Free Republic

The Motion Picture Association of America has given an upcoming pro-life film the highest possible rating, meaning that teenagers who can legally have an abortion without parental consent will not be able to watch a film depicting one unaccompanied. Unplanned, a film about the real-life conversion story of former Planned Parenthood manager Abby Johnson, has been given an "R" rating, which prohibits under-17s from watching a film unless they are accompanied by a parent or guardian. The filmmakers were certain they were making a PG-13 film, but the MPAA has informed them that it will be rated R for "some...

On April 1, a re-edited, PG-13 version of the Oscar-winning film "The King's Speech" opens in 1,000 theaters, minus a scene of swearing. That one scene, in which speech therapist Geoffrey Rush advises tongue-tied king-to-be Colin Firth to unleash a stream of obscenities, originally earned the film an R rating. But after winning the Academy Award for best picture--and earning more than $300 million worldwide--the Weinstein Company decided to trim the offending scene and re-release the film for family consumption. The Weinstein Company hopes that the new verson, which will replace all the R-rated prints that have been running in...

CBN.com – RATED “PG” FOR USE OF JESUS? Michael Catt is the pastor of the 3,000 member Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. He is also Producer and Director of the football movie, Facing the Giants. The movie was written, directed, produced, financed and cast by volunteers from his church. Only five professionals were paid for work on the movie. Facing the Giants is about a high school football coach who draws up a new game plan after running a losing team for six years. The coach dares to trust God to do the impossible, and through Him, he and...

In her short story "The Displaced Person," Flannery O'Connor had a character for whom "Christ in the conversation embarrassed her the way sex did her mother." In many circles, talking about sex is no longer taboo, but talking about Christianity is taboo. Many secularists have no problem with explicit sex and violence, but they find explicit Christianity terribly offensive. Now Christianity is joining bad language, nudity, and gore as an element that movie ratings warn us against. Facing the Giants is an evangelistic movie made by Alex and Stephen Kendrick, the "associate pastors of media" at Sherwood Baptist Church in...

Kirby Dick was steamed. Somebody would have to pay. It was sometime in 2004, and he had run out of patience. Too many independent filmmakers, people just like him, he said, were being made offers they couldn't refuse: cut cherished scenes from their movies or get smacked with an NC-17 and disappear into commercial oblivion. Director pals told him what he suspected already: the secretive, too-powerful Motion Picture Association of America was hammering independent filmmakers with tough ratings while letting the major studios off easy. You couldn't reason with the ratings board, the indies bleated; it wouldn't even let you...

A spokesman for a pro-family group warns that parents should not be convinced of a movie's propriety for family viewing based solely on its rating. He says more and more moms and dads are experiencing a growing sense of "ratings creep," where what was once unacceptable for a certain movie rating is increasingly seen under that rating, until it becomes commonplace. Ed Vitagliano, director of research for the American Family Association (AFA), says these parents are not imagining things -- ratings creep is real. "I think parents are getting increasingly concerned that they can't trust ratings, and they never know...

<p>Sure, when it opened last week, "The Matrix Reloaded" savaged a few box-office records as if they were so many flimsy Agent Smith replicates. But it still couldn't beat out "Spider-Man" for a record three-day opening. And that amounts to a notable failure for this movie, considering that it benefited from more advance hype and fevered anticipation than the invasion of Iraq.</p>