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PG-13 Rating Turns 20
Ant writes "CNN has a story about the 20 year anniversary of PG-13 and how it was created/born from two of Steven Spielberg's movies. (Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom and Gremlins)" Oh, Mola Ram and your heart-removing antics, little did you know the profound impact you would have.
I realize the importance of having a rating that differentiates between a kid's movie and one for young adults, but as a non-parent I look on it with contempt. Ever since the R rating begun to be widely enforced, studios have toned down violent films so they can still have a chance at making money from the younger market. For example: I might actually have gone to see the recent Alien vs. Predator film had it been rated R, but since it was PG-13, I decided to wait until I can rent it. Enforcement of the ratings system, and the studios' response to it, has dealt the death blow for true horror/action films, because studios must now focus on making higher quality products for a more discerning audience if they want to make profit and carry the R rating. Instead they choose to neuter their movies and add some more special effects and popular cliché to entice the kids.
I'm not suggesting that just because a movie is rated PG-13 that it is, by default, a bad movie. What I am suggesting is that continuations of previously successful films, and modern horror/action flicks will never be what we all remember them to be. We will never see truly cheesy and senselessly bloody movies like Evil Dead ever again.
Also, if anyone hasn't heard of a decent NC-17 movie since Showgirls, this one looks promising. I saw the trailer for it the other day.
PG13 has been able to watch itself.
Indiana Jones wasn't G?
the Political Inquirer
Did anyone else think they were raising the allowed age for letting kids into a PG-13 movie to 20?
Or maybe 20 year olds could be naked now in a PG-13 movie.
Or... how old are the Olsen Twins again?
For a second there, I thought PG-13 was about to become PG-20!
CNN has a story about the 20 year anniversary of PG-13
In a related story... nobody cares.
The funny thing is that actor that plays Ram was a popular Indian actor that played villian roles. His lines were all in Hindi, and not gibberish. Something about "Black mother" if I remember correctly.
The article talks about how it was adopted and loved and all that when for a long time - even after Indiana Jones and such - it was the No Man's Land of ratings. Teens could still get in to R movies, while parents wouldn't want to take younger kids to PG-13 movies. I'm not sure where they came up with this tripe of a story. Then again it seems to be an RIAA press release gifted to them by CNN so it's understandable that it's full of shit.
What I don't get, is that the rating systems are inconsistent. Here in Quebec, most movies that are rated R elsewhere are rated PG-13. Take Hannibal for instance, I believe in the U.S. it was rated R, in Quebec it was PG-13 or maybe even PG-14, and in Brittish Columbia I think it was rated PG. How can anyone make sense of anything when the rating system is inconsistent? If you ask me, it's just a waste of time, completely meaningless.
For those of you who don't know what I'm referring to, in the U.K. cut of Temple of Doom, the British censors refused to screen the movie without deleting the heart-removal scene, and the scene of Short Round being whipped, and maybe one or two other scenes. (The recently released Indy boxed set in the U.K. kept with the original theatrical versions, which pissed me off when I realised the difference.) As you might expect - and as I mentioned above - the heart scene was sorta crucial for making sense of a couple points of the movie.
The fine brat-esque-pack Red Dawn.
Why is this "knews" piece even relevant? CNN has a pro-MPAA, pro-RIAA, Valenti puff piece every couple days. You don't see a whole lot of well-rounded copyright discourse on the major media news outlets. (Gee, I wonder why...) CNN: We're tough on music fans. We like suing kids and grandmas. We equate infringement with theft. We are fair and balanced, too.
[
Hmm. Considering all the [Insert favorite analog here] around these days, you'd think this would be mandatory viewing for [Insert favorite socio/economic/ethnic/political group here]
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Almost nothing gets a "G" or "NC-17", so most films are "PG-13" and "R". I think the Catholic ternary system was a little better in distinguishing movies: "A", "B" and "C"- children, adult(not naughty), and condemned.
Not many know the actor who played Mola Ram is a Bollywood actor who has the badguy act down to the dot. Some info on how this talented actor landed this role can be found here
:).
However the first time I saw Temple of Doom, I specifically didnt enjoy the manner in which Speilberg sought to portray the culture and traditions of India and Hinduism. Thanks to movie such as Temple of Doom, a big part of Western Hemisphere thought this sad portrayal was still true of India until the Indians started stealing their jobs
But heck, its a movie and though not as good as the other two, it is still enjoyable. I hope Speilberg and Ford gets around to making one more and I wouldnt complain if they threw Sir Sean in to the mold as well..
