Gawker: Mpaa

Kanye and Friends Record a 'We Are the World' for a File-Sharing Site

Max Read — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:10:00 EST

What the world has been missing lately is a big, all-stars-on-deck charity single to benefit a needy cause (casual racism optional). So we're really glad that Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Diddy, Chris Brown, Floyd Mayweather (Floyd Mayweather?) and others have joined together to release the "Megaupload Mega Song," to benefit the, uh, charitable cause of, well, a file-sharing site. More »

Ex-Senator Chris Dodd Named Hollywood's Top Lobbyist

Jim Newell — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 16:51:49 EST

Recently retired Sen. Chris Dodd, who said last year that he wouldn't take a lobbying job after leaving Congress, has taken a massive lobbying job: Chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America. Congratulations, Chris Dodd! More »

MPAA Decides Lady Oral Sex Deserves an R After All

Richard Lawson — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:10:09 EST

The Weinstein Company recently appealed the NC-17 rating given to its Oscar-bait film Blue Valentine, assigned because Ryan Gosling goes down on Michelle Williams in one scene, and they've won! The film will be R-rated now, no cuts necessary. More »

Blue Valentine: Bohos In Love

Richard Lawson — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 10:09:48 EDT

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Here's a trailer for the upcoming indie Blue Valentine, the Ryan Gosling/Michelle Williams relationship drama that bowled critics over at Cannes with its realistic (read: very depressing) take on a romance that blossoms then rots. It looks... so Brooklyn? More »

4chan Users Leak List of 5,000 Alleged Internet Porn Fans

Adrian Chen — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:52:00 EDT

Earlier this month, pranksters from 4chan's /b/ board launched an attack on anti-pirating forces like the Motion Picture Association of America. One side-effect: a list of over 5,000 alleged Internet porn pirates was leaked on the Internet. More »

4chan Attack Brings Down MPAA Website

Adrian Chen — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 11:59:00 EDT

4chan and movie piracy are closely linked: Many of the anarchic message board's users frequent sites like the Pirate Bay to download movies they can watch alone in their parents' basement. Now, 4chan is attacking the champions of anti-piracy efforts. More »

If Avatar's Sex Scene Was Cut for Its PG-13, then Tendril Sex Is as Obscene as the Penis Kind

Maureen O'Connor — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:09:44 EST

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Now that we've read the script for Avatar's Na'vi sex scene James Cameron's claim that they cut it to avoid an 'R' rating prompts an interesting question: Do sex scenes count if they aren't human and don't involve genitals? More »

Wild Things Scares Kids But Still Rules the Weekend Box Office

Richard Rushfield — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:33:59 EDT

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As the box office tea leaves are sifted, many in Hollywood are searching for a way to take the glory away from Spike Jonze, but whatever, your feelings about the hipster icon, we all bow before an opening weekend victory. More »

Bruno Too Gay for MPAA

Richard Lawson — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:25:25 EDT

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The MPAA's "no homo" rule strikes again! Sascha Baron Cohen's new mockumentary Bruno, in which he terrorizes straight men with flagrant gayness, has earned an NC-17, partly because of a scene depicting buttsex. More »

Jack Valenti Once on FBI's 10 Most Probably Gay List

Seth Abramovitch — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:41:21 EST

It's been two years since silver-maned MPAA drum-beater Jack Valenti passed to the great ratings board in the sky, where he's been gleefully defending the afterlife's classification system. (Heaven: PG-13 for strong language, partial angel-nudity.) More »

40 Reasons to Wish the MPAA Ratings System an Unhappy 40th Birthday

STV — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:45:00 EDT

The MPAA ratings system tomorrow celebrates its 40th birthday — four full decades of tormenting filmmakers, distributors and, ultimately, audiences with an inconsistent moral code symbolized by those infamous G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 ratings. In an interview published Thursday in Time, MPAA chief Dan Glickman and ratings board chair Joan Graves reflected warmly on the system's evolution over the years; and while we agree that Hollywood's self-governance is preferable to the zealotry of the Hays Code and other puritanical watchdogs who preceded it, Graves and Co. remain the city's worst censors by any other name. So join us after the jump to commemorate the MPAA's milestone with a look back at 40 decisions affirming its less-than-inspiring legacy. Unhappy 40th, everyone! More »

