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       #Post#: 11954--------------------------------------------------
       MPAA
       By: Mac Date: September 3, 2012, 5:08 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Pretty good article... I hope this carries steam.
       [glow=red,2,300]We Need To Reboot The MPAA [/glow]
       [quote]
       [size=12pt]The MPAA rating system is broken, and it needs to be
       fixed. But it also needs to exist. Here's a three-part
       examination of the history of American film censorship, the MPAA
       and a recommendation for a future ratings system.
       This September sees the 22nd anniversary of the MPAA’s adoption
       of the NC-17 rating, a failed effort to replace the maligned X
       rating. That number is meaningful because the MPAA finally
       scrapped the X 22 years after it was introduced in 1968. 22
       years feels like a good cycle, and it’s time for the MPAA to not
       only get rid of the NC-17, it must overhaul every single element
       of the ratings system.
       I believe the ratings system should remain. I believe it’s an
       important prophylactic measure that keeps non-industry
       censorship away from our movies. And I believe that we are
       living in a time of dangerous conservatism, where we’re only one
       bad poll number away from the **** right declaring jihad on
       Hollywood once more. As the fundamentalist grip continues to
       choke progressivism in America, our arts remain in danger from
       outside forces.
       But I also think that the system as it exists today is
       extraordinarily flawed and that reform is the only way to save
       it - and most importantly to create an environment where truly
       adult cinema can flourish.
       A Kind Of Brief History of Censorship in American Movies
       The first movie censors arose at almost the exact same time as
       the first movies. Thomas Edison’s The Kiss (1896) angered
       conservatives with its 20 second on-screen smooch. The Victorian
       prudes saw the new technology of cinema as inherently
       corrupting, made all the worse by the fact that the men who made
       films for nickelodeons and arcades were seemingly obsessed with
       sex and violence.
       Edison may have been the producer of the first movies to be
       censored and banned; the 1896 short Fatima: Muscle Dancer (also
       known as Fatima’s Coochee-Coochee Dance) was considered so
       risque that the dancer’s offending bosom and hips were covered
       with what looks like a hand-drawn fence.
  HTML http://cf.badassdigest.com/_uploads/images/fatima.jpg
       A Fatima knock-off, The Dolorita Passion Dance of 1897, was
       actually banned in Atlantic City, New Jersey, making it the
       first film to be banned in the United States. The coming years
       would see the growth of the movies as they expanded out of
       arcade machines and became theatrical presentations, as well as
       the growth of censorship. Many municipalities and states began
       creating censorship boards; at the time the dominant legal
       theory held that the First Amendment only applied to federal
       regulation of speech.
       The young motion picture industry proved to be quick on its
       feet. When New York City sought to outlaw all movies in 1908 the
       owners of the city’s theaters got an injunction, but the censors
       still tried, and using the Blue Laws of the time banned all
       non-educational movies from playing on Sunday. In his excellent
       book Sex and Violence: The Hollywood Censorship Wars (a source
       for much of the pre-MPAA information in this article), Tom
       Pollard explains how they got around it:
       The resilient owners then staffed theaters with announcers to
       highlight the educational aspect of each film shown on Sunday
       by, for example, pointing out, “these are railroad tracks” and
       “we are passing a mountain.”
       At the time the courts were generally against the movie
       business. When Chicago banned two Westerns in 1908 (The James
       Boys in Illinois and Night Riders) the case made it all the way
       to the Supreme Court who ruled, in 1909, that the city could ban
       films that were indecent or obscene. These two films, which
       lionized Western criminals, were found to “represent nothing but
       malicious mischief.”
       In response the National Board of Motion Picture Censorship (The
       NBC) was founded in New York City in 1909. One of the founders
       of the board was Marcus Loew, who was the founder of Loew’s
       Theaters and MGM, and it was in his best interest to head off
       the willy-nilly municipal bannings of films. The idea was to
       create a centralized industry body that could bring uniformity
       to the censorship of movies. The National Board of Motion
       Picture Censorship, by the way, still exists. They’re now called
       The National Board of Review and they hand out what is
       considered the first awards of Awards Season.
       The NBC was the model for industry censorship that still stands
       today with the MPAA. It also has informed how comic books
       censored themselves (the Comics Code Authority) as well as how
       the music and video game industry would self-police their
       content.
