Is there really really really any point in them?

 

I watched my first 12 when i was only 4, and since that age and above i have been seeing 15's and 18's

In fact probally everyone has

 

So is there really any need for them?

well the idea is that 4 year old wont be seeing porno and ultraviolent 18 releases that will disturb them, but of course at home and tv its more up to parents to enforce and regulate viewing habits.

 

in the states its very important as getting the right rating means in many cases its a life or death situation at the box office, this is why a lot of horror is going into lower categories than before as that is the mass market.

I'm in two minds about it to be honest, I mean, when I was 13/14 I was reading Stephen King books, but I was too young to go and see the films made out of them, go figure.... :huh:

 

I suppose there is a purpose to them over here, but they're even more meaningless in the US, where you could go and see any old ultraviolent film so long as you're with your mum and dad; and a lot of US DVDs are 'Unrated' which technically means that a 12 year old can buy Zombie Flesh Eaters or any number of other gore flicks.....

and of course with tv's in everybody's bedrooms every kid can watch what they like (and you wonder why i like foreign films :lol: :lol: :lol:)

I don't think kids should be watching 18's until they are at least 15.

 

James Bulgers killers watched over 170 horror films before the age of 10.

 

Is there really really really any point in them?

 

I watched my first 12 when i was only 4, and since that age and above i have been seeing 15's and 18's

In fact probally everyone has

 

So is there really any need for them?

 

Are you seriously advocating that kids of say 7 or 8 should be allowed into a cinema to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre or whatever ? :wacko: :wacko:

 

I do also agree with what x-The_Royston_Poisoner-x said

 

I don't think kids should be watching 18's until they are at least 15.

 

James Bulgers killers watched over 170 horror films before the age of 10.

 

Can you actually substantiate that claim or is it just something you pulled off a questionable source on the net....?

 

Where did they find the time for one thing....? Secondly, it's irrelevant as to whether they watched horror films, there is no established link between film and real-life violence (at least none that any serious psychologist would entertain...); Thirdly, what are the bloody parents doing when the kids are watching these films - surely a break down in parental control is the problem more than films

 

I grew up watching Hammer horrors and things like "Alien" and "The Omen", and I managed to get by without killing anyone... But then again, my parents actually taught me values........

They don't stop me watching the films.

 

I've been watching 18's since I was about 7 :rolleyes:

They don't stop me watching the films.

 

I've been watching 18's since I was about 7 :rolleyes:

 

Killed anyone lately....? :lol: :lol:

 

Can you actually substantiate that claim or is it just something you pulled off a questionable source on the net....?

 

Where did they find the time for one thing....? Secondly, it's irrelevant as to whether they watched horror films, there is no established link between film and real-life violence (at least none that any serious psychologist would entertain...); Thirdly, what are the bloody parents doing when the kids are watching these films - surely a break down in parental control is the problem more than films

 

I grew up watching Hammer horrors and things like "Alien" and "The Omen", and I managed to get by without killing anyone... But then again, my parents actually taught me values........

 

My citizenship teacher told me. He knows a lot about that kinda thing.

 

Yeah it's obviously the parents fault. Though they must have had something wrong with them. You don't watch a horror film then kill someone if you are normal.

I was never stopped from watching any particular ratings. :unsure:

I've seen a few 18's my mum does'nt really like me to though.

I think 18's are better in horror films to be honest. Some 15's are so cheap it's rediculous.

I think 18's are better in horror films to be honest. Some 15's are so cheap it's rediculous.

 

yeah but you tell the studios that :lol: :lol: of course they want the most admissions to their films and that means the middle market of middle america

 

 

think this is the one to get

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b6/MPAARatingPG13.gif

 

whilst this is not bad for horror

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d0/MPAARatingR.gif

 

however this is the dreaded cert!!!!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ec/MPAARatingNC-17.gif

 

fyi

 

History

[edit]

Origins

The MPAA film rating system was instituted on November 1, 1968, as a response to massive citizen complaints about the appearance and increase of explicit sexual content, graphic violence, scatology, and profanity in American film following the abolition, by the MPAA, of the Production Code of America in 1967. The United States came rather late to motion picture rating, as many other countries had been using rating systems for decades.

 

The erosion of the film production code had its advantages and disadvantages: while it allowed for certain kinds of artistic movies like Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) to be filmed, it also sparked a rise in low-budget exploitation films that became more and more explicit in their sexual and violent content.

