Can somebody tell me what kind of a world we live in, where a man dressed up as a bat gets all of my press? This town needs an enema!
In the late 1980s, Batman was enjoying quite a renaissance, mostly on the strength of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, along with Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke which rescued the character from the campy 1960s television show and returned him to the dark, gritty streets from which he came. When it was announced that Warner Brothers was producing a motion picture version, the comic’s legions of fans could scarcely contain themselves. The film attracted A-List talent, most notably Jack Nicholson as the Joker and was Warner’s big film of 1989.
What the fans got, however, was a bit of a mixed bag. (more…)
How Do You Rate, Part III: Do It By The Numbers
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005The single biggest flaw in our current movie rating system is that shoehorns vastly different levels of content into the same rating. The R rating can cover everything from the gentle Lost in Translation, with one brief scene in a strip club to a Friday the 13th movie in which a half-dozen nude women get decapitated or meet some other graphically depicted and gruesome fate.
The MPAA has tried to help recently by publishing a brief summary of their reasons for applying a rating, but these are often ambiguous at best. What exactly is a “Sexual Situation”? How much violence is “Strong” violence?
So what do I propose? Nothing less than taking G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 and tossing them on a bonfire. We can do better. (more…)
Posted by Paul McElligott in Commentary | 10 Comments »