Party Clown Dan Glickman Helps Washington Celebrate Ratings' 40th Birthday

STV — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:20:00 EDT

It seems fitting that on a day when pigs and their lipstick are a subject of national discourse, MPAA boss Dan Glickman would add a bit of Hollywood color with a gushing, glimmering tribute to his institution's widely reviled ratings system. The infamous G, PG, R and the disused X celebrate their 40th anniversary Nov. 1, trailed by the PG-13 (est. 1984) and NC-17 (est. 1990) denotations; as Glickman reportedly told a gathering today in Washington, the ratings are "synonymous with the First Amendment ... with political, artistic and creative expression in this country": More »

'Max Payne' Director On 'Dark Knight's PG-13: 'MPAA Scked Warners' Cck'

Seth Abramovitch — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:20:00 EDT

You might have caught a movie this summer by the name of The Dark Knight—a little film that featured [SPOILER ALERT] pencils through skulls, long-winded monologues about surgical disfigurement, and one incinerated Maggie Gyllenhaal—and at times thought to yourselves, "Perhaps this wasn't the best choice for my daughter's Girl Scouts troop monthly Fun Night outing." But it was precisely its PG-13 rating that helped catapult the Chris Nolan film to its current record-breaking box office take of over five hundred gazillion dollars. Other directors are now wondering who at the MPAA they have to fuck to get a similar hall pass on their own darkly violent visions (and please, please God let it not be the notoriously scissor-happy Joan "The Snipper" Graves). But according to Max Payne director John Moore, it was the reverse scenario of the MPAA handing out the sexual favors to the filmmakers: More »

Movie Poster Banned For Alluding To Seth Rogen's Sexuality

Hamilton Nolan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:47:22 EDT

The MPAA, the cabal charged with protecting American decency through movie regulation, has banned a promo poster for the upcoming Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen flick Zack And Miri Make A Porno, just before its debut in Toronto. Too blowjob-y. Considering the film's title, the only surprise is that the poster was so bland. But not bland enough! Now the forbidden ad will be seen only in Canada, as well as on dozens and dozens of websites, including this one:
*Americans, please unclick this post. [via Adfreak] More »

Meet Joan Graves, the Most Powerful Censor in the Film Industry

STV — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:05:00 EDT

Believe it or not, half-ass blogging neophyte Patrick Goldstein has kind of a genuine scoop today at The Big Picture: A heads-up to an interview with CARA (Classifcation And Ratings Administration) board head Joan Graves, arguably the most notorious (and notoriously private) movie censor of the last 50 years. Of course, it's not Goldstein's interview, but rather his wife's, banished to the relatively innocuous comfort of Graves's alumni magazine at Stanford. But that doesn't make it an any-less-terrifying glimpse behind the scenes of the ratings board's "parent-friendly" tyranny: More »

Steven Spielberg taking money from digital film pirates?

Jackson West — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:20:00 EDT

Steven Spielberg and David Geffen are offering Indian conglomerate Reliance ADA a large stake in their production company Dreamworks in exchange for $600 million. What none of the press has mentioned? That Reliance was accused by Universal of selling pirated DVDs. Universal, though, is a rival of Dreamworks parent company Paramount, which in turn is a division of Viacom — who are busy suing Google for $1 billion in copyright infringement damages. Your move, MPAA. [Current] (Photo by AP/Kevork Djansezian) More »

Anti-Smoking Advocates Warn of Encroaching 'Hulk' Nemesis 'Emphysema'

Seth Abramovitch — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:20:00 EDT

Green skin, black lungs: That's what smoking-in-film watchdog group the American Medical Association Alliance is accusing Universal of showcasing in The Incredible Hulk, and thereby encouraging its teen audiences of picking up the deadly habit in order to emulate the cool on-screen persona of William Hurt's stogie-loving army general. From their press release: More »

Help is On the Way For Children Threatened by 'Hulk Smash Hands'

