Who the hell decides these standards, anyway?
Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006 at 8:36 a.m.
On this day in 1971, A Clockwork Orange opens, originally given an X rating. Censors objected more to the sex scenes than the orgies of ultraviolence. Director Stanley Kubrick later earns an R by removing some of the smuttier footage.
So I guess you can show as much blood and gore as you want, so long as you don�t show any naughty bits engaged with other naughty bits. Of course, the problem at the time was that there wasn�t an NC-17 rating, and naughty bits movie people began to add Xs to their movie ratings, so anything with an X rating was, well, denigrated, you�d say? I know that X movies at the time deserved their ratings, like Midnight Cowboy and all, and . . . Hey! I�m walkin� here!
Sorry.
I remember, back when I was in high school, The Breakfast Club came out with an R rating. R! Nowadays I see kids performing this as a high-school theatre project! By the same token, I wonder why so many high schools perform Grease!, what with its smoking, drinking, and knocking up. I mean, the lyrics of the song go, �You know that ain�t no shit / gonna get me lots of tit�. Where�s the uproar for that, when people still whinge about Huckleberry Finn and Harry Potter?
Yeah, kids, be subversive. Read a Banned Book. Heck, Father F, my pastor read all the Harry Potter books and he doesn�t see a thing wrong with them, he told all of us one day in Mass. It�s fiction. Imagine that!
Anyhoo, the Hubster and I watched Superman Returns last night, and I rather liked it, mostly because it had that sense of humor that I remember from the original movie. And I just love that John Williams theme, I mean , how can you not, and that �love� theme when Superman�s flying with Lois? It always makes me squishy when I hear it. And Kevin Spacey�s such a hoot. And I cried at the end.
I also recently watched Ralph Bakshi�s Wizards, which was better than I expected it to be, animation notwithstanding. Of course, we�re talking about 1976, and rotoscoping was pretty much the highest standard you could get. The story itself is interesting as a technology vs. magic battle, but then you also have to put up with Bakshi�s style in general. Here�s a still of Avatar the Wizard and Elinore the Fairy:
Doesn�t that just scream Fritz the Cat to you? You can�t see it in this still, but Avatar is barefoot and has feet the size of pizza pans. He also smokes cigars using his toes and talks like Peter Falk. Elinore, meanwhile, wears a white bikini and has her nipples poking out in every shot, which would send the above censors flying right out of their seats if they�d paid any attention to this movie. Oh, and Hitler gets a cameo in this movie, too:
Blackwolf, the villain, unearths ancient war technology and Blitzkrieg films and shows them to the elven enemy, which produces this reaction:
Yeah, that was kind of my reaction too. All turns out well in the end, of course, but not before you see these kinds of images:
Which, naturally, would remain in a modern sanitization of this movie. Because kids can see all sorts of violence, but god forbid if they see a single female nipple, animated or otherwise.
But is the movie good? It�s good if you go in with low standards, like I did. It is amazing what this group managed to do with as little money as they had, and it was exceptionally popular, despite Disney�s attempted sabotage (they re-released Fantasia when this movie premiered, that mousy bitch.) Keep remembering that it was 1976, and at the time, no one else was making movies like this. While this was being produced, a little film was being worked on that everyone thought would fail miserable too. Remember that movie?
You guessed it. Star Wars.