>Oh, yeah, happy belated birthday.

 1 Response »
Nov 032008
 

>We’ve been so pins-and-needles over tomorrow’s election thing, we’re totally late to the party for the 40th birthday of the MPAA’s rating system. Oh, well–it’s not like they bothered to show up for our 40th shindig.

Photobucket

Founded in 1968, largely as a way for industry to stave off government intervention in the movie business, the ratings were/are intended as a way to help parents decide which titles are appropriate for the precious youngsters, but have tended to be a bit, er, capricious over the years.

In a fitting birthday gift to the MPAA, Defamer has come up with a very special list of questionable rulings made over the years, “40 Reasons to Wish the MPAA Ratings System an Unhappy 40th Birthday.”

Be sure to check out the rest, but just a few of the hits:

Boys Don’t Cry: Threatened with an NC-17 for a lingering shot of a topless Chloe Sevigny experiencing an orgasm, but allowed to keep the climactic rape scene and gunshot to Brondon Teena’s head.

and, of course…

Waiting For Guffman: A classic example of the “Fuck Rule”; a Christopher Guest mockumentary with no sex or violence but featuring the F-word used one too many times in an actor’s audition using the scene from Raging Bull. Its R-rating was upheld on appeal. (You can use “fuck” in a non-sexual way up to four times in and retain a PG-13 — maybe.)

And in an interesting coincidence (or is it?!), Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which barely squeaked away from it’s own NC-17 rating, opened on the MPAA’s birthday to not-so-spectacular results. At work might have been a skittering away from the the film’s title and subject matter by mainstream newspapers and venues… though several reports underlined the odd hypocrisy of limiting the sex-themed feature while glorifying such torture-porn fare as Saw V.

Then again, going back to Defamer, it could just be bad marketing on the part of the distributing Weinstein brothers. Shocking, indeed!

>Stroke me, stroke me

 No Responses »
Sep 192008
 

>In addition to a screening of Zack and Miri Make a Porno, opening night revelry for this year’s Fantastic Fest included the first annual Air Sex World Championship. Kinda like air guitar, but pretty much not, as seen in this video via Spout, the competition featured live performers simulating sex, vying for the prize of a trip to Nevada and a gift certificate for some type of bunny ranch or another.

While air sex has been a regular installation at the festival’s hosting venue in Austin, the activity can be traced back to Japan, the home of blurred depictions of pubic hair and other perversities. There, as seen in this clip from the television series Japanorama, the original version sports one critical distinction from its American imitators– performers seemingly devoid of any actual sexual experience whatsoever:

>No soup for you, Zack and Miri!

 No Responses »
Sep 102008
 

>In Kevin Smith’s ongoing struggle with the MPAA to get his latest film, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, out into the theaters and in front of an audience, comes news that the agency has rejected the original poster for the movie. Featuring the title characters, each fully clothed, you may also notice at the bottom edge of the poster the somewhat humorous suggestion that each is getting oral, er, attention from the other. Pretty innocuous–and banned by the MPAA!

Photobucket Image Hosting

Interestingly, as noted on CinemaBlend.com, the MPAA earlier approved very similar imagery for the Dane Cook-vehicle, Good Luck Chuck, for a poster that went even further–if you can call it that–featuring the actor more apparently in flagrante delitico.

Photobucket Image Hosting

One might chalk up the discrepancy to mere bureaucratic inconsistency. Or, perhaps something more insidious, as it brings to mind contentions made in the documentary, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, that the MPAA regularly applies far more rigorous standards when a depiction includes female sexual pleasure–and not just some guy boffing a pie.

Hypocrisy much? Meanwhile, first reports on the film, which just premiered in Toronto, can be found here!

>Oh, well, as long as it’s not titillating.

 No Responses »
Aug 072008
 

>Kevin Smith‘s upcoming latest, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, in which two friends attempt to overcome debt(!) by entering the adult film world, just had its rating reduced from an NC-17 to an R, after an appeal made by the director to the MPAA.

Acknowledging in an AP report that the more restrictive rating would have been “commercial suicide,”

Smith said the MPAA ratings board objected to two sex scenes involving co-stars Jason Mewes and Katie Morgan. After the movie’s initial NC-17 rating, Smith said he trimmed those scenes as far as he was willing to go but was unable to convince the board to lower the rating.

“They felt it was rather sexually graphic. My point is, it was comically graphic. All the sex in the movie with the exception of one scene is very cartoonish, very campy,” Smith said. “It wasn’t designed to titillate.”

The MPAA appeals board apparently agreed with Smith’s arguments, which he presented on Tuesday. No word yet when/if he’ll get an official thumbs-up on an early teaser for the film – see below – which the MPAA ordered yanked from its internet-only release back in June.