Chinese censors somehow found 40 minutes to cut from Cloud Atlas
While the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer already got their Cloud Atlas down to a tight two hours and 52 minutes, they forgot to excise much of the scenes that depict lovemaking not in service of fathering a male heir, and so Chinese censors were forced to step in and do that for them. According to Yahoo News, the deleted material “consisted mostly of exposition”—which, in the unedited American version, proved a real drag on the otherwise zippy pseudo-philosophizing—as well as various “passionate love scenes,” passion being a Western construct that distracts from productivity. Most importantly, even more so than the horrible Asian-face makeup, apparently, anything hinting at the gay love affair between Ben Whishaw and James D’Arcy’s characters was cut, turning that entire chapter into a story about a guy who helps a funny old composer write a song and then has dinner. The End.