don’t you hate it when weekends end just as they get interesting..?

Alright, I’m totally for the idea of the Digital Media Club. I had mentioned it in the afterminutes of class that I wouldn’t mind writing the constitution. I don’t wanna do it alone, however. I think Danielle said she wanted to do something with it as well. As a matter of fact, why don’t we have as many people as we can to help put this constitution together. I don’t think it’d be out of line for me to give you all my e-mail so we can decide how we’d go about it. We can meet on campus and talk about what we should put into it or just e-mail back and forth. Hell, we could even instant message. Whoever wants to do this can e-mail me. I’ll be more than happy to do all the typing. You can get me at DanielColonna@gmail.com. Until then…

–dan

this film is not yet liberated…

Well, I saw the movie and I loved it.

The film rating system is totally corrupt, it drove me nuts to see just how they manage something like that. I still want to know where they get off rating films the way they do. I think the part that bothered me the most was the fact that the government wasn’t involved at all. Trust me, I’m no fan of federal censorship, but it would at least ease my mind to know “Okay, the suits are always like this with media.” However, these decisions are all being made by the financial heads of the industry and church leaders(?!). Kirby did a good job of breathing down the neck of the system in place and challenging the credibility of both the raters and the appeal hearers.

I never knew that something so unofficial could be propped up on a pedistal to the point where one would be surprised to hear that it isn’t run by the government. I was personally surprised by this – I always thought the government interfered with film ratings the way they’re beginning to interfere with video game ratings. But the government can only be linked to the film industry (in this case) in two ways – one being Valentin’s former position in the government, and the other being the way the Pentagon only allows a certain number of movies to use the name of the Armed Forces for the good of its image.

What didn’t surprise me was that there are church leaders who help make the final call on what rating should be given to a movie. This fact actually angered me more than anything. I’m not anti-religion, but it does bother me how the church finds itself in places it rarely ever belongs. These people know nothing beyond “there’s nudity? R. there’s sex? how much? okay, NC-17.” Religious figures don’t usually condone such depictions for the sake of artistic expression in a movie. They’ll usually just mark it as porn. I’m afraid to see what happens to the next movie that says something negative about a religion. It’ll probably get an R, since children should never know anything besides what their religious reading has to say.

Why shelter the names of these raters? Who are they, murder witnesses? I understand protection of your employee, but when a movie is being released to the public, the public should know who has effected the final product of what their seeing. Hollywood can’t seem to grasp the idea that it is not as important as the government. Until it does, there will only be an increase in the amount of movies that aren’t released below NC-17 for a flash of pubic hair during an intimate depiction of a couple in the deepest bowels of emotion.

In short, this rating system is bullcrap.

–dan