Rapid Nirvana
As a concerned parent, I am very pleased that Indiana Jones himself came up with the PG-13 rating. Now that my oldest boy, Johnny, is 16 I'm thinking about letting him watch a PG-13 movie.
Showgirls is not a decent movie. The only real question is whether it's just horrible or whether it's so bad that it's passable as camp. I don't think any of the principals associated with it really want to be associated with it anymore.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
(Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom and Gremlins) Now I feel old
An interesting bit of movie rating history: when the MPAA brought out the original system (G/M/R/X), they trademarked the first three but not "X." Pornographers were thus free to use it, and it came to be associated with "pornography" instead of "adult content," requiring the creation of the "NC-17" rating years later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-rated
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
While many gurus like to suggest that Hinduism is all smiles and laughter -- it ain't so. Read about the Thugee, who were particularly nasty worshipers of the Hindu Goddess Kali.
When it came out in the 80's it was the best thing to happen to movies. Youu could have a good humor flick with a flash of nudity and still have the teens go to see it. Now it's an excuse to make a half assed horror/thriller and tone it down enough to make them extra money. So many movies have been killed by this rating. Blah....
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
Don't you mean SNT, PC and NPC?
SNT = Skirts & Ties
PC = Practicing Catholics
NPC = Non-practicing Catholics
I knew it! Know how I knew it?
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Give up?
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I RTFA!
[antilamenessfilter!]
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
That anon post is exactly right - Red Dawn was not the first film to get a PG-13 rating (I can't remember which one was), but it was the first film *released* with a PG-13 rating. At the time, Red Dawn had more scenes of graphic violence than any other movie ever made.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Spielberg had the brilliant idea of adding a sub-rating to a 2-level rating system (making *gasp!* 3 levels), told it to his buddy Jack Valenti, who then asked their opinion to theater owners (who, as everybody knows, are reknown experts in pedopsychology) and implemented it.
The new sub-level then quickly became a marketting tool to capture more teenager money, effectively turning the whole rating system into a 2-level system again, since no filmmaker wants a PG rating anymore.
In short: *yawn*
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
and I can take it to a bar and have it buy me a beer. *snif* How time flies for our little ratings. :)
All the provinces in Canada have a movie review board that is empowered with determining a rating on all publically released movies. What one province will rate PG another might give 14A (think PG14, it's a Canadian thing).
Quebec and Canada in general, seem to have a more liberal ratings policy than their American counterparts. I had the same reaction when I was out for a movie in Texas and saw several movies rated "R" that were 14A back home in BC. Another difference that comes to mind is while the Canadian ratings system is mandated by provincal law, the American ratings system was a compromise created by the MPAA to stave off government censorship (if memory serves).
Something else to note is while in the U.S. the MPAA rating carries over onto the video release, the Canadian distributors apply a "Canadian Home Video" (or somesuch) rating that reflects the liberal Canadian ratings during the theatrical release. No province that I know of classifies home movies other than adult, thus the "Canadian Home Video" rating system.
Million Name Movies!
Credits that roll on and on for hours in type so small as to be indecipherable.
They Live, We Sleep
He _was_ the first fish.
AVP is a prime example of abuse of the PG-13 rating by a major studio. AVP was shot as an "R" rated film, but the studio, at the last second, decided to cut the film to a PG-13, so the younger crowd could get into see it, and make more money. To me, they ruined the film by doing this. Thankfully, they did not cut Freddy vs. Jason to a PG-13, yet it still was the number one movie that week and made a lot of money. Hollywood has long since lost it's segregation in regards to ratings. Instead of making kid films, teenager films and adult films, the studios are making "all in one" films that just about everyone can see.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
If I'm not mistaken Jaws was PG. We're talking lots and lots of blood. I still won't go into the Ocean to this day. (Granted I live in Oregon, which is not known for its warm water or sharks for that matter) Jaws was also a spielberg movie.
