Just a note on Abel's story.. (NC-14? I'd go higher.)

[Janus Whitefurr]

The Matrix, rated R, was fine.

....wait, what? M15+, dude.

Oh yeah, I'm Australian...

[icarus]

who framed roger rabbit is G (in canada).

it contains:
many sexual inuendos
an alcoholic character
a man being run over with a steamroller
a man being strangled in a film projector
numerous shootout scenes
blood (human blood)
an infant (admitably a toon) smoking and hitting on women

meanwhile, indiana jones and the raiders of the lost arc is rated PG in canada.
in this a man's head is blown off by a plane propeller
several people are shot
nazis melt
people get run over/blown up
however the inuendo is less, the swearing is less and the graphic violence is less than roger rabbit.

remember that even in the states, PG-13 means 'may be unsuitable for children under the age of 13.'

arguably many children also gloss over the 'dark' parts of stories.
how many of you realized eddie was an alcoholic in roger rabbit as kids? or that the goonies swore profusely? i sure didn't.

in other words
god you guys stop being such wimps

[Netrogo]

{wall of facts}

in other words
god you guys stop being such wimps

Quoted, but shrunk, for truth.

[DarkAudit]

Wasn't it mentioned in another thread that in today's climate, the early seasons of Sesame Street are not suitable for children?

[Tapewolf]

Wasn't it mentioned in another thread that in today's climate, the early seasons of Sesame Street are not suitable for children?

Yes, it was

[M]

(Film Examples)
arguably many children also gloss over the 'dark' parts of stories.
how many of you realized eddie was an alcoholic in roger rabbit as kids? or that the goonies swore profusely? i sure didn't.

in other words
god you guys stop being such wimps

Haha, yeah. I always love watching old kids movies and then going, "What the hell? How'd they get away with that!?", because I honestly never noticed them.

I've got a great example of a low rated movie with several adult themes.

Ever heard of Rock and Rule? It's an animated movie rated PG, both in Canada and the US, and it has:
Lots of swearing
Breasts. In several scenes.
Drug use/alcohol use
A whole lot of sexual innuendo. Don't ask me about Banana Man (so dubbed by a friend).
Satanic worshiping (Don't really care about this one, but a lot of overbearing people probably would).
A monster. That spews fetuses from it's mouth. Fetuses.   

But people loved the film as kids. They just didn't notice or care. I watched it last year, so I didn't get to have the advantage of childlike ignorance.

[Fuyudenki]

I watched bloodsport and just about every old Clint Eastwood western when I was ten. I watched the original Child's Play (Chucky films for the unenlightened around the same time. Did I get all hyped up and play punch and kick my way around the house after watching Bloodsport? Yeah, I was a ten year old boy I'd have done that anyways. Did Child's Play scare the bejesus outta me? Heck yeah, I had a My Buddy doll at the time. When I went to bed that night I stuffed the bugger away in the closest cuz I was worried he'd kill me.

Whoop-de-##&%-do for you, Net, your parents decided that it's fine for you to watch R-rated movies.

That's fine with me.

However, each and every parent should be allowed to decide what their children watch, not the government, not the general public.  Like I said before, I don't want to see death and bloody dismemberment and scenes of torture in a live-action movie.  My parents were about as attentative as could be, probably moreso than yours.  They spent hours with my brothers and sister and me trying to instill an understanding of right and wrong, and reality and fiction, and they decided that movies which are rated R shouldn't be seen in their household.  It's not because they're lazy, believe me, if you called my mom lazy she'd probably break you in half.

The thing is, see, teaching kids the difference doesn't always help.  I know full-well that Indiana Jones is fiction, and CNN is... well, CNN is also fiction.(as are Fox News, NBC, and whatever other 'news' broadcasts you've got out there, American or otherwise.  Just to be clear.)  My parents spent literally hours making sure I understood that, but after it's all said and done, I was not the most mentally stable person around as a kid, having gotten into seven fights in my 7th year of school alone.  It was probably more than that, that's just the number of times they caught and punished me, and that's with the considerably milder stuff that I was exposed to.

My brother is twenty, now.  When he turned 18, my parents said "We don't care if you watch R-rated movies, you're an adult, now, just don't bring them in this house."  He watched a few, and then came back to my mom and dad and said "Thanks for not letting me watch those when I was younger.  You were right."

So, Net, to each his own.  I'm not saying your parents did anything wrong by letting you watch movies that I personally never want to see.  DON'T TELL ME MY PARENTS DID WRONG BY NOT LETTING ME WATCH THEM.

[edit]note: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was one of the movies I was not allowed to watch, and currently have no desire to.  Indiana Jones, on the other hand, I simply have not finished watching because I've been doing other things.

[Dannysaysnoo]

My parents were kinda strict and wouldn't let me near the (18)'s and such until now. I now realize what i was missing.

[Kenji]

(Film Examples)
arguably many children also gloss over the 'dark' parts of stories.
how many of you realized eddie was an alcoholic in roger rabbit as kids? or that the goonies swore profusely? i sure didn't.

in other words
god you guys stop being such wimps

Haha, yeah. I always love watching old kids movies and then going, "What the hell? How'd they get away with that!?", because I honestly never noticed them.