 

In 1967, two movies (Ulysses and I'll Never Forget What's'isname) were released containing the word "****" in their dialogue. This precipitated the public demand for the re-introduction of self-regulation. After a series of meetings with government representatives, the Motion Picture Association of America and National Association of Theatre Owners agreed to provide a uniform ratings system for all of its constituents' movies, a system that would be theoretically enforced by the film exhibitors. Film production companies not members of the MPAA were not affected, and the ratings system had no official, governmental enforceability due to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as interpreted in regards to matters of sexuality, violence, and profanity in the media dating back to 1952's Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson decision.

 

 

Original ratings

The original movie ratings consisted of:

 

Rated G: Suggested for General Audiences. All ages admitted (including children).

Rated M: Suggested for Mature Audiences. Adults and mature young people (parental discretion advised).

Rated R: Admittance restricted to persons 17 years of age and older. Persons under 17 are not admitted unless accompanied by parents or adult guardian.

Rated X: Persons under eighteen not admitted (age limit may vary in certain areas).

[edit]

The M rating gets replaced

Many parents were confused as to whether films rated M contained more mature content than those rated R; especially because during the pre-rating years of 1965 to 1968, an earlier form of crude classification allowed more content to be included so long as the film's advertising bore the notation "Suggested for Mature Audiences" (often abbreviated as "SMA"). This confusion led to its replacement in 1970 by the designation GP:

 

Rated GP: for General Audiences/ Parental Guidance Suggested

[edit]

Age problems with the R and X ratings

At the same time (1970) the ages on the R and X ratings were increased from 16 to 17 (where the R rating has remained ever since), although the age on the X rating would still vary in certain jurisdictions until it was officially changed to an NC-17. Some newspaper advertisements clearly show that ages on advertising even for R and X rated films would occasionally be altered to read 18 instead of 17. Other local boards (involved in the early negotiations of the rating system) even wished to classify the age as high as 21 or 25, depending of the board.

 

[edit]

The GP rating gets replaced

By 1972, a number of problems with the GP rating emerged. First, the rating now sounded too permissive, and was not indicative of the film's actual content. During 1971 the MPAA experimented with designating some GP films with a special warning label. The exact wording would vary, but this label would generally read "Contains material not generally suitable for pre-teenagers" and thus was an early form of PG-13 rating. Since this added message was referred to with an asterisk next to the GP symbol, this brief rating can be called GP*. However, the percentage of GP* films quickly grew to outnumber GP films with no special advisory, and in early in 1972, as part of an overall standardization of the rating symbols as used in promotional material, both GP and GP* were redesignated with the new PG rating that would then be used throughout most of the 1970s.

 

Rated PG: Parental Guidance Suggested—Some Material may not be Suitable for Ages 7 and Under

From the adoption of the system through the mid-1970s, it was not uncommon for mainstream films such as Airport, Planet of the Apes, Tora Tora Tora, The Odd Couple, and 2001: A Space Odyssey to be released with G ratings, but by 1978, that rating had become increasingly associated with films, often low-budget, intended specifically for children, while the PG rating became increasingly acceptable for designating "family" films. The films just mentioned would all have absolutely been rated as PG had they been made later.

 

By the late 1970s, the PG ratings on some films were re-worded, and the pre-teenagers phrase became used less frequently, with the word children substituted instead. An analysis of the proportion of films rated G and PG at this time (corresponding with a conservative shift in the rating standards) shows that fewer G ratings were issued while more family films were rated as PG with the less restrictive-sounding "children" label. The "pre-teenagers" label was still used for more "mature" films until 1984, when the PG-13 rating was established. (Interestingly, the last mega-marketed, non-animated big studio film with a G rating was Star Trek: The Motion Picture in December 1979. This was also when live-action Disney products, such as The Black Hole, The Watcher in the Woods, and The Devil and Max Devlin, began to receive PG ratings.)

 

By this time, the familiar standardized boxes with boldfaced text, the MPAA logo, and the explanatory message underneath were now in common use.