Though my position on this issue probably doesn't sync with the norm, I've found the problem with PG-13 to be the exact opposite of yours. Sometimes I'd just like to see a good movie without any of the questionable junk. (I know, I know - lots of people seem to prefer to see the stuff I just called junk in their moves - I'd rather that stuff be in movies rated R though.) Movies which for the most part probably could be rated PG throw some gratuitous scene or language in just to get the coveted PG-13 rating so that the teenage crowd won't dismiss it. So, what you end up with are movies which are mostly pretty good, but have some questionable content which may or may not fit with the rest of the story or the intended audience in one small scene just to get the more mature rating. So, from my perspective, the PG-13 rating has actually worsened my movie going experience. But, I recognize I'll be hard pressed to have very many other people on Slashdot agree. Let the puritanical accusations commence!
Disney owns ABC america
News Corp owns Fox News and 20th centuary fox
Time Warner owns CNN
Viacom owns Paramount and CBS (and also UPN)
I dont know who owns NBC (I think it is or was Vivendi or General Electric or something)
No matter where you go, most "news" outlets are biased.
When it comes to any issue that affects the big $$$$$ that Big Media makes, they are always going to go with whatever side makes them the most.
With regards to copyright, expect the MPAA to push for HD-DVD players (or whatever the new standard for blue-laser hi-definition DVDs ends up being) to only play protected content. And for any commercially available recording devices to use different disks. Their stated goal for that would be "preventing piracy" but their real aim would be to prevent anyone from being able to produce content for the format unless its been vetted by the MPAA first.
Not coincidentally, thats why Big Media is winning in congress over the technology companies (because Big Media can paint the congressmen that support them in a favorable light and paint those that wont in an unfavorable light)
The original Planet of the Apes movies was rated G. Complete with violence ("get your damn dirty hands off me"), beastiality (ape on human kissing), swearing against the creator ("Goddamn it all to hell!") and just plain smut (Charleton Heston's naked ass).
Boy the times have changed.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
"Kids don't want to feel like they're seeing pap," Dante said. "People will go out of their way to put one dirty word in it just to get the rating that they need to give the picture some legitimacy, so the kids won't feel like they're going to see their little brother's movie."
Actually we go to movies cuz they are good not because of the higher rating. The only people that I know that even bother with ratings watch movies with low ratings not the higher ones.
You mean films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey? That's probably my all time favorite. I find that "adult" film really means adolescent film. I don't care to spend hours and hours filling my head full of blooshed and gore. There's a whole universe of stuff out there that could make for interesting films, but people are so in love with violence that that's what we get. Either that or just plain stupid, sappy stuff.
Long ago I decided to vote with my buck and just stop going to the movies.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
I was surprised to find out that the motion picture rating system is a voluntary system. It is enforced by the ownership/management of a theater and not by law (like age limits on alcohol or driving).
I found this out when Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was released this year. There was such an uproar about the film being rated 'R' (and thus a "Bush led conspiracy to keeping some people from seeing it") that a couple of theater owners in the Bay Area said they wouldn't enforce the 'R' rating on the film.
I'm not sure what would happen if a theater owner consistently ignored the rating system.
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
"As Steven Spielberg told The Associated Press recently, PG-13 puts "hot sauce" on a movie in the viewer's mind."
Blah, more like mixing hot sauce with milk. Aiming just below the R for the more profitable PG-13 has ruined many movies in my mind. Giving up grit and realism for something more palatable to censors while thrashing the original vision.
But then again, is that surprising.
3 308&trkid=73), rated PG-13. If it scared off people for having brief nudity (a 70-year-old man's bare ass) and sexual content (discussions about panties and what they mean on a date), then maybe Hollywood wouldn't have made such a shitty movie.
The problem is that *all* of the ratings rely on someone else telling parents what's appropriate for their children. I know, but let's pretend that parents in this country actually parent.
A better system of rating would be to rate them for launguage, violence, sexuality, etc., very similar to what many pay-cable networks use.
Google for yourself - there's plenty of outraged people out there who think that some PG-13 movies are unacceptable for 13-year-olds, but if a movies was rated for brief nudity and sexual content, we could all make that decision based on personal morals, as opposed to the nebulus PG-13.
What I think is acceptable for me and my children is wildly different from many puritanical types in America. In plus, the aforementioned movie with nudity and sexual content is called Mooseport (http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?movieid=6003
They had their chance 20 years ago for reform, and now we'll never see it.
Apparently at least one of the most senior newsmen also believe that the RIAA is doing the right thing.