STV — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:50:00 EDT

It's been a while since The Incredible Hulk lumbered into a completely fabricated media controversy, a drought no doubt prompting the LA Times to report today's scandal that... that... Sweet Jesus, we can't even write it. John Horn, would you please step in? More »

Revision3 CEO: Antipiracy group attacked our network

Owen Thomas — Thu, 29 May 2008 11:40:00 EDT

Jim Louderback, the CEO of Revision3, is jumpin' mad. A denial-of-service attack brought down the online-video network over the weekend, and it wasn't the work of a freelance hacker with a distributed network of compromised machines, he writes in the company blog. It was, he says, the deliberate act of MediaDefender, an antipiracy consulting group which works to shut down file-sharing networks. Revision3 uses BitTorrent, a file-sharing protocol, to distribute its own content, and runs a "tracker" server to coordinate those downloads. All of this is quite legal. MediaDefender, it turns out, found a security hole in Revision3's server, and planted unknown files, possibly illegal copies on Revision3's servers, for their own purposes. It's not clear why, but whatever the motive, MediaDefender may have broken several laws in doing so. More »

Just in time for blockbuster season, Ad...

STV — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:25:00 EDT

Just in time for blockbuster season, Ad Age brings into crisp relief the latest crisis befalling multiplexes around the country: Evil, evil popcorn. "According to an Agriculture Department report, next year's corn stocks are expected to plunge to a 13-year low and, as a result, corn-futures contracts have soared to an all-time high," notes reporter Claude Brodesser-Akner. "This can be attributed to the demand for ethanol, which will claim 40% of next year's corn crop, munching away at the margins of theaters that rely on concession sales for as much as 45% of their revenue." The author has more stats as well, none more distressing than that citing an 80% markup currently affecting popcorn and beverages concessions. Wait — except for maybe the one that claims 63% of moviegoers over 12 don't mind ads before the films. The whole thing has MPAA president Bob Pisano predicting "mutually assured destruction," with viewers retreating to the comfort of their homes. Defamer's solution: Booze, naturally, and a section of 21-and-over seats to make it work with the law. Yes, they'll have some drunks, but they do already; who else is the market for The Love Guru? [Ad Age] More »

Movie Industry Starts Hunting Kids With Dogs (No Seriously)

Nick Douglas — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:33:21 EDT

The Motion Picture Association of America is carting two pirate-DVD-sniffing dogs around the continent in honor of "World Intellectual Property Day." They stopped by an L.A. elementary school to give the demonstration shown here: "Lucky" and "Flo" sniff a bunch of boxes of DVDs to find the pirated ones. When I think that the training of these dogs could have been wasted on detecting bombs, I feel so warm inside. But that's not all the MPAA is doing to remind people that it will hunt us down for stealing Harold and Kumar 2! More »

Movie Industry Mouthpieces Shockingly Confident in Movie Industry's Recession Resiliency

STV — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:00:51 EDT

In an environment as volatile and prone to bullshit as the film business is, we tip our caps to the guileless souls who keep it real when things are looking down. Particularly people like MPAA president Dan Glickman, who, when asked by Time Magazine how the industry's '08 crop of retreads, sequels and adaptations might weather the sluggish economy, steadfastly refused to toe the company line:

"When times are bad, our business seems to buck the trend," says Dan Glickman. ... "The movies are great therapy. It's a lot cheaper than a psychiatrist." ...

Oscar Screener Piracy Less Of A Problem, Thanks To Regular Piracy

Nick Douglas — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:51:05 EST

Since the MPAA tried to ban screeners of Oscar-nominated films over piracy fears in 2003, the risk of those screeners leaking to the Internet has actually fallen, according to research by journalist/programmer/dot-com founder Andy Baio. But a month before the ceremony, all but six of this year's 34 nominated films have been leaked online. Below, how movie studios' fear of piracy (okay, "stealing") was the best thing that happened to pirates. Plus, how a studio's fear of piracy kills a movie's Oscar chances. More »

Innocent Data Entry Error Triples Reported College-Student Movie Piracy Numbers; MPAA Apologizes For Previous Call To Have All Universities Burned To The Ground

