Resurrecting the Movies thread...

[Front-Ranger]

In order to get back on topic - has anyone yet seen "Behind the candelabra"?

I´m waiting for it to premiere over here so that I can go and see it.
I´ve been reading up lately on Liberace - he was mostly known in the US and not so much in Europe. I know of him mainly from references made about him in American movies 

I was really looking forward to seeing this; however it was an HBO movie and I don't get that channel.

[Monika]

I was really looking forward to seeing this; however it was an HBO movie and I don't get that channel.

Will it only be shown on TV in the US?
Here it premieres on the big screen June 7.

[Front-Ranger]

Is it the MPAA ratings system that has diluted American movie content? This link discusses some (mostly recent) movie ratings controversies. Among the mis-rated were The King's Speech, Once, and Blue Valentine (with Michele Williams who received an Oscar nomination for her role) while dreck such as Scary Movie, Orgazmo and Hostel Part 2 got lenient treatment while showing body parts and torture.

I find it interesting that the MPAA instituted this "self-regulation" in late 1968 after the success of films like Blow-up, Michael Antonioni's masterpiece of dystopia. Blow-up was the first adult movie I ever saw (I was not yet 18) and had a tremendous influence on me, one of the reasons why I decided to study film. Early X-rated films included Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange and John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy. All were made by Europeans.

Roger Ebert protested the emphasis of the MPAA on censoring sex while allowing hard core violence to get a pass. Is this why we're in the pickle we're in now? What does it mean that a whole generation, or two, of American moviegoers has gorged on violence while being turned away from movies like Blue Valentine, which showed a husband and wife having sex?

[milomorris]

Roger Ebert protested the emphasis of the MPAA on censoring sex while allowing hard core violence to get a pass. Is this why we're in the pickle we're in now? What does it mean that a whole generation, or two, of American moviegoers has gorged on violence while being turned away from movies like Blue Valentine, which showed a husband and wife having sex?

Huh?? We're in a "pickle"

Violence and sex have very different cultural positions in society. While sex is not even a consideration for most children until puberty, violence can very easily be present in a child's life at an early age. Therefore, violence is an element that can be exposed to, and discussed with children much sooner than sex.

[serious crayons]

Then let me put your "wonder" to rest.

The quality of the film is not a point of my discussion. The content is. The author of the opus on which the film is based has evaluated the sex scenes as pornographic. Gil, FrontRanger, and Lord knows who else have assumed that Americans will treat the film "unfavorably" before any action has even been taken by the MPAA. That is plain old prejudice on their part.

Honestly, I really don't care about the film one way or another. What I care about is the fact that people here at Bettermost seem to think its OK to be bigoted against Americans.

Oh, OK. When you said "we're supposed to accept this shit" I thought by this shit you meant the film. Maybe you were talking about Americans getting shit from critics like Gil and Lee.

Franky, I get slightly irked at knee-jerk criticisms of Americans, too. We may be more "prudish" in some ways than people in some countries, and we're obviously far LESS "prudish" than people in others. A reasonable analysis suggests that we're somewhere in the middle of the human range of prudishness. If the best that Gil can offer as proof of our prudishness compared to Canadians is that 13-through-16-year-old kids in Quebec can see movies without their parents that American kids can't, it seems a pretty weak distinction, and one I'm more or less willing to live with, especially since there are so many ways around it if you're really determined to have your 13-year-old see an R-rated movie without you (I speak from experience).

Frankly, I can think of far worse examples of American prudishness, but very few would be on-topic on this thread. (The only one I can think of that is -- and this was a particularly outrageous situation -- was that teenage bullying movie that got slapped with an R rating because it contained too many "fucks," thereby restricting its accessibility among the very audience it should have targeted.)

On the other hand, taking a little criticism is part of the price of being the world's most powerful country, of having our culture and movies so dominate the global market. It's kind of like prejudice against white people or straight people or men. It's not that it doesn't happen, nor that it doesn't sting or isn't morally objectionable, but it's not exactly comparable to prejudice against people who are in the non-power group.

And Americans are certainly not above crticism on any number of counts.

So my reaction to cultural criticism of the U.S., even when it comes from non-Americans, generally ranges from an annoyed shrug to vehement agreement.

[serious crayons]

Is it the MPAA ratings system that has diluted American movie content? This link discusses some (mostly recent) movie ratings controversies. Among the mis-rated were The King's Speech, Once, and Blue Valentine (with Michele Williams who received an Oscar nomination for her role) while dreck such as Scary Movie, Orgazmo and Hostel Part 2 got lenient treatment while showing body parts and torture.