The problem is that Aaron Brown is just a mediocre journalist at best. At some point, CNN decided to introduce all kinds of people to the major anchoring jobs that look good and are great at giving some more human touch to stories, throw in a small non-offensive joke once in a while. People like Aaron Brown or Paula Zahn. But they don't excel at their jobs, which is a pity, given CNN's status.
CNN still does have people like Jeff Greenfield, though. They just seem to appear rarely on screen.
This is an interesting side-effect of subscriptions - it enables intelligent first posts. Trolls aren't really gonna subscribe because they are all broke 13-year-olds (or broke 23-year-olds). So you have a bunch of people selected from what is likely to be the most intelligent posters getting a head start. An interesting strategy would be to just delay stories for people with low/no karma. It could possibly make this effect more pronounced. Of course you would market it as a reward for having high karma.
-If
Bad Karma? No Probalo!
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
... that 33-year olds across the globe are cursing /. for making them feel old ;)
Do you see what I did there?
"It's also lead to an interesting counter-trend out of Hollywood... they're now putting out the "unrated edition" DVD for movies that had to get some scenes cut to qualify for the lower MPAA rating."
It's not a "counter-trend," it's a "profit-trend." The "Unrated" label is just a ploy to sell more DVDs. "Ooh look! This is unrated, it must be full of sex and murder! I want to see what I missed in theaters!"
G
Requiem... Yeah, that was a good movie if you wanted to put a gun in your mouth the next day....)
Programming:
Someone picked up a pile of these for $1 at a garage sale.
As he perused through them, he took notes.
From it we got
- The Fugitive
- Addams Family
- Flintstones
- Beverly Hillbillies
- Rocky & Bullwinkle
- Mod Squad
- Incredible Hulk
- Spiderman
- Charlie's Angels
- George Of the Jungle
- I Spy
- Lost in Space
- Mission Impossible
I leave off Jose and the Pussycats because it was self referencial about movies only made to reach commercialism for nostalgia's sake.Good movie, but loses points for standing on the shoulders of an ok tv show
Good Lord, why
ibid
Still, the same
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a tanking movie!
Ok, really a comic. With all the character development sam raimi's ever done
We're started to drag belly on the ground here
ok, I'm a sucker 'cause I loved this show. When I was 3
Well, mission improbable. She's 25, uber-babe, has 4 PhDs and can barely pronounce the technical terms she's been given.
This is PATHETIC!!
We have some interesting and creative people coming up with screen plays and ideas who are utterly being quashed by these lame-ass studio execs who wouldn't know a good idea if it kicked 'em in the nuts.
A separate but related thread is people remaking moves that, really, we done right the first time. Remake the movies that were good ideas but SUCKED! Like perhaps most of the ones in the last 20 years.
Jack: People aren't avoiding movies because we're pirating them, we're avoiding movies BECAUSE THEY SUCK!
see also this about "piracy ads" because it's a great idea.
In Britain, up until 1989, we had ratings similar to the US ones. U (Universal) for films suitable for everyone, PG (Parental Guidance) for films that contained some content unsuitable for very small kids, and 15 and 18, films suitable only for 15 and 18 year-olds respectively.
However, in 1989, the 12 rating was introduced, primarily as a result of the 15 rating that the James Bond movie Licence To Kill received for one or two of the more violent scenes. The first movie to actually receive a 12 rating was Batman, which was released in the summer of that year.
The only real difference between the our rating systems and the US ones are that the age limits are more strictly enforced. Whereas in the US a 14 year-old accompanied by person over the age of 17 can watch a 17 movie (but not a R one, obviously) in the UK every patron must meet the relevant age requirement, not just one out of the group.
Recently, a 12A rating has been introduced, which basically bridges the gap between PG and 12 but is less strictly enforced than a pure 12.
Frankly though, there have been more than a few movies that received PG ratings that shouldn't have done because the studios exerted their pressure one way or another. There's no way that Jurassic Park should have got anything less than a 12, not because you had to be at least 12 to not get scared shitless by it but because with a PG rating it was portrayed as being safe for very small kids to see, which clearly wasn't the case.
Similarly, the Lord Of The Rings movies got PG ratings too, when the content deserved a 12A classification: these movies aren't the sort of thing that every five year-old will sit through without getting unduly scared or having nightmares about for days.
