Tuesday, November 02, 2010

To the MPAA ratings board, 'The King's Speech' is just as bad as 'Saw 3D' | The Big Picture | Los Angeles Times

More MPAA rating nuttiness: The King's Speech gets an R.

Money quote from director Tom Hooper: “This isn’t creating a precedent, since after all, how many films can claim to use swearing for its therapeutic effect? The floodgates aren’t going to open. But when you have a system that gives the same rating to Kick Ass and Saw as The King’s Speech, it feels like you’re in a world that has lost its mooring.”

Wow, so this must mean The King's Speech is just as foul as Once.


ADDDENDUM: After I wrote this initial post, my dear friend Kimberly emailed me with this pointed, and I think, well considered response. I post it here with her permission:

Taken from the article:

"It's rating decisions, which frown on almost any sort of sex, frontal nudity, or bad language but have allowed increasing amounts of violence over the years, are horribly out of touch with mainstream America, where families everywhere are disturbed by the amount of violence freely portrayed in movies, video games, and hip-hop music."

To the writer of the article:

The writer seems to have forgotten the word 'NOT' in the second part of the sentence. Apparently you don't have kids or pay much attention to what happens in society. It's why my teenage nieces (all god-fearing Christian educated girls) are walking around singing Ke$hia's "Tik Tok". Heard the lyrics on THAT lately? But they still buy the records and listen in droves.

Which film would I take my 12-year old to see? NEITHER YOU IDIOT. They shouldn't see Saw and they would be bored to death by The King's Speech. Which film will I be seeing? Possibly both.

Anyone who thinks that ratings have any effect at all on whether or not parents take their children to a theater hasn't BEEN in a theater in years, at least where I live.

Are ratings arbitrary? Sure. We all know this. But to think that people care about the rating (or enforce the rating, which is a whole other post), is even more naive than the MPAA.

Grow a set. Find something important to write about. I'm sure there's something. It is LA.

Wow. Thoughts? 

No comments: