Unrated DVDs vs cinemas
p2pnet.net news:- Hollywood’s MPAA isn’t playing fair, say disgruntled cinema owners.
Kids are watching adult/scary/near-porno/etc movies, thanks to bad parents, which has led the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) to take another look at its NC-17 rating.
NATO (yup) is short for National Association of Theatre Owners and the Classification and Ratings Administration, which runs ratings for the MPAA and NATO, “revealed a new advisory for the R rating that’ll read, ‘Generally, it is not appropriate for parents to bring their young children with them to R-rated motion pictures’,” states Cinematical, also saying:
“One thing that continues to be unclear, though, is if the MPAA is more interested in removing the stigma of the NC-17 rating or in altering the perception that an R-rated film is perfectly suitable for all ages.”
Well, it all depends on what’s best for bidnes.
At ShoWest, NATO head John Fithian, “stressed the importance of having theatrical releases rated by the MPAA in order to perform well,” says the story.
Apparently, even though NC-17 is stigmatized, “movies released with that rating earn more money than those released without a rating”.
Finally, Fithian said he wanted Hollywood to stop releasing unrated DVDs, “or at least stop marketing them as being better because they are uncensored,” says Cinematical, adding:
This, “undermines the authority and purpose of the ratings, plus it emphasizes the idea that for some movies it is better to avoid the theater and to wait for the more complete DVD.”
Also See:
NC-17 rating – Bad parents and bad movies, March 16, 2007
Cinematical – Theater Owners to Studios: No More Unrated DVDs, Please, March 17, 2007
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March 20th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
The concept of “unrated” seems to mainly be a marketing ploy more than anything else.
Says Wikipedia in its Motion Picture Association of America film rating system article:
“Since the rapid expansion of the home video market in the late 1990s, studios have been known to skirt the rating system and release unrated versions of films on videocassette and DVD. Sometimes these versions would have earned an NC-17 if submitted for rating, but often their unrated status is merely for marketing purposes. Films that have been rated PG-13 in their theatrical run are sometimes extended with footage equivalent to an R (but not NC-17) rating and marketed as “unrated” with the implication that the added unrated material is racier than an R rating would permit. For example, one DVD release of American Pie, rated R in its theatrical release, exclaims on the box, “UNRATED! The Version You Couldn’t See In Theaters”. Sometimes the difference between an R-rated feature and its unrated home video counterpart is as little as a few seconds, while other unrated video editions add scenes that have no sexual or violent content whatsoever, making them “unrated” in the technical sense even though they don’t contain more provocative material than the theatrical version (one example of this would be Unleashed). A number of filmmakers have also taken to filming additional footage specifically for video or DVD release, with no intention of submitting this material to the MPAA.”