Like how in Rescue Rangers, there was a crook impersonating a baby and shoot at the RRs with a GUN while still looking like a BABY. They even left it in for the reruns on Toon Disney.

And yet when Disney bought the rights to the Digimon show, they censor the fact that one kid punches another kid.

[Rafe]

Ah, Canada. That would explain it.

You guys are a lot more lax than us uptight paranoid Americans....

Not true.
Maybe the rating system is done a little different, but Canadians are big on completely censoring films - even animated ones.  The Ottawa Animation Festival has gotten a huge amount of criticism for blacklisting certain films.  And they don't just censor films - they've been know to seize shipments of printed comics.  So watch out Amber (and others), what you bring back from your next con, or try to publish - especially in Ontario.

[Netrogo]

believe me, if you called my mom lazy she'd probably break you in half.

I was going to make a good rebuttle but honestly I can't respect someone in an argument who makes any sort of physical threat on the internet. Quite frankly because...

You're mom is lazy.

Heck she's really lazy.

She's the laziest human being on the planet.

My address is {Removed because I felt like it}. I'll be the guy laying on the couch in the living room, most likely in a black shirt and blue jeans, with black rimmed glasses on and messy shoulder length hair.

I won't hold my breath waiting...

[bill]

u dead, dog

[Netrogo]

Well in the event a mysterious woman shows up at my door with threats of spinal injury. I have a large jamaican roommate in the other room for back up

[Fuyudenki]

problem now, Net, is...

I'm lazy.

But yeah no... I'll be working for years just to pay off the debt incurred for my higher education.  I can't imagine the amount of monetary compensation they deserve for the task of raising me.  If my parents were lazy, I would be dead right now.

'cause hiding the battered, bruised body of a five-year-old would have been easier than the latter seventeen years.

[Amber Williams]

You would think that! But after a while, it gets really difficult hiding all those 5 year olds.  I mean yeah...they "look" smaller than average...but they are notoriously tricky. 

Now 5 months! Those suckers fit in almost anyplace!

[Netrogo]

'cause hiding the battered, bruised body of a five-year-old would have been easier than the latter seventeen years.

True dat. At times I think my parents still consider the 'hide the body option' with me. Namely anytime I call to borrow money

In regards to the earlier 'pleasantness' I think we can just agree to disagree. Clearly we both have some rather different views of how censorship should be handled, but debating it here's not gonna change anything.

You would think that! But after a while, it gets really difficult hiding all those 5 year olds.  I mean yeah...they "look" smaller than average...but they are notoriously tricky. 
Now 5 months! Those suckers fit in almost anyplace!

Future mother of the year

[Fuyudenki]

oh, I'm not saying that every movie should be G-rated, or that we should abolish the movie rating industry alltogether.

What I would like, though, is something like what we've got, where they'll release the R-rated version, and then the Director's Uncut "Not safe for humanity" version, except also release PG-13 and/or PG versions, for those of us who don't like seeing people get shot and have sex with each other every five minutes.

I think any studio that decided to do that would make a killing, actually.

[edit]
Also, do I get win points just for reading a post with so much win as Amber's

[Netrogo]

oh, I'm not saying that every movie should be G-rated, or that we should abolish the movie rating industry alltogether.

What I would like, though, is something like what we've got, where they'll release the R-rated version, and then the Director's Uncut "Not safe for humanity" version, except also release PG-13 and/or PG versions, for those of us who don't like seeing people get shot and have sex with each other every five minutes.

I think any studio that decided to do that would make a killing, actually.

See that I can agree with. The problem I had earlier is the company you mentioned that was 'dumbing down' the films sounded like it was a seperate company that had nothing to do with the studios, which to me means they were basically stealing the films and editing then rereleasing them. If I misunderstood that I appologize.

However you're right, if the studios were to release multiple copies of the films they could make a killing, the problem is how much it would cost. Contrary to popular belief the amount of money they'd have to spend to reedit (editors for films don't come cheap) would be damn high, not to mention some things would require being reshot completely for the film to make sense, which would mean paying the cast and crew even more (Can't think of any film examples of this but the comic Peter is the Wolf is a good example. Anytime something 'naughty' happens they have a seperately drawn version of it for the adult and normal sections of the site.) If they could find a cost effective way to do this then yeah it'd be an excellent option.

[Fuyudenki]

Actually, houses like CleanFilms took every precaution to avoid legal quagmire, and would still be fine had Hollywood not claimed that the story of said movie was theirs, in direct contradiction to... I forgot who wrote Ender's Game.(good book.  I must read the sequals.)

It worked like Netflix.  Every member who paid fees to the company was considered a "part owner" of a stock of several hundred(probably several thousand) legal and legit DVDs.  For every legal DVD in the library, there was one backup copy, also legal according to the RIAA, except the backup copy had various things edited out.

