G.B.F. is a good-natured teen comedy about prom queens in search of gay best friends. Its depictions of affection are chaste and its language is clean. So why does it have an R rating?

As a companion to our earlier post about the sanitization of film through the PG-13 rating, here are a few examples of when things swung the other way. (It is namely dicks that are swinging.) Though the penis's on-screen presence virtually guarantees an R-rating today, we found a few examples of fully naked guys on…

It's a great time for PG-13. Seven out of the nine films nominated for Best Picture at this year's Oscars were rated PG-13. Eight of the Top 10 grossing films of last year in the U.S. sported that rating. It's become something of a badge of honor: This Means War was edited to qualify (not that it made a difference in…

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…

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.)

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…