 

[edit]

The addition of the PG-13 rating

Prior to 1984, when two films associated with Steven Spielberg triggered calls for yet another addition to the list of ratings, other films had been released that suggested there needed to be a middle ground between PG and R. The summer of 1982 featured Poltergeist, which was highly frightening for a PG-rated film (yet not severe enough for an R). [1] Violent scenes in the 1984 PG-rated films Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (which he directed) and Gremlins (which he produced), were the final straws. Public outcry about the violence led Spielberg to suggest a new PG-13 rating to Jack Valenti, who conferred with theater owners and then introduced the new rating on July 1. The rating still allowed children under 13 to be admitted without a parent or guardian, but it cautions parents about potentially shocking violence or other offensive content. The first movie to gain widespread theatrical release with a PG-13 rating was 1984's Red Dawn (although the first to receive the classification was The Flamingo Kid). It took a year for the PG-13 logo to shift into its current form. The initial rating, instead of using a line of boldface text followed by explanatory description below, bore the wording:

 

Rated PG-13: Parents are strongly cautioned to give special guidance for attendance of children under 13.

With the PG rating still being used without a change, it was unclear to some parents at first whether PG or PG-13 films were intended for older viewers. Until 1990, some of the same content that prompted the creation of the PG-13 rating was still being observed in some PG films. For example Big, Beetlejuice, and Nothing in Common were three late 1980s widespread PG releases that contained a sexually-derived expletive in their dialogue (Big and Beetlejuice used **** while Nothing in Common used dick). The ratings board reacted quickly to parental protests, and over the next couple of years, the number of PG-13 films finally outnumbered the number of PG releases, as standards were tightened for PG classification. Around the turn of that decade, standards were also tightened for PG-13 films, at least for violence, as the ratings board became more likely to issue an R rating for violence that involved bloodshed and/or the slaying of policemen. Except for a brief reversal in 1994, the number of PG-13 films has outnumbered the number of PG films ever since, and the proportion of R-rated films (starting with the boom of home video product in the late 80s) has generally increased at the expense of unrestricted films.

 

 

X is replaced by NC-17

In the early years of the ratings system, X-rated movies such as Midnight Cowboy (1969) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) could win Oscar nominations and awards. But the rating, which was not trademarked by the MPAA (as were its other ratings), was self-applied by the "adult entertainment" segment of the industry to the point where an X rating could be included in advertising gimmicks and came to be equated strictly with film pornography, which was never the intent behind the original rating. This concern led to a large number of newspapers and TV stations refusing to accept ads for X-rated movies, and some theaters' landlords forbade exhibition of X-rated movies. Such policies led to a compromise with the distributors of George Romero's 1978 horror film Dawn of the Dead: the audience restriction would be enforced by participating NATO theaters, but the letter "X" itself would not appear in the film's advertisements or displays, a message instead being substituted: "There is no explicit sex in this picture; however, there are scenes of violence which may be considered shocking. No one 17 and under will be admitted." After all, the MPAA stresses the voluntary nature of the system and denies that the rating system should cause a film not to receive widespread release. Various horror films, such as the sequel Day of the Dead and Re-Animator were marketed in this fashion. Some, like The Evil Dead had actually earned an adults-only rating at some point, while others like Guardian of Hell or Zombie may have used such messages in addition to their R ratings (which were sometimes surrendered specifically for marketing purposes).

 

The MPAA introduced the NC-17 (No Children Under 17 Admitted) rating on September 27, 1990, to finally make an official and standardized classification that could allow these films to be distributed with the MPAA seal. Part of this calculation was that the adult XXX markets tended to have no reason to pay the fee to submit their product by that point (since the films were distributed either through independent theaters or simply direct to video), and a differentiation could therefore be inferred by viewers that MPAA-rated NC-17 films were legitimate motion pictures with actual stories and developed characters, as with the first such film, Universal Pictures' Henry & June (1990), rather than merely prurient/pornographic fare.

 

Some media outlets which refused ads for X-rated titles viewed ads for NC-17 rated films as equally unsuitable, despite studio claims, and thus simply transferred that policy to NC-17 titles, as did many theater landlords. A number of social conservative groups placed pressure on large video chains including Blockbuster Video and Hollywood Video, as a result of which these chains do not stock NC-17 titles. However, similar and even more controversial sexual and violent product is often carried by these chains so long as no such rating was officially connected with its packaging.

 

Later, in 1996, the age for the NC-17 category was subtly increased by one year by changing the wording from "No Children Under 17 Admitted" to "No One 17 and Under Admitted." The label NC-17 stayed even though the words it represents no longer includes a "C" for "Children."