       Things remained dark for the movies, though. In 1915 the Supreme
       Court handed down another ruling, this time saying that movies
       were not art but only commerce and as such were not protected
       under Ohio’s freedom of speech laws (which were pretty similar
       to the First Amendment. Again, at the time the legal theory was
       that the Bill of Rights only applied to federal law).
       With the constant threat of legal harassment hanging over them,
       the Hollywood moguls decided they had to take stronger action.
       They were spurred on by  an escalating series of Hollywood star
       scandals - the Fatty Arbuckle murder trial and the unsolved
       murder of director William Desmond Taylor - that created the
       sense of Hollywood being a place where all morals were out the
       window. The corrupting influence of the movies had always been
       assumed, but now it was being acted out by the people who made
       the movies themselves.
       Thus was born the MPPDA - the Motion Picture Producers and
       Distributors of America - an entity that took over where the
       National Board of Review had left off. By 1922 there were 37
       states proposing legislation to create censorship boards, so the
       producers knew they had to take matters into their own hands
       before it was too late.
       Knowing that anti-Hollywood sentiment was running high, the
       MPPDA hired an outsider to be their head censor*. William Hays,
       former US postmaster general under Warren G Harding, a
       Republican and very serious-minded Presbyterian, was the man
       they found. He established a code of conduct that became known
       as The Hays Code, even long after he was out of the job. The
       Code was introduced in 1930, but it was so wantonly ignored that
       the years from 1930-1934 are popularly known as “Pre-Code
       Hollywood.” There was no enforcement method available, and while
       Hays worked with the heads of the studios to create a list of
       “Don’ts and Be Carefuls,” filmmakers cheerfully ignored them.
       By 1934 discontent was rising in the heartland again. A Catholic
       bishop was trying to get Catholics to boycott ALL movies, and
       there was a bipartisan bill being prepared that would give
       Congress oversight of motion pictures. It was time for the Code
       to grow some teeth, and so a $25,000 fine was attached to all
       infractions.
       The Code, it’s worth noting, didn’t just censor imagery, it also
       censored politics and themes. Crime could only be shown in a way
       that aggrandized the law. Religion was to always be respected.
       Miscegenation was not to be shown. Homosexuality was right out
       the window. Any depiction of a lifestyle that flaunted ‘decent’
       standards of the time was heavily frowned upon.
       Joseph Breen was now head censor. A severe man, Breen had been
       Hays’ assistant and had secretly fomented agitation among
       Catholics to get himself a promotion to head censor. Gone were
       the freewheeling days of the Pre-Code era, where risque double
       entendres and careful sidestepping of the “Don’ts and Be
       Carefuls” created one of the golden eras of Hollywood
       filmmaking. The Breen Office was taking no **** from filmmakers,
       and he had the power to punish them for their transgressions.
  HTML http://cf.badassdigest.com/_uploads/images/joseph-breen.jpg
       Sourpuss Joseph Breen.
       As was always the case since the beginning of motion picture
       censorship, it was sex that truly agitated Breen. Violence had
       always gotten a free pass, even from the reformers who hated
       movies on moral grounds. The Code prohibited certain explicit
       displays of death - hanging, electrocution - and banned revenge
       killing, but it was sex and nudity and lust that always caused
       trouble for the movies.
       There was still some back and forth, and some movies were
       created and released outside of the system. Howard Hughes
       released The Outlaw without Code approval, and the Betty Boop
       cartoons were outside of Breen’s reach. There were other films
       that skirted the edges of decency, like 1938’s Child Bride,
       which has a naked 12 year old girl in it. That film was produced
       outside of the Hollywood system and claimed to be educational,
       allowing it to exist in the nascent exploitation circuit.
       The MPPDA became the MPAA - Motion Picture Association of
       America - in the 1940s. As WWII ended and the GIs began coming
       home, American culture slowly changed. The soldiers had seen and
       experienced things that changed them, and the progressive
       aspects of European culture had impacted them as well. While the
       1950s are remembered as the most whitebread of decades, a slow
       erosion of conservative moral values had begun.
       Alongside the slow change in morals was a sea change in social
       attitudes. The Civil Rights movement began, and pushback against
       the Communist witch hunts brought liberals out of the closet.
       Many aspects of the Code were beginning to look increasingly
       archaic.