On a related note, I'll just say that anyone who takes kids aged 2-6 to a three hour long film in the cinema is either very stupid or a sadomasochist. Kids that age can't sit still silently for that period of time: they'll cry, scream, constantly need to go to the bathroom, etc. This might not bother you but it sure as hell will bother anyone else trying to watch the film. Yet every time I went to watch a LOTR movie, even in the evening, there were parents doing this very thing. If this is you, or if this is someone you know, please, don't do it again.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Gratuitous: Root - gratuity : the reason you go to see the friggin' movie, for the same reason the waiter puts up with your crap.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
As a movie employee, I see this myth being held by many, especially young, afraid adolescents; the myth you have to be at least 13 or with an adult to see a PG-13 movie.t m
The actual guideline (that the MPAA doesn't really like to promote) is that the
PG-13 rating still allows those under 13 to be admitted without a parent or guardian
source: http://www.mpaa.org/movieratings/about/content5.h
I'm even though a little surprised that PG-13 allow to get away with the RTFM word [In alien v. predator]; though it was used only briefly.
As for the article, it's accurate. I've seen customers turned off of a movie, who hold that a PG movie is mere anime and for little kiddies. [Napoleon Dynamite is one example]
Summary - Parents find out what your kids are watching; Tweens - don't feel bad sneaking into R-Rated movies. It's fun when me and fellow teenage workers watch your dissapointed & shockedlooks when you get kicked out. ^_^
..you can't expect the MPAA to do anything without stripping people of more rights, can you? So of course they had to make PG-13 and 'R' and apply the classic law of 'kids are sub-human things that should only watch what we decide they should watch' and put age-restrictions on theaters, just to ensure that kids don't leave their cages.
Oh yay, let's celebrate a great milestone in thought control.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
For you to get it, you have to travel a bit to a foreign city. When business was good, I managed to travel to many different foreign exotic places. Even if they were exotic, it was horrible. The hotel room in any major city is the same as any other hotel room. Since I am there on business, there is not much time for tourism. So, I really really identified with the movie, and the hopelessness of being away.
There are at least 5 different ratings - allowing much greater flexibility.
G (Irl, General) - U (UK, Universal)
PG (Irl, UK, Parental Guidance)
12PG (Irl, over 12s only, or under with a parent/guardian) - 12 (UK, over 12s)
15PG (Irl, over 15s only, or under with a parent/guardian) - 15 (UK, over 15s)
18 (Irl, UK, over 18s)
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
He was the greatest. Went on to become a Goonie.
"Hey, Dr. Jones, no time for love. We've got company."
"I'm very little! You cheat very big!"
"Hey, lady! You call him Dr. Jones!"
"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
This flick has to be the easist way for boys to see breasts in a film they can easily rent at a video store. I remember being a kid dying to see this flick because it had TONS of nudity, especially for a PG-13 movie.
I've never seen a rating system for books - thank God. Some popular music is dissed for sex, obscenity, etc., but a rating system? Why are movies special?
Let the film makers make the flick they want to make. ASSume the flicks are viewable by those who have reached the age of majority. Most film makers are already required to shoot alternate footage for the TV version. With digital distribution to theaters (How are we coming on that?) let the theaters show the different versions at different times of the day.
I don't want my media censored. At the same time, I'm weary of writers, musicians and film makers who act like little kids and try to see what they can get away with just for the sake of doing it.
If you don't want to watch something, fine, don't watch it, but you don't have the right to stop me from watching it, so bugger off.
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it? ~ Albert Einstein
I can't believe they didn't mention Poltergeist. I don't remember how old I was, but it scared the living crap out of me when that guy tore all the skin off his face. I was so afraid from that point on I had to leave the theater.
That's because there wasn't a PG-13 rating at the time. Guess what the cause of the PG-13 rating was? The bare breast in Clash of the Titans. It caused such an uproar that the PG-13 rating was instituted because a bare breast would corrupt all those blood and gore viewing young men. They actually wanted to rate Clash of the Titans 'R', but couldn't, because it didn't meet the requirements.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I've been stuck in hotels in Hong Kong and Malaysia. It is boring. But watching other people be bored is even worse. Why do I need a movie to show me what bordom is like? I watched the DVD because I was already bored and hoped to aleviate my boredom.