Mark — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:35:24 EST

· Whoopsies! The MPAA admits that a 2005 study "incorrectly concluded" that movie piracy by college students is responsible for 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses, claiming that a "data entry" error ever so slightly inflated the actual "key number" of 15 percent. [THR] More »

MPAA head asks ISPs to save the movie industry

Tim Faulkner — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:40:27 EST

Dan Glickman, head of the MPAA, is calling on Internet service providers to implement filtering to protect movies from piracy. AT&T has already announced plans to develop such a system, but there are few details. It's also not clear if Glickman has any rationale for placing the onus on ISPs, considering the law's not on his side. And yet, the prospect of holding them legally responsible for piracy on their networks is implied in his statements. More »

The Motion Picture Association of America...

Mary Jane Irwin — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:42:31 EST

The Motion Picture Association of America is trying to hack universities, suggests Techdirt's Mike Masnick. Alongside the proposed education bill that will force federally funded universities to foot the bill for legal file-sharing services, the MPAA is offering a toolkit to monitor network usage that also happens to reveal each user's browser history to anyone who knows where to look. [Techdirt] More »

MPAA learns to pay illegal spies more

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:30:10 EDT

The Motion Picture Association of America claims it lost $2.3 billion worldwide to Internet piracy in 2005. So you'd think they'd be willing to spend a couple extra grand to keep some of its more unsavory antipiracy methods quiet. But you'd be wrong. According to a Wired News story, the MPAA signed a $15,000 contract with hacker Mark Anderson to obtain the names, addresses and phone numbers of the owners of P2P site Torrentspy.com. More »

Butt pirates battle Internet pirates

Jordan Golson — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:33:16 EDT

All-male porn peddler Titan Media has sued to shut down an "online gay porn piracy ring." Titan is suing 22 defendants working on a half-dozen blogs. In this arena, for a change, the porn world is behind the curve, not on the cutting edge of tech. While the RIAA and MPAA have huge budgets and companies like MediaDefender and BayTSP to do their antipiracy dirty work, those companies don't "want to be known in the porn space," according to the CEO of BayTSP. As a result, sex sites must do their own dirty work. More »

The Ultimate MPAA Anti-Piracy Ad

Mark — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:42:06 EDT

Even though the anti-piracy ad embedded above was mocked up by the writers of British (and soon to be NBC) sitcom The IT Crowd, we wouldn't be too surprised if the MPAA was already working on a version to run before American films to help stop the widespread disrespecting of copyrights. Sure, they'll need to change small details like having its scofflaw defecate into a more-recognizable LAPD hat rather than a quaint bobby helmet, but the Brits have already done the rest of the work in communicating to file-sharing teens the core message that downloading a camcorded copy of Good Luck Chuck will earn them a bullet in their bittorrent-addled brains. More »

It doesn't have any mention of "grizzly...

Mark — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:26:37 EDT

It doesn't have any mention of "grizzly images," but this list of MPAA ratings justifications does have an "intense depiction of very bad weather", a Jeffersonian "bawdy puppet show," and "strong bloody ninja violence." [Matineer] More »

Lucky And Flo Take Manhattan

Seth — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:26:59 EDT

After the Motion Picture Association of...

Mary Jane Irwin — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:10:28 EDT

After the Motion Picture Association of America sued BitTorrent search engine TorrentSpy for copyright infringement, a federal court ordered the file-sharing searcher to log all user IP addresses and file traffic. To avoid violating its own privacy policy, TorrentSpy has instead opted to ban all US-based IP addresses. [TorrentFreak] More »

Fox Throws Hands In The Air, Decides It Has No Choice But To Make 'Dallas' As A Comedy

Mark — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:16:03 EDT

· Realizing that no matter what their vision was going in for a long-planned, big-screen adaptation of Dallas, the final result would be hilarious, Regency and 20th Century have finally decided to just give up and officially make it as a comedy. Betty Thomas will direct, and John Travolta will still star as JR Ewing, playing the part in only a slightly bigger fashion as a nod to the project's new direction. [Variety] More »

Lucky And Flo To Receive Malaysia's Highest Honor

Seth — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:49:12 EDT

We're happy to report that Lucky and Flo, the two bacon-lovingest detectives in all of the MPAA, have nearly completed their Malaysian tour of duty, during which they uncovered millions of dollars worth of counterfeit DVDs while successfully evading the bounty hunters who sought to deliver their doggie heads on a plate. Unlike their annoying, Jason Lee-voiced big screen counterpart, however, these canine heroes are every bit the real deal, and the Malaysian government is throwing them a ceremony to show their gratitude: More »

At Thursday afternoon's Cinerama Dome celebration...

