A Quasi-Rant on the MPAA

I caught this article today on Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno. The initial cut of the movie received a NC-17 rating - a death-knell for any wide release movie. Most theatre chains simply won't show an NC-17 movie, period.

Contrast to this piece by Emily Bazelon of Slate, which looks at the Tale of Despereaux and describes it as "too scary" for a G rating.

The rating system starts with G, for General Audience. Next is PG, for parental guidance suggested. Third up in the rating scale is PG-13, strongly cautioning parents, and fourthly is R, for over age 17. NC-17 is everything else.

Now, I am 25 years old, and I look back at my own maturity level at age 17, and I think of how different I look at movies, the world, and just about everything. A huge portion of the movie-going public is age 20+, yet the movie rating system effectively tops out at age 17 - anything too graphic or intense for a 17 year old is lumped in NC-17, an effective purgatory for movies.

What we wind up with, then, is very little market for the upscale, the more mature, and the more intense. I won't even touch on the violence v. sex debate in movies, which is an entirely separate issue.

Why can't a film-maker make a movie with me in mind, without having to tone it down or edit it for the 17 year old version of me? I'm not talking about graphic sexuality, but rather just in the depth of story, the level of maturity, the subject matter of the film, and so on. Movie's like Planet Terror and Sweet Sweetback's Badassss Song come to mind. Even films like American History X and Last Tango in Paris are suggestive that we need to accept the NC-17, or perhaps add another rating, for movies aimed at adults. Other good examples are movies like Casino, Resevoir Dogs, or Rambo IV - those are movies that shouldn't be screened for 17 year olds.

Overall though, the entire rating system needs to be revisited - not only for the filmmakers and the parents, but for the viewing audience. I want movies aimed at me, not at the 17 year old counterpart of me.

Watching the Economy Implode

Watching the news about the economy, and especially the AIG stupidity, it strikes me as amusing to draw parallels between our current socio-economic situation and that of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Now, I am not an objectivist by any means - the views on religion do not suit me, and there generally just seems to be something missing from the theory - but there are a lot of elements in Atlas that ring true.

I think that now, when anyone says anything about the economy, I am going to reply, "Who is John Galt?" and see if anyone catches the reference.

Blogging and Life . . . Life and Blogging

Again and again, life seems to be striving to keep me from posting by keeping me busy and (more or less) happy. My angsty need to post continues to diminish.

As a general note though, I do hope that sooner or later the economy does get fixed, or at least better. I had yet another friend laid off due to economic realities. While I may be a bottom-feeding bankruptcy attorney, and hence virtually immune to economic shifts (or perhaps in the best position to benefit), those I care for and call friend are facing harsher realities.

There is no magic bullet, and I understand that the economic realities are grim, but surely someone somewhere has a solution?

Oh, and one more thing: the new median income numbers for bankruptcy have gone up this month. How the hell that happened I have no idea - but from February to March, the median income for a single person household went up almost $2,000.

Economics makes my brain hurt.