Sex And The City

OK - here's the scenario. There's this award-winning film, right? But the subject matter's a little on the racy side - with lots of little-left-to-the-imagination sex scenes. Apparently such visual stimulation is deemed too appalling for the newspapers of this particular city to advertise the film, let alone allow their film reviewers to review the movie. So where are we? Iran? China? North Korea? Nope, Seattle - birthplace of grunge, mecca for caffeine addicts and the city where misplaced censorship is obviously still alive and well. The furore stems around a Spanish language movie, Sex and Lucia, which had just won both Best Screenplay and Best Director at the Seattle Film Festival. Clearly such critical appreciation did little to endear the film to the owners of the city's newspapers The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post Intelligencer who, according to Variety, have not only refused to advertise the movie, but are also still debating whether they're going to allow their film reviewers to even review the film. According to Empire's reviewer who, it must be said hasn't suffered any long-lasting ill-effects from watching the movie, Sex and Lucia is a 'passionate, stylishly directed and frequently erotic meditation on love, loss, sex, fantasy and the nature of fiction versus reality. With lots of censor-baiting nudity thrown in for good measure.' We can only hope that the good citizens of Seattle show their outrage at the Big Brother attitude of their city's press and pack out every screening of the film for the forseeable future.