       At almost the exact right moment the Supreme Court weighed in
       again. In 1952 the “Miracle Decision” came in; the Court struck
       down an effort to ban Roberto Rosselini’s The Miracle, a short
       film that made up half the feature L’Amore. The Miracle was
       seriously controversial stuff - a jerk impregnates a delusional
       woman who thinks she’s the Virgin Mary carrying the Christ fetus
       - that caused protests even in Paris. The film was seen as
       sacrilegious and New York attempted to ban it. The Supreme
       Court’s decision was momentous on two levels: one, it struck
       down all blasphemy laws and two, it acknowledged cinema as an
       art form covered by the First Amendment.
       In the aftermath of the ruling the Code began to crumble. Some
       Like It Hot couldn’t get Code-approved but was a box office
       smash. By now it seems that the conservative witch hunters had
       turned their attention to the new kid on the block, comic books.
       Movies had been established as an American form, and in the
       waning days of the Code they began pursuing topics like drug
       addiction (The Man With The Golden Arm) and rape (Anatomy of a
       Murder).
       It wasn’t until 1964 that the Code received its fatal blow. That
       came in the form of The Pawnbroker, a Holocaust drama that
       featured two sets of bare breasts and a sex scene. The
       Pawnbroker signalled a lot of firsts - it was the first film to
       deal with the Holocaust from the point of view of a Jewish
       survivor, it was the film that made Rod Steiger a star (he was
       nominated for an Oscar, losing to Lee Marvin role in the silly
       Cat Ballou) - but it was the fact that, after a lot of back and
       forth, the Code approved the movie with nudity that truly
       reverberated. At the time the film was considered a special
       exemption, but with the way American culture was rapidly
       transforming in the 1960s there was no chance The Pawnbroker
       would stand alone.
       Four years later the Code would be done. The first crack was The
       Pawnbroker. Then in 1966 it was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,
       which was approved with language like ‘up yours,’ ‘hump the
       hostess’ and ‘goddamn’ (‘screw you’ had to be removed, though).
       That same year Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up was released by
       MGM without Code Approval and it was pretty obvious that nobody
       gave a **** about the Code at all anymore. The Catholic groups
       had seen their power wane, the Supreme Court had given movies
       the protection of the law, and the American people had bigger
       problems on their minds than some **** in a movie.
       Jack Valenti became the president of the MPAA in 1966, and he
       was the guy who negotiated the language in Who’s Afraid of
       Virginia Woolf?. Two years later he tore down the Code and
       replaced it with a ratings system - the earliest version of the
       ratings system we have today.
       But that has not guaranteed freedom from governmental
       interference. While the Supreme Court has struck down attempts
       to ban films (in 1969 they allowed I Am Curious (Yellow) to be
       shown, despite a shot of a woman kissing a ****), the case of
       Miller v California establishes troubling precedent for
       declaring something obscene, while reiterating obscenity is not
       protected by the First Amendment.
       The problem of obscenity has been plaguing the justice system
       for a while. In 1964 Louis Malle’s The Lovers became the center
       of an obscenity case in Ohio; while the Court upheld the theater
       owner’s right to show the film as it was not obscene, the ruling
       of Judge Potter Stewart became famous for how it codified a
       wishy-washy approach to obscenity:
       "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of
       material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand
       description [of ****ography]; and perhaps I could never succeed
       in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the
       motion picture involved in this case is not that."
       "I know it when I see it" has become something of a joke, even
       as the Miller Test, arising out of Miller v California, makes it
       clearer just what obscenity is. At least a tiny bit clearer.
       Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community
       standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals
       to the prurient interest,
       Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive
       way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state
       law,
       Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary,
       artistic, political, or scientific value.
       If a work violates ALL THREE of those, it’s obscene. But those
       guidelines remain vague, and they return the motion picture
       industry back to where it was in 1908, as it battled various
       municipal and state censorship boards. What will fly for
       audiences in New York may be utterly inappropriate for Ames,
       Iowa. And in the age of the internet the idea of parts of the
       country as discrete, separate areas becomes less and less
       realistic.
       The Ratings System, And Why It’s A Mess
       Which brings us more or less to today. The MPAA ratings system
       was established in 1968 as Jack Valenti - who lived long enough
       to become the villain - understood the old order was done and
       that the time-consuming process he had undergone on Who’s Afraid
       of Virginia Woolf? couldn’t be repeated again and again. From
       1966 to 1968 the MPAA added an SMA (Suggested for Mature
       Audiences) tag to some pictures, and then in 68 debuted the
       rating system:
       G: General Audiences – Suggested for General Audiences – (all
       ages)
       M: Mature Audiences – Suggested for Mature Audiences – Parental
       Discretion Advised
       R: Restricted – People Under 16 Not Admitted Unless Accompanying
       Parent or Adult Guardian
       X: Adults Only – People Under 18 will not be Admitted (changed
       to 17 later that year)
       The G, M and R ratings were trademarked, but the X was left
       wide open. The reason was that the MPAA didn’t want to get into
       tussles with localities where adult-oriented films might yet be
       legally challenged. The X could be assigned by the MPAA or self
       applied by the producer. And with that cowardly decision the
       rating intended to denote films that were for grown-ups became
       used to denote **** **** (XXX, for the record, isn’t even a real
       MPAA thing).