The Matrix: Reloaded, for example, lost the sex scene, Trinity shooting the ghost in the arm, Persephone trepanating the vampire, and all swear words which couldn't be said in a PG setting, yielding a PG end result which lost none of the impact of the original(me having seen both versions), but unveiling the movie for what it was: a special effects orgy which really wasn't that great.  Honestly, I would have liked a version with just the sex scene and most of the coarser curse words removed, for a PG-13 rating, but eh.

The editors did their best to stay true to the movie's core, and in fact, the site carried a disclaimer that while all of the "objectionable material" was removed, many movies had certain thematic elements inherent to the story which may still offend viewers.  50 First Dates became a charming love story, Office Space became a live-action Dilbert movie(I'm not sure what was cut from the latter.  It wasn't missed.)  MIB2 was so rife with innuendo that I think it actually lost something in the translation, but my younger siblings, who never saw the original version, would probably argue the point.  Chronicles of Riddick was just bad, and I can't imagine it would have been any better with the swearing and violence added back in.  The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was... promising, but fell flat.

An interesting side-effect was that occasionally, when a particularly bad cut had been made in the original movie, it made you wonder what had just been edited.  We figured out what was happening when those cuts were happening as we watched movies that hadn't been edited.

Ultimately, Hollywood decided to sue, on the grounds that if they made a movie where a man gets his head blown off, shown in gory Technicolor detail across all 60 inches of your rear-projection flatpanel, they want you to see a man get his head blown off, shown in gory Technicolor detail across all 60 inches of your rear-projection flatpanel, with the only other options being A: close your eyes, or B: don't watch the movie.

The point of the matter is that Cleanfilms, and similar places, were costing Hollywood nothing, actually improving the sales of their movies, and reaching a population segment which would ordinarily have nothing to do with them, and Hollywood made it quite clear that they aren't in the business of making money, they're in the business of spreading smut as far as the eye can see, and anyone who tries to stand in their way will answer to their lawyers.

Frankly, Hell's charges are cheaper.

[Silverfoxr]

i know a good expample my fave show growing up andstill is the real ghostbusters- when it orginaly aired for a g rated show it contined alot of dark matrial
the necromanicon
a guy with a magic flute bringing the endof the world
werewolves and vmpires
the adults complianed and the show giot ruineed in the later season cause they 'toned itdown'
but i dont think the kids ever complained - heck i lvoved it (mainly cause the jokes against the dark tone helped)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15sJK6Fh_Ys - explosinons in the first 2 miutes

[Netrogo]

Ghostbusters (completely fucking RULED!!! I have the entire original series on dvd here XD) and Sesame Street are two examples of censorship gone wrong. In my opinion anyways.

[Silverfoxr]

Ghostbusters (completely fucking RULED!!! I have the entire original series on dvd here XD) and Sesame Street are two examples of censorship gone wrong. In my opinion anyways.

*jealous!!*

[Netrogo]

Ghostbusters (completely fucking RULED!!! I have the entire original series on dvd here XD) and Sesame Street are two examples of censorship gone wrong. In my opinion anyways.

*jealous!!*

It's just burnt dvds. Friend of mine got them off of ebay

[Alondro]

Ghostbusters (completely fucking RULED!!! I have the entire original series on dvd here XD) and Sesame Street are two examples of censorship gone wrong. In my opinion anyways.

*jealous!!*

It's just burnt dvds. Friend of mine got them off of ebay

Why did they pay for DVDs that had been on fire?   

*Charles is not hip with modern technical terms...*   

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

...a guy with a magic flute bringing the endof the world...

... that he plays like a recorder...

Not that I'm picking holes or anything...

[Netrogo]

...a guy with a magic flute bringing the endof the world...

... that he plays like a recorder...
Not that I'm picking holes or anything...

Llearch is a nerd.

[Keleth]

I wouldn't be proding the box too hard there.

There's more power in one of them boxes, than the rest of the forum put together!

[Hermie]

Okay, I'd like to perform a 180. *spins*

Anyway, in retrospect, I think you actually did quite well giving it that rating, Amber. I thought it wasn't going to be as dark as it was, which actually was a very good thing.

It allowed me to be shocked by the contents of the story arc, similar to what the characters went through. I wasn't expecting that Abel's dad would suddenly flip out and kill Hennya, among other events. With that rating, I was expecting something much softer. It actually made for a nice effect. It was like I was reading a horror comic or something, and I didn't know what was going to happen next. If it had an MA rating, I would have expected all of that.

But damn.. that story just STUCK IN MY HEAD. And you did a DAMN good job on Abel's facial expressions.

... From now on, this will be one of my regular stops on the internet.

For you, Amber, a cookie.  ^^

[Rafe]

...a guy with a magic flute bringing the endof the world...

... that he plays like a recorder...

Not that I'm picking holes or anything...

Recorders are flutes - axial flutes to be specific.  The more well know flute and piccolo are transverse flutes.

[Naldru]

I'm just wondering where you would rate episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dr. Who.  For Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I recall one episode where Willow completely stripped the skin off a person and there was an episode of Dr. Who (Delta and the Bannermen) where a busload of tourists was incinerated.  These were shown on network television in the United States and there were episodes of these shows that were far creepier than anything I've seen on DMFA.