Barnes & Noble

Documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick launches an incendiary, full-frontal assault on the Motion Picture Association of America’s Classification and Ratings Administration (a.k.a. the MPAA's CARA). This is the entity that assigns ratings to movies -- the familiar G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 designations. This secret, unregulated organization wields considerable power over the film industry and operates, the filmmaker asserts, on a highly subjective and prejudicial basis. Dick mercilessly targets individual CARA members with such zeal that he occasionally risks losing audience sympathy, but he successfully brings attention to the conflicting and contradictory standards that the organization employs when labeling movies with questionable content. Filmmakers and critics weigh in on CARA’s various absurdities: Ratings-board members receive no training, are given no specific standards by which to judge movies, and eschew advice or testimony from child psychologists, sociologists, or any other scientists. The organization’s pointed rules on certain aspects of human behavior, such as the length of time a filmmaker may allot to the showing of a female orgasm, also come in for a richly deserved pummeling. All this makes for compelling viewing; after you see This Film Is Not Yet Rated you’ll never take MPAA ratings for granted again. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

In a rare and refreshing reversal of roles, filmmakers put the powerful Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA for short) under the microscope for inspection in Academy Award-nominated director Kirby Dick's incisive look at stateside cinema's most notorious non-censoring censors. Compelled by the staggering amount of power that the MPAA ratings board wields, the filmmaker seeks out the true identities of the anonymous elite who control what films make it to the multiplex. He even goes so far as to hire a private investigator to stake out MPAA headquarters and expose Hollywood's best-kept secret. Along the way, Dick speaks with numerous filmmakers whose careers have been affected by the seemingly random and sexual-content obsessed judgments of the MPAA, including John Waters, Mary Harron, Darren Aranofsky, Wayne Kramer, Kevin Smith, Matt Stone, and Atom Egoyan. Jason Buchanan

Product Details

• UPC: 876964002561
• Source: RED ENVELOPE (MAG400
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Time: 1:37:00
• Sales Rank: 13,235