       Over the years the MPAA slapped a couple of movies with Xs -
       Midnight Cowboy, for instance, which is the only X-rated movie
       to win the Best Picture Oscar (although it was rerated to R in
       1971 without any edits) - but it was mostly the province of
       ****ography. Once the **** producers jumped on the rating it was
       completely, infinitely tainted.
       For 22 years the X continued to be the bastard stepchild of the
       ratings system. MPAA signatories (ie, the major studios) could
       not release films unrated, and an X rating was a kiss of instant
       death, so all films had to be edited to fit within the R rating.
       During that time the MPAA did play with the ratings some. They
       made GP PG for some reason. Then in 1984 they added a rating -
       the PG-13. This came on the heels of a couple of films that
       pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in a PG movie;
       Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins and Poltergeist
       all went farther than many felt acceptable for the PG. Steven
       Spielberg himself - the man behind all three of those films -
       recommended the PG-13, and the first film to get that rating was
       Red Dawn. The Woman in Red followed soon after, and to give you
       an idea of how the ratings system changes over time, that film
       features a shot of Kelly LeBrock’s bush, a guaranteed R-rating
       today.
       The PG-13 is an object lesson in how the MPAA works. It’s a
       studio backed organization, and when the studios decide they
       need leniency, they get it. If we were watching a movie and in
       it the biggest, most commercial director in the world demanded a
       new rating category and got it you would think it was a touch on
       the nose. But that’s how it really happened.
       The other object lesson here is that the PG-13 mostly covers
       violence. Again, the history of movie censorship in America is
       really a history of people getting upset about sex. I think it’s
       interesting that LeBrock’s pubes could get through in 1984, but
       that was just because everybody was figuring out how this new
       system worked. Language and sex are way worse than violence in
       the eyes of the MPAA. Look at Lord of the Rings: Return of the
       King for an example of a clearly R-rated movie getting a PG-13;
       the fact that there’s no sex and only violence helps, as does
       the fact that it’s a major studio release.
       As the MPAA is a servant of the studios its ratings assignments
       often have the feeling of unfairness. The signatories get winked
       at but the indies get a harder time. Of course some of this,
       again, comes down to sex - the major studios rarely release
       sexually explicit films at all anymore. Violence and action are
       the hallmarks of modern R-rated big studio films, while it’s the
       indies and ‘dependents’ (Fox Searchlight, Miramax, etc) who
       tackle the sexually oriented stuff.
       In 1990 the MPAA finally realized the whole X rating situation
       was a cluster****, and so the NC-17 was born. The idea here was
       to have a rating that would not be left open to the
       ****ographers and which could denote adult-oriented material.
       Whatever that means, right? Except that the conventional wisdom
       immediately was ‘New Name For X.’ And so many newspapers would
       not carry ads for NC-17 movies, TV stations wouldn’t run
       commercials, and major retailers wouldn’t stock the home videos.
       To be fair, the landscape of movie distribution has changed
       drastically since 1990. The NC-17 is still rarely applied, but
       more cities have arthouses that will play such fare, and with
       Wal-Mart and Blockbuster no longer having a stranglehold on home
       video, it’s more likely that a movie like Shame will be seen by
       a wider audience over the course of its extended life. Which is
       not a joke about how big Michael Fassbender’s **** is, I swear.
       Still, the NC-17 is a stupid rating, made all the stupider by
       the broadness of the R rating. Consider this: The King’s Speech,
       Billy Elliot, Saw and Hostel are all rated R. As part of the
       1990 changes the MPAA added text advisories to the ratings -
       explaining if films have violence, nudity, intense depictions of
       very bad weather, etc - but what’s the point of having a rating
       as massively vague as that?
       [/size][/quote]
       Cont....
       #Post#: 11955--------------------------------------------------
       Re: MPAA
       By: Mac Date: September 3, 2012, 5:10 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Continued...