Plus, these characters take bordom to a whole new level. They seem to be even more bored by their normal lives and don't want to go back, at least until the guy whispers whatever he said and deus-ex-machina suddenly life is smiles and happiness as they leave, never to see each other again!
Unfortunately, for a lot of people, the best of this movie was, indeed, lost in translation. Those of us that have lived and worked in Tokyo or another foreign city get a lot more out of it. There were a lot of little moments that, without the context of having been in a place where you really don't fit in completely, will fly right over a watcher's head.
Not that I'm making excuses for the movie, but the themes in it definitely work better when one has context.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
I know I'm getting old and sound just like my father, but Jeezus. I can't imagine me being that age and sitting next to my parents watching something like that. Would never have happened. And if I'd somehow managed to get an older sibling to sneak me in, we both would have been ass-whooped when we got home.
Times have indeed changed. Kids are exposed to so much more than I was at their age.
I would agree with you. I lived both in this country and abroad and Americans are definetly obsessed with violence. Oh the horror if there is any nudity on the screen or any show of affection, the movie gets an R or NC-17 rating easily. But there can be limbs cut off and people blasting each other away and that is accepted. I am not saying that nudity should be shown to kids, its just that at least the same restrictive standards should apply for violence as there are for nudity and sex - something that is far more common and normal.
Ack, you missed the directors cut. Just after he whispers to the girl, space monkeys start attacking!
(Bows to Eddie)
I don't do this for karma, I do it for cash. It's much better.
2001: A Space Odyssey predated the ratings system by a few months. In this New York Times review it's listed as "MPAA Rating: NR (Mild Violence/Adult Situations/Questionable for Children)"
I'm not quite sure how it later earned a "G" rating. After all, it's a about a computer committing mass murder. Perhaps the board believed that those persons who might be emotionally scarred by the movie would be bored out of their skulls.
20 years after PG-13 came out, the rating is now functionally meaningless.
The content in PG-13 films is now well above what your average R film was 20 years ago. Nudity, vulgarity, swearing (even 'fuck'), and violence are all relatively common PG-13 trends.
Not only that, but there's hardly anyone that gives a damn about PG-13 anyway - unless they've got very, very little kids (4, 5?). Look at "American Pie", "Scary Movie" and the slew of other (shitty) teenage films. They're evidently targeted at those that idolize the teenage years of life - namely, middle schoolers.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Man, Gremlins needed that rating. That was some fsck'd up #!/sh -- they were freaky. I remember the launching of that rating and it has been a good thing. I say that as a kid who was 13 when it came out and now as a parent of young children. It's helpful.
:)
Of course, guys a couple of years younger than me might have a different report. Obviously, being 13 at the time, I didn't see any down side.
Temple of Doom needed it pretty badly also. I remember the eyeballs in the soup or something like that
RP
The Flamingo Kid was the first move to receive the PG-13 rating, Red Dawn was the first movie released with the rating.
"But there can be limbs cut off and people blasting each other away and that is accepted."
This is actually not true, although it is an oft-repeated myth on Slashdot. What immediately comes to mind is "The Matrix" and "Die Hard" - both of which garnered R ratings, and neither of which had any sex or nudity whatsoever. Violence will grab you an R in this country quite easily.
Violence _won't_ get an NC-17, or at least I've never heard of it doing so, but considering that such things as wars, death camps, and mass graves are covered daily in the news in all their graphic detail, I think this is relatively understandable. Simply put, violence tends to be a public issue, whereas sex is perceived as a private one - hence societal prudishness on sex/nudity vs. violence. I don't think that's really wrong or bad, just different than other places.
I agree, though: things would be a lot better if the same standards for nudity/sex were applied to violence. G-d knows I'm never going to let my kids watch TV without VERY close supervision.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
The original cuts of Robocop, Natural Born Killers, and Kill Bill were given NC-17, until selected scenes were cut out.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
I always enjoyed reading their view on movies, it was usually the only reason I'd pick up the Catholic Key each week. Not that it ever stopped me from viewing them, but it was nice to know what they found offensive in them. The write-ups can be rather amusing in a stuffy sort of way.
Harold & Kumar go to White Castle
"Danny Leiner's road picture makes pretensions of social commentary concerning race and identity, but the only race it seems to care about is a race to the bottom, shamelessly finding humor in a story built around getting high while behind the wheel of a car. Recurring drug use, two instances of frontal nudity, much rough and crude language, as well as strong sexual and bathroom humor."
