You’d think that the astronomical rise in ticket prices would have done something to keep the assholes who don’t care about the moviegoing experience of anyone around them out, but it seems to have had the opposite effect.

I’ve found Arclight, and specifically their 21-and-over screenings, to be quite tolerable.  [insidejoke]C’mon people, it’s not a movie, it’s an experience![/insidejoke]

(And I’ve got it pretty good in Boston. Go to suburban Philadelphia or Atlanta.)

Um … is that Slate Movie Club code for “black people talk in movies”?  Boston: 25% black.  Philadelphia: 43% black.  Atlanta: 59% black.  Not that I’m arguing one way or the other, but that’s what immediately jumps into mind as the biggest difference between Boston and Philly/Atlanta.

If the film studios are going to continue to place a premium on theatrical distribution (and I hope they do), they should want to know how their films are exhibited or whether the folks who’ve come out to see them are satisfied with the exhibition. There should be someone from the studio—and not the regional publicists, either; their jobs are hard enough as it is—someone from Sony and 20th Century Fox and Universal and on and on should come and see what I see when I go to a movie on Friday night. (And I’ve got it pretty good in Boston. Go to suburban Philadelphia or Atlanta.) See the dirty, holey screens, the bad projecting equipment, the managerial indifference, the commercials… It just seems crazy for studio executives to pull out their hair over flat theatrical attendance last year and not be more openly disappointed/concerned about how your product is displayed.

Read the rest here although INTENSE AND BOLDED SPOILER WARNINGS if you read the rest of the discussion. They go into detail on how most of the viable Best Picture candidates end, so don’t read beyond this one post if you care not to know the endings of Atonement and No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood and… uh… Knocked Up.

I’ll take it a step further: No movie theaters! Ever!

I’ve recently started going back to movie theatres regularly after a long exodus, and with the exception of visiting the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax, I invariably find myself wishing that I’d just stayed home and waited for the DVD. You’d think that the astronomical rise in ticket prices would have done something to keep the assholes who don’t care about the moviegoing experience of anyone around them out, but it seems to have had the opposite effect.

As I’ve said before on this site, I really, really wish there was a no-stigma adult rating for things: something that says, “In no way is this appropriate for kids, but you’re not a perv if you want to watch it as a grown-up.”  But somehow we only tolerate stuff that “might be OK for our kids to see”.  But we still want to watch the stuff.  So, rather than toning down our tastes, we keep increasing the amount that kids can see.

I, of course, am all for adults monitoring their kids’ viewing habits.  And the MPAA has no right to exclude kids from films if their parents are not there.  Solution: no kids in movie theaters!  Ever!  Problem solved.

Deadwood was one of my favorite shows of the last five years, and if I had a teen, I think that he or she could handle the violence, the sex, and the profanity. I still wouldn’t let them watch it, though, because of the casual racism and misogyny displayed by some of the characters. Strictly speaking, gutting a man and watching him bleed out on your office floor is probably worse than using the word “chink” to describe a business associate, but in my judgment the latter would be something that I’d be less comfortable with having my teen view than the former. As a parent, that would be my call to make.

I like my movies laced with profanity, sex and violence. I also like people to make informed decisions for themselves and their families based on comprehensive information, rather than on some sort of extremely arbitrary ratings system.

Also… You think Kill Bill should be NC-17? For realzies? You and I would have eaten that movie up as teenagers, and I don’t think it would have done us any harm. It’s certainly less intense than some of the stuff that I watched at that age.

Also also… I realize that I come off as a bit contrarian, and I am something of a contrarian by nature, but I love Pink Flamingos.

You have my 100% agreement regarding The Matrix, though. The entire premise of the movie falls apart if you look at it too closely.

“So the machines have FUSION, but they need bioenergy. Which they can’t get from animals or drugged or lobotomized humans for some reason. No, they definitely need it to come from humans with fully functioning brains. Except, they can’t just strap them down and take their bioenergy for some reason; the humans need to think that everything is normal. Well, yeah, this system does seem like it would use up more energy than it would likely create, and yeah, feeding dead humans to living humans would probably not sustain the population for very long, but no one is going to notice that. We’ve got bullet time!

I think that neither Kill Bill nor Requiem are appropriate for children, and frankly should both have NC-17 tags, as I believe does Pink Flamingos, which is really not suitable for anybody, IMHO.

Have you seen This Film Is Not Yet Rated?

Sort-of depends. I’d let my (theoretical) child watch Sweeney Todd before I’d let him/her watch Pink Flamingos, despite the fact that I think that slitting throats is probably worse behavior for a kid to emulate than eating dog crap. Kill Bill, despite being infinitely more violent, is probably more appropriate for children than Requiem for a Dream.

Every child is different. My brother could handle images of extremely graphic violence at a much earlier age than I could (I suspect that this is because he was raised with a television, and I wasn’t). Ultimately, it falls to the parents to decide what a kid can handle, and that decision should be as informed as possible. So, yeah, you’re going to find a lot of things listed together, because the full information regarding what’s in a movie should definitely all be listed on the package.

Having said that, the MPAA can lick my ass.