Tea and a movie is a great combo. You steep up that delightful Earl Grey, Russian Caravan, or even some Jasmine Green Tea, and select a movie to settle back on your comfy couch or chair and watch. This is where censorship can play a role, as you will soon see.

Movies come in various versions. There is the movie theater version, often trimmed a bit since theater owners have the idea that their patrons can only stand sitting still so long. There is the premium cable/satellite version which may or may not include the parts that were trimmed. There is the movie download version available from sites like Netflix. There is the version shown on the regular cable/satellite stations – this version often has dub-overs of any spicy language and scenes cut short that are not considered suitable for those adorable little munchkins who might want to join you to watch. And let’s not forget the DVD versions, often the full director’s cut and without dub-overs or cut scenes. To those of us who may have only seen that cut version, sitting down to watch the DVD could be a bit of an eye opener. Suddenly seeing scenes that were rather revealing and even risqué and with language bombs coming out – it’s enough to make you splurt out your tea in sheer surprise.

For example, there’s that scene in The Thomas Crown Affair (the remake with Pierce Brosnan and Renee Russo) that I was used to seeing only in its shortened version. They go from gazing longingly at each other in the evening after getting back to his place from a ball to the next morning having breakfast served to them by Crown’s manservant. Well, hubby and I settled in with our cups of hot Golden Heaven Yunnan China Black Tea and some Walker’s shortbread, popped the DVD into the player, hit the “Play” button, and were enjoying the movie. Then, instead of the shortened scene, we saw the full version in all its wild and raucous splendor. Fortunately, there were no children around. We both swallowed a bit of tea down our windpipes in sheer surprise and had to cough for awhile.

It just goes to show that drinking tea while watching a movie can be quite an iffy matter. Just take care not to spill or otherwise abuse the tea!

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