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie
"Incoherent animated action adventure about a teenager named Yugi....this dizzying and disjointed mess is little more than a 90-minute commercial for "Yu-Gi-Oh!" products."
Gigli (you asked)
"Stale romantic comedy about a low-level leg-breaker (Ben Affleck) who falls for a beautiful lesbian mob enforcer (Jennifer Lopez) hired to assist him in kidnapping a federal prosecutor's mentally handicapped brother. Lopez and Affleck exhibit more fizzle than sizzle in this overhyped clunker written and directed by Martin Brest, full of forced lewd humor and fueled by a distorted suggestion that sexuality is a malleable social construct and a casual endorsement of homosexual activity. A sexual encounter, excessive sexually explicit and rough language, as well as profanity and brief strong violence. O -- morally offensive."
"My fingers Emit sparks of fire in Expectation of my future labours." William Blake
Why are so many productions shot in my neck of the woods? Most people think of San Pedro as the ass end of Los Angeles, but there are some familiar landmarks that appear in Usual Suspects. I don't have good shots of the cargo docks, but those feature quite prominently as well.
I see signs up for cast members of various productions, nailed to telephone poles, on a more or less daily basis. Sometimes there are production trailers camped out at the park at the end of our street. Today's signs just off the 110 freeway just said "ORANGE". Is there somewhere I can look up what productions are listed by such odd abbreviations?
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Watched Indiana Jones with my five-year old son and his six-year old sleep-over buddy tonight. PG-13 just doesn't mean as much as it used to.
jim
Quebec tends to mainly focus on giving violence and language stricter ratings. Either their censors don't care so much about sexual content or they just don't watch some of the things they rate, because I've seen brief nudity in G-rated films in Quebec before. If it's rated 18A in Quebec you can almost be certain that some character in the film is slowly dismembered, that every single word is some variation of a swear word, or that it's practically a prono.
I thought this movie was great. I live in east asia (though not in Tokyo), and virtually all the expats I've met that have lived out here for a reasonable amount of time thought this movie was great, too.
The director -- Sophia Coppola was it? -- apparently lived in Tokyo for sometime, and used her experiences when making the movie. Whatever it was, it really shines through. No matter how enculturated you become (for example, I've lived in Shanghai for years now, speak Chinese, and am possibly now more comfortable with Chinese culture than the one I was born with), there are always these hopeless times where you realize that no amount of xenophelia will ever make you fit in, and that you will always be an outsider, if only because of your race.
Lost in Translation captures this feeling of hopelessness in such an incredibly poetic way.
Most of the people I've discussed this movie with that didn't like it (and sibling posts bear this out) seem to be mostly concerned with the fact that the film has the slow pace of real life rather than the accelerated pace of Hollywood blockbusters. It's really much more like a French film than an American one, I think, in terms of pace and style.
If you're not into that sort of thing, well... what can I tell you?
But understand that you are probably not the intended audience of this movie. It's about culture shock, and if you haven't experienced culture shock, you probably aren't going to identify with it.
Since when did Slashdot become aintitcoolnews2.com?
Thought for a second there that PG-13 became PG-20 hehe...now wouldn't THAT be nice lol
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
This site makes for weirdly compelling reading. Check out the scores for Scary Movie and American Psycho...
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
People who are either kids, or are just barely not kids (i.e. most Slashdotters) don't like the rating system! Who woulda thunk it? ;)
But seriously ... grow up, have a few kids, and I don't think you'll mind having a few voluntary tools to keep them from becoming too coarse and vulger, too fast. Trash doesn't have to actually be harmful for you to want to keep your kids from wallowing in it.
After all, when that must-see, super duper important movie that the kids simply *have* to see comes out, you could just take them there yourself, you know. Or rent it, since movies come out on video about five minutes after they're released now.
A year or two goes buy; the movie gets re-edited, and re-released with an R rating. I wasn't able to see it on the re-release due to my age. Go figure.
It's just something which weirded me out at the time.
As for the actual topic of the conversation, I agree that the PG-13 rating isn't really worth much. Either make your movie family friendly and give it a PG rating, or require kids to bring a parent with them. Heck, they can probably explain most of it to the perplexed parent while they're at it...
