Entertainment & Sports: March 2005 Archives
I'm not sure I agree with all the producers in this article who say that sex makes America nervous, but I'm pleased to read that people prefer to keep sexuality private rather than parading it publically.
As any theater owner will eagerly tell you, American audiences like their movies PG and PG-13, not R, and certainly not NC-17. At the recent ShoWest convention, National Association of Theatre Owners president John Fithian urged Hollywood to give theater owners more PG-rated hits and a lot fewer R-rated losers.Last year, five of the top-10-grossing movies were PG. Of the top 25, only four were rated R. "Increasingly, if a movie is rated R," says producer John Goldwyn, "audiences won't go."
Not because Americans don't like sex, but because sexual material is so easy to access at home that it's easy to keep it private.
But they're not making movies like that anymore.Why? These days, sex is in the home. In the privacy of your own room, you can see all the racy material you want in "Sex and the City," "The L Word," "Queer as Folk," "Deadwood" and "Desperate Housewives."
"Today's audiences aren't comfortable being seen in a mass-audience public place like a cinema complex seeing something that is inevitably notorious because of its sex," producer Bill Horberg writes in an e-mail. "If you go to a complex, you might run into your kids, much less neighbors, co-workers." ...
"We are a Puritan society," Press says. "We'd rather watch it at home."
And I say, good. It makes it easier for parents to control what their kids are exposed to. I don't really care what people want to watch in their own homes, but the majority should get to rule on what dominates the public sphere. In this case, it's market forces that are shutting out highly sexual movies, which is far better than if the government were getting involved.
One of my old RPG friends pointed me to this awesome ceiling-mounted digital projector rig used for displaying maps directly onto a tabletop. I don't play many games anymore... but I still want to build one of these.
Last night I went to see Robots, Fox's most recent animated adventure, and it was pretty dull. The animation and voice acting were great, but the plot was thin and the script was barely amusing; the only parts I actually laughed at were incidental background widgets thrown in by the artists (such as male and female robot bathrooms labeled with images of plugs and sockets). Aside from all that, the movie was incredibly frustrating because the writers chickened out on a golden opportunity to educate young viewers on the merits of capitalism.
To explain briefly, Robots takes place in a metal world inhabited entirely by robots. Apparently, the robots are all built by a company owned by a big round robot named Big Weld. Big Weld's company is taken over (somehow) by an executive named Ratchet, and Big Weld loses hope and retires into obscurity to play with dominoes. Ratchet is more obsessed with making money than with helping other robots, so he decides that the company is going to stop making spare parts and only sell "upgrades" from now on -- upgrades that are too expensive for the poorer robots to afford, which results in them being melted down once they can't be repaired.
These events set the stage for Rodney, the hero, to solve the problem. He's an inventor himself and gains some quick popularity by fixing some poor robots who can't get spare parts. Rather than charging money for this service -- as is sarcastically suggested by another robot -- he does it for free and then laments that the robots can't be fully repaired without parts. A clever writer would have realized that by charging money, Rodney and his friends could have set up their own company in competition with Ratchet and easily cornered a significant market niche that the villain intentionally neglected.
Children could have learned that only a foolish capitalist would stop making spare parts and thus eliminate a huge revenue stream and a whole host of customers. That's no way to make a profit! The motto of Big Weld was "see a need, fill a need", and the mantra was repeated many times throughout the movie. Indeed, that motto is fundamental to capitalism, and the film would have provided a great foundation for introducing the concepts to children. Obviously Big Weld understood how to make money, or he never would have accumulated the capital necessary to dominate the robot manufacturing market, so why did he allow Rodney and the audience to wallow in naivety?
In the end, Rodney rouses Big Weld from his self-imposed exile and helps him reclaim the company, thus re-establishing the monopoly structure that led to the problems in the first place. Why not instead teach kids to start their own company rather than depend on the moods of others? Why not teach kids the value of competition? Why not teach kids that the best way to make money is to provide something people want?
According to Todd Zywicki, Arrested Development is in danger of being cancelled (yet again). I saw Jason Bateman on Conan last week or so and he was practically begging people to watch the show... it was kinda sad. It may get poor ratings, but the show is amazingly funny and I watch it every week. If you like it too and you're interested in keeping it on the air, sign the petition. Hey, what can it hurt?
I haven't accepted a job yet, but I also haven't been spending much money recently... so I felt justified in wasting $72 on this deluxe limited edition A Game of Thrones: RPG and Resource Book. At least it'll give me something to do once I finish A Storm of Swords, assuming my pre-order ships soon. Yes, I am somewhat addicted.
