little box reads the subtitles of the movie (even when they're not on,) and when it finds a swear of any kind, it shuts out audio for several seconds before and after the point it thinks that swear is. So we don't get "What the...is going on here?!" We get 7 seconds of the lead detective yelling silently, possibly about some major event, although who knows? Maybe he's yelling "These pretzels are making me thirsty!" in a way that some could be offended by.
The thing sees a bad word and just shotguns it, knocking out lines, scenes, heck, depending on the movie, entire plot lines could cease to exist. So you could imagine my chagrin when the movie had started, several behind-the-scenes shots of some important military operation had passed, a man with many medals asked "What do we do?!" over the phone, and I was greeted with silence as a man walking down a hallway mouthed, presumably, WHAT THEY SHOULD DO.
So I would love to tell you what I thought about Eagle Eye, I can't. I only heard half of it.
-Will
"If you're . Because if I don't get some good leads soon, "
