We all know that people who consume violent media become violent people, right? I mean, it’s so obvious. So we should all acknowledge how important it is that we keep violent movies and video games out of the hands of children, in fact, we should be calling on the movie and video games industries to put standards in place to -

Wait, you mean they already have? And they’re being enforced? And they’re being enforced most efficiently in the retail video games market? Yes, according to the Federal Trade Commission itself, it’s never been harder for kids to buy tickets for R-rated movies or purchase M-rated video games, which just goes to show that some things were not harder when you were a kid, and kids these days do not have everything just handed to them.

Frankly it leaves us wondering why they’re not just making a fully fledged porn.

Oh right, they’re suing the guys who are making the porn. The musical, though. The musical is apparently fine.

There’s a good part of me that wishes that somehow I could watch Prometheus and have it all be like this picture or even this picture and still get the experience of watching Prometheus. Instead, I’m going to wait for the home video release, probably have a drink beforehand, and keep my finger on the pause button. Because I actually do want to watch Prometheus, as it was cut.

There’s an interesting story out from the LA Times, however, that’s about one pretty significant cut that Ridley Scott was asked to make from Prometheus, apparently the only thing in the movie that stood between it and a PG-13 rating instead of the box-office killing R. If you’ve already seen the movie, you’ve probably already guessed which one it is, and if you haven’t… well, HUGE SPOILERS below.

While we wouldn’t be surprised to see similar, or even weirder complaints from our fellow Yanks here in the U.S. of A., a new collection of complaints by British filmgoers is just adorably prudish and random. Compiled by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), which deals directly with costumer complaints concerning movie certificate ratings, a list of the silliest gripes received by the association includes problems with what people look like, what things look like, the words people say, and the price of popcorn. Which, no, Virginia, has nothing to do with rating certificates. So, come with us after the jump to read more about how many British people have a problem every time Dame Judi Dench uses a naughty word!

The Weinstein Company finally gave in to some of the pressure being put on it by the MPAA, and in the name of gaining its coveted PG-13 rating, exactly three instances of the “f-word” were edited out of its documentary Bully. And now, Bully is rated PG-13, meaning that teenagers can now see a movie they would prefer not to see with their parents sitting next to them — and that means they will be exposed to the message they really need to hear. But was the so-called “crucial scene” that contained all the bad language sacrificed for the rating?

So, Harvey Weinstein and the filmmakers behind the documentary Bully have lost their appeal to the MPAA to get their movie a PG-13 rating so their target audience can actually see it. Rather than take the R — guaranteeing that theaters will show the movie, but not allowing the kids who need to see it in to see it — it was decided to release it unrated, meaning that technically, there are no audience restrictions. But now this raises a new question: Will theaters even let kids in?

The public outcry over the harsh R rating for the documentary Bully has hit a new level and headed straight to the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the people who granted that rating, the Motion Picture Association of America. In an attempt to quell criticism over the rating — which prevents the people who need to see this movie from seeing without adult supervision — the MPAA held a screening and panel discussion to try to convince the highly-influential guests who were invited (including Congressional Representatives) why the R rating was sound. The opposite happened, and now the MPAA is under fire on its own turf.

Except now we’re all going to think about the first few minutes of Up, and then we’re all going to cry. By James Hance, who makes tons of these amazingly sweet geeky prints. (via Blastr)

No, don’t go away! I know this seems like a lot of coverage on a little story. I only just did a whole post on Bully and the MPAA response to it, and its creators’ response to the MPAA’s response yesterday. But I find this story very interesting, and worth paying attention to, because it’s the kind of story that has all the qualities of becoming a bigger story, if the stars align. Which they likely won’t, but let me at least explain what those qualities are.

The MPAA is in our thoughts not infrequently here, what with their role in the war on piracy, their part in the history of censorship in Hollywood, their extremely conservative views on what constitutes explicit material, and rigid, bordering on draconian, rules about what rating the language used in a film will garner.

But you’d think that even they’d have looked past the facts to the context in the case of Bully, a documentary about the modern anti-bullying movement that could be life saving viewing for kids everywhere. Because the film features unedited interviews with kids and footage of bullying, there’s understandably a lot of language being used that isn’t “network television safe,” and the film garnered an R rating, which would prevent anyone under seventeen from seeing this movie without the presence of an adult. In other words, the MPAA is trying to protect kids from the words that they’re already using every day, by making it difficult for kids to see a movie designed to give a lot of them hope.