Lastly, IMNSHO, the ratings don't mean too much anyhow. They're allowing more and more stuff in PG and PG-13 movies. Bah... evidence of the changing of times, I guess.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Good movies are coming out at an alarming rate. In fact, I would say that for the first time since the 60s it is now possible to go to a mainstream cinema and have a high chance of finding a real grownup movie on. Even wide-appeal movies like the Kill Bill movies, Lost in Translation and so on are grown up in the way that 80's movies never were. We have more 'pure art' movies available than ever before, now that Japanese, Chinese and Korean movies are finally actually being shown on screens (admittedly only in big cities). And even the summer blockbusters, lowest of the low in pure trash terms, sometimes contain depths (LoTR, Spiderman, pity about Troy though) that nobody would have dreamed of bothering to add in in the 1980s.
What's more, from a technical point of view there has never been a greater reserve of knowhow and skilled professionals available. Even a flop like Van Helsing was able to call on cinematography that was really a work of art in it's own right.
You want Real Art? The usual suspects are doing it: Talk To Her, Dolls. Hollywood's doing it too: The Others, Donnie Darko. But even if you don't want Real Art, the average quality of every grade of movie has moved up SO far since 20 years ago...
The movies are not dying. Watch a week's worth of multiscreen fodder from 1984 and you will agree with me!
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I seen it when I was 10, with my father the first time, did it scar me? Hell no, I went and seen it 2 more times, with friends. We enjoyed it. As for PG-13 being made to not offend teens who wont see a PG movie. I think thats silly. I feel the studios are marking and editing down their movies so they dont get an R rating. AvP being PG-13? Come on their parents were R!!!! Add the filthy language in!
April 22 - 2005. For the first time in many years, you have the change to see a movie which actually has a plot.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
That's the likely reason you'll see Will Smith's naked rear in "I, Robot,"
But... but... Why couldn't it have been Bridget Moynahan's naked rear, instead?
Stupid Will Smith...
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
I've never even been to east asia (though I'm spending December there) so that wasn't was resonated in me about the film. I loved the subtly of Sophia's directing. It was all about what wasn't said and they left it up to our intelect to figure it out. That kept the movie going for me. I also felt like she didn't dwell on any one scene too much. Just when the scene might get old she cut to a new one and let us figure out what was in between. She didn't hold your hand through the entire film and lay it out for you. To some this is boring, to me it is masterful.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
I want to know what happened to the supposedly great masterpiece of Kubrick's career that he worked so long on. This movie positively sucked. I call it a sleeper, because it put me to sleep 3 different times while I tried to watch it. I finally caught it on HBO in full daylight and opened the blinds to force myself to stay awake. How boring can a movie be? Cruise walked down the street for ten minutes. The scenery didn't even look like he was in New York, it screamed of London. I'm just glad I only tried to watch this stinker on video and HBO, but I want those hours of my life back.
Same goes for HULK of 2003. I want those hours of my life back. They should have paid me to sit through that hideously boring movie. It was like an exposition of slide in and overlay effects that filmmakers could use in the future when they had a script that didn't suck and an actor that wasn't a wooden man. Run away from "movies" like this one.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
"This recording contains no offensive material apart from four cunts, one clitoris, and foreskin, and as they only appear in this opening introduction, you're past them now."
First against the wall when the revolution comes
I find it quite surprising that Gremlins and Indiana Jones are credited with being the cause for the PG-13 rating, and not some of the other movies that were farther over-the-line, such as "Sheena"... The PG-rated movie with full-frontal nudity.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Seven years ago, PG-13 was old enough to get into itself.
i'd have to agree with you. lord knows i love watching the japanese do what they do best: be wacky. ...but yeah, the whole thing really dragged on with little artistic value to make up for it. (it was certainly no 2001, it wasn't even napoleon dynamite!) i've heard the explainations already, i just don't think they made up for how slow the film was. then again, i'm only 23 so i guess it's only natural that i wouldn't give a shit about someone's mid-life crisis. they're unpleasant. i get it. so is a root canal, doesn't mean i want to watch a 90 minute film depicting it.
IIRC, this atrocity was nominated for the Oscars. I don't know what criteria they use these days....
:-P
Yeah, not only was it nominated, but Bill Murray thought he had it in the bag or something -- he looked really pissed when they didn't announce him. I've heard he's got a big ego, but come on... Didn't he see the film???