 

While a number of movies have been released with the NC-17 rating, none of them have been a major box-office hit. In a bold attempt to broaden the acceptance of NC-17 rated films towards the movie-going public, United Artists marketed its big-budgeted Showgirls heavily, with splashy TV and print ads. The film became the first (and, to date, only) NC-17 rated film to open in wide release, on 1,388 screens. But the critically-savaged film's poor box-office performance only created a larger stigma towards the rating, deeming any film rated NC-17 as being "box-office poison". An acclaimed film, Requiem for a Dream in which the lead actress, Ellen Burstyn, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in the 2000 Academy Awards, was released unrated rather than go out with the stigma of an NC-17 rating. The MPAA threatened to give the film the NC-17 rating due to a montage at the climax of the film involving a graphic orgy/party scene. Although the scene is quite explicit by today's standards, many protested it was very necessary to the entire message of the movie, which should be seen by teenagers under the 17 age limit to give them "an educational wake-up call" on the negative effects of drugs. Even though the purpose of the film was to show the realities of drug addiction, the MPAA stood by their decision by refusing to give the film an R rating on appeal. The NC-17 rating has more recently been limited to films considered to appeal to a limited "art house" audience, where the limited distribution and advertising of such films is not considered a major obstacle.

 

The majority of NC-17 fare is still released theatrically either in an edited R-rated version, or with its rating surrendered. Every five years or so, a mainstream release, such as The Dreamers, will be attempted by a large studio. Most commonly, however, the NC-17 version gets distributed on home video without a rating, or where its rating is difficult for the average patron to notice on the packaging.

 

 

I don't think kids should be watching 18's until they are at least 15.

 

 

also remember that in every country there is a different set of ratings so some places 15 years old will be able to watch our 18/USA NC-17

also remember that in every country there is a different set of ratings so some places 15 years old will be able to watch our 18/USA NC-17

 

Yeah I know. It should be same everywhere surely?

Yeah I know. It should be same everywhere surely?

 

well think its also due with cultural differences. in some countrys rude words are more frowned upon and in others its sexualized content that get the grades up

 

(will have to look at some of my dvds for examples however i guess thet cat III in HK is tame by the standards of some of the things that gets passed post James Ferman)

fyi: wiki

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/13/Bbfc_logo.gif

 

The BBFC rates theatrically-released films, videos and some video games. Legally local authorities have the power to decide under what circumstances films are shown in cinemas, but they nearly always choose to follow the advice of the BBFC. In line with the Video Recordings Act, all video releases not exempt under the Act must be classified by the BBFC, it being illegal to supply material which has been explicitly refused a certificate. Very realistic video games with adult themes must also be submitted to the BBFC to receive a legally-binding rating (contrast advisory PEGI ratings) in the same way as videos.

 

All videos and games rated by the BBFC receives a certificate, along with "consumer advice" detailing references to sex, violence and coarse language. If a certificate specifies that a film or video game is only suitable for someone over a certain age, then only those over that age may buy it.

 

The BBFC can also advise cuts for a less-restrictive ratings. This generally occurs in borderline cases where distributors have requested a certificate and the BBFC has rated the work at a more-restrictive level. The final certificate then depends on the distributor's decision on whether or not to make the suggested cuts

 

well think its also due with cultural differences. in some countrys rude words are more frowned upon and in others its sexualized content that get the grades up

 

 

there you go there examples here:

 

'Bad' or 'strong' language can earn a film a more restrictive certificate, though BBFC policy states that there are no constraints on language use in films awarded an 18 certificate. It is difficult to compare the BBFC's policies in this area with those in other countries as there are different taboos regarding profanity in other languages and indeed in other English-speaking countries. For example, the use of 'strong' language has little effect on a film's classification in France. The BBFC's policy proved particularly controversial in the case of Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen in 2002, which was passed uncut only at 18 certificate, even though its main characters were teenagers who frequently used profanities that the director argued were typical of the social group his film depicted. The film received similar certificates in Ireland (also an 18 certificate) and the United States, but in Australia it was awarded the less restrictive MA certificate.

 

There are minimal restrictions of the depiction of non-sexual nudity, which may be allowed in even U and PG certificate films, but scenes of (simulated) sexual activity are limited to more restricted certificates. With regard to material that is intended primarily as pornographic the Board's policy, as stated on its website is "Material which appears to be simulated is generally passed ‘18’, while images of real sex are confined to the ‘R18’ category." However, for some years depictions of real sex have been allowed in 18 certificate videos which are intended to be educational, and in recent years a number of works such as Catherine Breillat's Romance, Patrice Chéreau's Intimacy and Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs which feature apparently unsimulated sex have been passed uncut for theatrical release.

 

 

great soundtrack :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/9_Songs_film.jpg