mpaa
Flotsam & Jetsam
Wild Things Scares Away Kids But Still Rules The Weekend
3:33AM Richard Rushfield | As the US box office tea leaves are sifted, many in Hollywood are searching for a way to take the glory away from Spike Jonze. But whatever your feelings about the hipster icon, we all bow before an opening weekend victory. More »
40 Reasons to Wish the MPAA Ratings System an Unhappy 40th Birthday
8:45AM STV | The MPAA ratings system tomorrow celebrates its 40th birthday — four full decades of tormenting filmmakers, distributors and, ultimately, audiences with an inconsistent moral code symbolised by those infamous G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 ratings. In an interview published Thursday in Time, MPAA chief Dan Glickman and ratings board chair Joan Graves reflected warmly on the system’s evolution over the years; and while we agree that Hollywood’s self-governance is preferable to the zealotry of the Hays Code and other puritanical watchdogs who preceded it, Graves and Co. remain the city’s worst censors by any other name. So join us after the jump to commemorate the MPAA’s milestone with a look back at 40 decisions affirming its less-than-inspiring legacy. Unhappy 40th, everyone! More »
Party Clown Dan Glickman Helps Washington Celebrate Ratings’ 40th Birthday
8:20AM STV | It seems fitting that on a day when pigs and their lipstick are a subject of national discourse, MPAA boss Dan Glickman would add a bit of Hollywood colour with a gushing, glimmering tribute to his institution’s widely reviled ratings system. The infamous G, PG, R and the disused X celebrate their 40th anniversary Nov. 1, trailed by the PG-13 (est. 1984) and NC-17 (est. 1990) denotations; as Glickman reportedly told a gathering today in Washington, the ratings are “synonymous with the First Amendment … with political, artistic and creative expression in this country”: More »
‘Max Payne’ Director On ‘Dark Knight’s PG-13: ‘MPAA S*cked Warners’ C*ck’
4:20AM Seth | You might have caught a movie this summer by the name of The Dark Knight—a little film that featured [SPOILER ALERT] pencils through skulls, long-winded monologues about surgical disfigurement, and one incinerated Maggie Gyllenhaal—and at times thought to yourselves, “Perhaps this wasn’t the best choice for my daughter’s Girl Scouts troop monthly Fun Night outing.” But it was precisely its PG-13 rating that helped catapult the Chris Nolan film to its current record-breaking box office take of over five hundred gazillion dollars. Other directors are now wondering who at the MPAA they have to fuck to get a similar hall pass on their own darkly violent visions (and please, please God let it not be the notoriously scissor-happy Joan “The Snipper” Graves). But according to Max Payne director John Moore, it was the reverse scenario of the MPAA handing out the sexual favours to the filmmakers: More »
Meet Joan Graves, the Most Powerful Censor in the Film Industry
7:05AM Defamer Hollywood | Believe it or not, half-arse blogging neophyte Patrick Goldstein has kind of a genuine scoop today at The Big Picture: A heads-up to an interview with CARA (Classifcation And Ratings Administration) board head Joan Graves, arguably the most notorious (and notoriously private) movie censor of the last 50 years. Of course, it’s not Goldstein’s interview, but rather his wife’s, banished to the relatively innocuous comfort of Graves’s alumni magazine at Stanford. But that doesn’t make it an any-less-terrifying glimpse behind the scenes of the ratings board’s “parent-friendly” tyranny: More »
Movie Industry Mouthpieces Shockingly Confident in Movie Industry’s Recession Resiliency
2:00AM Defamer Hollywood | In an environment as volatile and prone to bullshit as the film business is, we tip our caps to the guileless souls who keep it real when things are looking down. Particularly people like MPAA president Dan Glickman, who, when asked by Time Magazine how the industry’s ‘08 crop of retreads, sequels and adaptations might weather the sluggish economy, steadfastly refused to toe the company line: “When times are bad, our business seems to buck the trend,” says Dan Glickman. … “The movies are great therapy. It’s a lot cheaper than a psychiatrist.” … More »
Innocent Data Entry Error Triples Reported College-Student Movie Piracy Numbers; MPAA Apologizes For Previous Call To Have All Universities Burned To The Ground
5:05AM Mark | Whoopsies! The MPAA admits that a 2005 study “incorrectly concluded” that movie piracy by college students is responsible for 44 percent of the industry’s domestic losses, claiming that a “data entry” error ever so slightly inflated the actual “key number” of 15 percent. [THR] Fox and The CW have joined CBS in announcing a more “targeted” approach to the strike-abbreviated pilot season, taking an opportunity to dump projects the networks either can’t or don’t want to make whenever the WGA and AMPTP reach a new deal. Additionally, ABC is threatening to lighten its script load by 30 percent. [Variety] [After the jump: Idol crushes rivals (again); studio speciality divisions dominate Oscar noms; Jericho finds a basic cable home.] More »The Ultimate MPAA Anti-Piracy Ad
7:02AM Defamer Hollywood | Even though the anti-piracy ad embedded above was mocked up by the writers of British (and soon to be NBC) sitcom The IT Crowd, we wouldn’t be too surprised if the MPAA was already working on a version to run before American films to help stop the widespread disrespecting of copyrights. Sure, they’ll need to change small details like having its scofflaw defecate into a more-recognisable LAPD hat rather than a quaint bobby helmet, but the Brits have already done the rest of the work in communicating to file-sharing teens the core message that downloading a camcorded copy of Good Luck Chuck will earn them a bullet in their bittorrent-addled brains. IT Crowd antipiracy ad [YouTube] More »