Mark — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:14:50 EDT

At Thursday afternoon's Cinerama Dome celebration of the memory of late MPAA icon Jack Valenti, Steven Bochco offered these words of tribute: "He was the human equivalent of the iPhone. He was a small, sleek package with irresistible features." It's probably best that Valenti himself didn't live to see the iPhone era himself, as he likely would have seen the device as "the Son of Sam of intellectual property theft waiting to blast away the young lovers of copyright as they make out in the front of a parent's Oldsmobile, an infernal machine that infuriatingly allows the brazen pirate to call up his friends and brag about how easy it is to steal food from the mouths of hard-working Hollywood professionals." [LAT] More »

More 'Captivity' Ad Fun: Elisha Cuthbert Vs. The Grizzly Bears

Mark — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:19:10 EDT

The producers of Captivity, still reeling from protests about their overly graphic, unauthorized billboards, should gird themselves for a fresh round of outrage from the public. Once it's discovered that their movie contains disturbing images of star Elisha Cuthbert being disembowelled by sadistic bears, they'll likely face protests by PETA, and be forced to fall back once again on the disingenuous explanation that they're just trying to tell an uplifting story of grizzly empowerment. More »

Dan Glickman: We Are Living In A Golden Age Of Hollywood Crap

Mark — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:43:14 EDT

To celebrate a summer movie season that has delivered an unprecedented, soul-crushing string of record-breaking pirate-, ogre-, and superhero-related sequels, MPAA spirit squad captain Dan Glickman has grabbed his pom-poms and megaphone and headed for the Huffington Post to lead the world in a call-and-response "Holly!"..."WOOD!" cheer, careful not to tear anything amid his flurry of ecstatic scissor-kicks. Glickman reminds us that the while the MySpaces and the YouTubes may have their place in modern life, nothing beats a wholesome trip to the multiplex to watch horny college girls get eviscerated by sadistic hostel-keepers for old-fashioned community-building: More »

Anti-Smoking Activists Not Buying MPAA's Lip Service

Mark — Tue, 15 May 2007 13:49:59 EDT

Back on Thursday, MPAA head Dan Glickman attempted to mollify an increasingly militant anti-tobacco lobby by introducing a complicated algorithm for adjusting the ratings for films in which the filthy, "increasingly...unacceptable behavior" of smoking is prominently depicted, which takes into account such factors as pervasiveness, historical context, and how many sexual partners a protagonist accumulates directly from the image-boost an omnipresent Marlboro affords him. More »

MPAA To Now Designate Movies As Rated Light, Ultra Light, And Menthol

Seth — Thu, 10 May 2007 19:35:11 EDT

As his first major order of business since the passing of his larger-than-life predecessor, current MPAA honcho Dan Glickman has announced that the federal ratings board will take the unprecedented measure of factoring in on-screen cigarette smoking into their ratings decisions. But rather than risking penalizing a worthy, smoke-filled-room movie like Good Night and Good Luck with a rating of "LC-17: Parents Strongly Cautioned Some Material May Indirectly Lead to Lung Cancer," the board has established several mitigating circumstances: More »

The future's five enemies (and how to beat them)

Nick Douglas — Thu, 10 May 2007 05:43:45 EDT

NICK DOUGLAS — Wasn't it sci-fi author William Gibson who said "The future is here, it's just unevenly distributed among pithy sci-fi authors"? The future is indeed inevitable, but before it brings us a 24/7 carnival of worldwide post-scarcity, cyborg bodies, and Starbucks on Mars, it must fight enemies like the following five: Baby Boomers, the movie industry and music industries, cell providers, the government, and Web 2.0. More »