Brent Bozell's culture column this week explored the outer reaches of the movie ratings system, and how the movie industry is looking hard at creating a more "respectable" adults-only rating of NC-17, which is often considered for movies featuring topless Nazis, toothy private parts, and grossly obese men chewing on babies.
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Toothy private parts?
March 24, 2007 - 15:47 ET by Guy Arthur ThomasI consider myself a bit sophisticated...but toothy private parts?...Did I miss some recent addition to American colloquialisms or am I simply forgetting what I have probably already learned but have used it so infrequently that my handling of the phrase isn't even up to pedestrian standards?
Shut up and blog! If you claim to be a conservative, please don't disgrace yourself and conservatism by thinking and arguing like a liberal. Go Rudy!
It is the kind of cinematic c
March 25, 2007 - 05:42 ET by Tim GrahamIt is the kind of cinematic concept that's usually mentioned and followed up with the line "You're joking, right?" It sounds like a satire of debased Hollywood.
My first thought was actual
March 26, 2007 - 07:59 ET by JasonCMy first thought was actually: "No way could this be a Hollywood film, must be an art-house thing."
I obviously differ from a lot of NBers in this sense. A lot of you see Hollywood (Hollyweird) as subversive and transgressive and so forth, but I actually see it as ruthlessly conformist, the vanguard of cliche, sentimentality, good-guys-always-win banality. The fact that such narratives tend to be punctuated with sex and violence does little to disuade me from this position. That's just giving the viewers what they want.
"If their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow" Isaiah 1:18
Grindhouse is actually a type
March 26, 2007 - 17:45 ET by balboaGrindhouse is actually a type of film that Tarantino and Rodriguez both loved while growing up, schlock adventure / horror movies that were very low budget made outside the Hollywood system in the '60s and '70s. The mantra of these movies was along the lines of "how outrageous can you make it?" This movie is an homage to those films, but with the budget and resources of a studio.
The technical term is vagina dentata...
March 25, 2007 - 05:45 ET by zeocon"Vagina dentata" - Look it up!
He's talking about the quite bizarre movie "Teeth."
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What's wrong with a few topl
March 25, 2007 - 11:00 ET by Roger the ShrubberWhat's wrong with a few topless Nazis running around? Or did I miss the news about new pics of "Adolph at the beach" surfacing?
Bozell is off base. By res
March 25, 2007 - 16:28 ET by blogonatorBozell is off base. By respecting NC-17, it will protect families more. Today a violent or sexually explicit film is given an NC-17 rating, which is unmarketable, then they edit out a few frames or (in the case of the South Park film make no changes) and resubmit it for an R. Then kids get in to see it with an adult. If NC-17 films were allowed to be marketed like R films, brutally violent movies like 300 or Saw could be released as NC-17, which no child - with or without a parent - could see. If you want to protect children, NC-17 is the way to do it. If you want to rally against the product Hollywood puts out, regardless of how it actually will impact families, then attacking NC-17 as Bozell has is the way to go.
I have never had any respec
March 26, 2007 - 07:35 ET by JasonCI have never had any respect for the MPAA. Valenti should find a new line of work. That organization has had consistently screwed up priorities. They'll slap a film with an R-rating for having one f-word, but a movie that shows The Good Guy wasting The Bad Guys by the dozen gets a PG so long as the violence isn't graphic.
Case in point. Compare Indiana Jones with Reservoir Dogs. The violence in the former is more frequent and more brutal (I believe a guy gets shredded by a propeller at one point), but the latter is considered an "ultra-violent" movie while Raiders of the Lost Ark is a standard for little kids. What message would we rather convey about violence? That it's like a roadrunner and coyote cartoon or that it's a hideous thing with hideous results. Films that show the truth about violence - lots of blood, lack of glamour, the degeneracy that promotes it - are somehow always considered worse for the culture (trash according to a narrow-minded Bozell) than those that depict it realistically. Wouldn't we rather that children see violence as it actually is than as an A-Team episode?
The worthless, hypocritical rating system should be abolished, stores like Blockbuster should face the fact that they're obsolete anyway and no one cares if they stock NC-17 movies because they can get whatever they want at NetFlix, and parents should take the tiniest bit of effort to just read a review or the IMDB comments about a film before they get it for the kids. It's just common sense. Why conservatives would want a quasi-governmental agency telling us what films are and are not appropriate is beyond me.
"If their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow" Isaiah 1:18