I find it interesting that the MPAA instituted this "self-regulation" in late 1968 after the success of films like Blow-up, Michael Antonioni's masterpiece of dystopia. Blow-up was the first adult movie I ever saw (I was not yet 18) and had a tremendous influence on me, one of the reasons why I decided to study film. Early X-rated films included Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange and John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy. All were made by Europeans.

Roger Ebert protested the emphasis of the MPAA on censoring sex while allowing hard core violence to get a pass. Is this why we're in the pickle we're in now? What does it mean that a whole generation, or two, of American moviegoers has gorged on violence while being turned away from movies like Blue Valentine, which showed a husband and wife having sex?

Huh?? We're in a "pickle"

Violence and sex have very different cultural positions in society. While sex is not even a consideration for most children until puberty, violence can very easily be present in a child's life at an early age. Therefore, violence is an element that can be exposed to, and discussed with children much sooner than sex.

Your assumption about the appropriate ages to address the subject of violence and sex is highly debatable. But even if your argument is granted, there's violence and then there's violence. A parent may well choose to discuss violence with, say, a 12-year-old, and might want to talk about, say, avoiding violent situations or using self defense or war or capital punishment or whatever.

But a discussion of violence and its consequences does not require having children watch as a maniac rips out someone's spinal cord or forces someone to saw off his own foot.

Though for the record, my kids would never in a million years pick "Blue Valentine" over, say, "Saw XXXVII." Is that because their preferences have been shaped by our culture? Or are many teenage boys just hardwired to be less interested in the subtle disintegration of a marriage than they are in gruesome violence? It's unknowable, I guess, but my money's on the latter.

As for sex, even if you don't think it's necessary to touch on the subject before puberty (which would be extraordinarily late for kids in this culture, since they certainly see references to sex all over the place, and most likely even depictions of it going on, from the time they're old enough to turn on the TV), then we're back to Gil's idea that we shouldn't prevent post-pubescent 13-through-16-year-olds from freely accessing it.

[oilgun]

Then let me put your "wonder" to rest.

The quality of the film is not a point of my discussion. The content is. The author of the opus on which the film is based has evaluated the sex scenes as pornographic. Gil, FrontRanger, and Lord knows who else have assumed that Americans will treat the film "unfavorably" before any action has even been taken by the MPAA. That is plain old prejudice on their part.

Honestly, I really don't care about the film one way or another. What I care about is the fact that people here at Bettermost seem to think its OK to be bigoted against Americans.

Oh, good grief! Please don't play the victim.  America, and yes I resent the fact that you have appropriated the word America, deserves all the criticisms it's gets being the world's leading terrorist state.

[Jeff Wrangler]

America, and yes I resent the fact that you have appropriated the word America, deserves all the criticisms it's gets being the world's leading terrorist state.

    

A statement like that is so ridiculously over the top that the only appropriate response to it is laughter.

[serious crayons]

Oh, good grief! Please don't play the victim.  America, and yes I resent the fact that you have appropriated the word America, deserves all the criticisms it's gets being the world's leading terrorist state.

You know, I even think that the last part of that sentence is arguably true. According to the website iraqbodycount.org, which to me seems pretty credible, Iraqi civilian deaths since the early 2000s exceed 100,000. They peaked in the Bush years of '06-'07 -- but the site says 34 were killed on Thursday, 873 in May. It's hard to imagine how the U.S. would be reacting if some other country had killed 100,000 of its civilians.

But that doesn't mean "America ... deserves all the criticisms it gets." "America" or anything else only deserves the criticisms that accurately apply. Otherwise those criticisms just wind up sounding stupid, and diminishing the credibility of whoever makes them.

I actually try to avoid calling it America, especially when talking to Canadians, because I know you guys get huffy about that, understandably. But "the United States" is such a relatively colorless and bureaucratic-sounding name that I wish we could just call it the lovely "America," and the other countries could call themselves Canada and Mexico and Uruguay and Brazil and so on. Let's just change the names of the continents themselves.

[milomorris]

Franky, I get slightly irked at knee-jerk criticisms of Americans, too. We may be more "prudish" in some ways than people in some countries, and we're obviously far LESS "prudish" than people in others.

I guess I get more irked than you do. But you seem to understand my position.