       [quote] Whoever wins this election, we’re in the middle of a
       changeover from conservative to liberal values. While right-wing
       politicians battle to ban gay marriage, most Americans are
       perfectly okay with gays getting married. The social pendulum
       has swung back to progressive and permissive; there are shows on
       television today that push the boundaries of what could even be
       shown in R-rated films. I’d love to see what an episode of The
       Walking Dead gets rated by the MPAA, to be honest, or Game of
       Thrones. The internet has also impacted our cultural
       permissiveness. It’s hard to keep kids away from risque or
       pornographic material. When I was 12 getting a porn movie was a
       major accomplishment; in 2012 it just means getting on a
       computer without web filtering software.
       But while the cultural mores change, the small-minded censors
       remain, and they will only get louder in the coming years. They
       take turns going after music and video games and comic books and
       movies, and with the Aurora shooting and more films butting
       against the NC-17 - Blue Valentine had to fight an NC-17 for an
       oral sex scene - it seems likely that movies could be getting
       their turn back on the front lines of the culture wars.
       Which is why I don’t want to destroy the MPAA’s ratings system.
       As stupid as the ratings are, and as stupid as the Code was, it
       has successfully kept the movie industry free of government
       censorship. Call me paranoid, but I do not believe that we’re
       out of those woods yet, and I like the idea of industry
       self-regulation.
       But the system as it stands is so broken that it will only
       invite anger from conservatives and religious groups (side note:
       until 2007 any movie that espoused a religious doctrine
       automatically got a PG rating. That seems pretty reasonable to
       me - I’m more worried about kids being exposed to religious
       dogma at a young age than a tit. But after the film Facing The
       Giants earned a PG rating evangelical groups complained and
       started a letter-writing campaign. The MPAA has said they would
       no longer take religious doctrine into mind when assigning
       ratings - a huge mistake on their part). And it’s broken in a
       fundamental artistic way, where films are funneled towards the
       childish PG-13 and more mature ideas get left behind.
       The NC-17 proved that trying to fix one part of the system
       doesn’t work. The world simply sees NC-17 as an artier X. Any
       replacement rating - be it A for Adult or M for Mature or
       whatever - will be seen the same way. So the entire ratings
       system has to be overhauled from the bottom - rebooted, if you
       will.
       Here’s how I would recreate the ratings system:
       E - Everyone. This would replace the G rating. It’s not much of
       a rating, as G movies are essentially death (even animated films
       try to get PGs so as to not seem too much like movies for
       babies), but changing the lowest rating signifies a shake-up of
       the whole system.
       PG - Parental Guidance Suggested. Let’s keep this old standby.
       T - Teen. Replace the PG-13 with this rating, lifted from comics
       and video games.
       R-15 - Restricted - No one under 15 without parent or guardian.
       Here’s where we make the big changes. This rating applies to the
       softer R movies, the movies like last year’s documentary Bully
       or this year’s The Dark Knight Rises. These are films with some
       violence and sex and language, but not terribly much more than
       you would see in an evening’s AMC TV viewing. I think the MPAA
       needs to give up on the language stuff, so this rating would
       have all your fucks and everything.
       R - Restricted- No one under 17. And now we have a top of the
       line adults rating that still has the same name as the old
       rating. Shame would be R. 300 would be R. Saw would be R. NC-17
       goes away, we’ve created a middle ground for less explicit, less
       heavy movies, and now movie studios can make films for adults
       without worrying about stigma.
       The actual ratings aren’t the only problems in the MPAA ratings
       system; there’s the secrecy, which doesn’t help filmmakers
       understand what it is about their movie that gets a certain
       rating. There’s also the big studios’ desire to homogenize
       everything down to the most box office friendly rating. But I
       think a top-to-bottom overhaul is overdue, and it could only
       improve things for the MPAA and Hollywood.
       Looking back at the Pre-Code era you see some of the best movies
       ever made. The reason is simple: restrictions enhance
       creativity. The filmmakers of the time were playfully dancing
       around the Hays Code and coming up with great films, as well as
       new genres. Screwball comedies and the gangster film both grew
       up out of that. Noir was shaped by the restrictions of the Breen
       Office. I’m against censorship, but I do like the idea of
       filmmakers having to consider the best way to present their
       material within a structure - it leads to creativity.
       But I also like filmmakers being able to make whatever movies
       they want, and to present whatever material they want. I think
       that my revised ratings system allows for both - a more nuanced
       teen-oriented set of ratings gives the right kinds of
       restrictions while the adult-oriented R rating allows for
       exploration of headier, sexier, deeper themes without worrying
       about the morality police pissing their pants.
       * They got the idea from Major League Baseball, who was dealing
       with the fallout of the 1919 White Sox scandal by hiring an
       outside to be ‘League Commissioner.’
       [/quote]
       #Post#: 12633--------------------------------------------------
       Re: MPAA
       By: Neumatic Date: October 1, 2012, 10:09 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       I wish there were more categorizations, you know?  I used to
       work in a video store and we... well, actually we weren't
       allowed to watch ANY movies on that giant flat screen that was
       facing us all day, but we tried to make sure they were PG-13 at
       the worst but PG-13 is so permissive these days that did little
       for us in terms of making decisions.  Of course, now video
       stores don't really exist so it's a moot point but in my
       opinion, PG-13 is the death knell of cinema because everyone
       seems to be shooting for it, so old R-rated properties
       (Terminator and Total Recall) and what should be R-rated new
       properties are being diluted into PG-13.  And you combine that
       with the fact that SO many movies are telling the same lousy
       3-act stories, movies feel more boring.  I just feel like if
       there were more rating categories, there'd be more holes for
       moviemakers to try to fill, you know?
       #Post#: 12640--------------------------------------------------
       Re: MPAA
       By: Chiprocks1 Date: October 1, 2012, 10:27 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       I just want it to go back to the way it was. R and PG. Do away
       with G rated stuff since I'm never gonna watch 'em.  S h i t
       man, I can't remember the last time I actually saw a G rated
       flick. Are Pixar movies G rated or what?
       #Post#: 12642--------------------------------------------------
       Re: MPAA
       By: Neumatic Date: October 1, 2012, 10:31 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       I don't know.  A lot of old movies are G but I don't know if
       they qualify as that or not.  And I wouldn't want to be
       revisionist because that'll make old movies subject to the
       standards of the present instead of their own.
       We kinda need a G-rating (or a K-friendly rating) and content
       that kids can see without their parents, so their parents can
       see something else.  It's probably why there's less R-rated
       movies, there's nothing you can drop the kids to see while you
       watch whores and murdering.  It's really not the rating so much
       that's a problem as quality, I don't think anyone out there is
       really trying to do a high quality G movie... cause no one would
       see it.  But honestly, I think quality knows no true rating.
       #Post#: 12644--------------------------------------------------
       Re: MPAA
       By: Chiprocks1 Date: October 1, 2012, 10:34 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       I only brought up the G rating because it just dawned on me that
       I haven't noticed it since probably the late 70's / early 80's.
       So, I was just curious if it still existed because in my mind I
       have transferred all the recent movies to that of PG = G by
       today's standards.
       #Post#: 12646--------------------------------------------------
       Re: MPAA
       By: Neumatic Date: October 1, 2012, 10:38 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Good point.  There was some forgettable piece of dreck that just
       came out of candy coloured puppets or something that I think was
       rated G.  It was also complete trash, I suspect.  The G-rating
       seems to be a dumping ground, which is a good reason to get rid
       of it.
       #Post#: 12648--------------------------------------------------
       Re: MPAA
       By: Chiprocks1 Date: October 1, 2012, 10:43 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       There's the rub with today's standard. Back when it was just G /
       PG / R ( X X X  for you completest out there), more care went
       into each movie. Compare the G Rated crap you get now with the
       classic G Rated stuff from yesteryear like Bedknobs and
       Broomsticks, Mary Poppins and Pete's Dragon. Today it's the
       stuff you just mentioned. Weak film making and studio mentality.
       #Post#: 12650--------------------------------------------------
       Re: MPAA
       By: Neumatic Date: October 1, 2012, 10:51 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Yeah but I can't imagine a boy singing to a cartoon dragon being
       made today (and I love Pete's Dragon).  I would LOVE a return to
       those, but everything you mentioned was Disney, they were the
       kings of G-rated material.  I feel like there's a fear of
       wholesomeness these days, that things can't be pure and sweet
       and good and I think that's bullshit.  Look, I love Battlestar
       Galactica and Sin City and vulgar dialogue, but I also like the
       absence of that as well.  I think you can be enjoyable for all
       ages without putting in under-the-radar elements for the
       parents.
       #Post#: 12652--------------------------------------------------
       Re: MPAA
       By: Chiprocks1 Date: October 1, 2012, 10:54 pm
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       All true.
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