MiniMe, That’s Not Chinese, Unfazed and I decided to do a movie marathon over the holiday weekend. Due to the fact that most movies nowadays are longer than the ‘average 90 minutes,’ we only ended up watching two movies in our marathon. Turns out, 60-90 minute movies are, for the most part, a thing of the past. According to IMDb, this was a trend between 1910 and the 1930s. The trend for movie lengths now is a little over two hours. Who has time for that? Not me, I’ve got mail to send, wine to drink and blog entries to write.
While we watched the trailers, which tack on an extra 30 minutes to one’s allotted movie watching time, we learned that, in addition to movies being longer, they are now given ratings AND new and exciting rating descriptors. Descriptors such as ‘mild peril,’ ‘intense sequences of adventure,’ ‘moderate torture,’ ‘small traces of other peril,’ ‘brief nudity,’ ‘mature thematic material,’ ‘brief strong language,’ and ‘comic violence.’ These are just a few of the descriptors. The list goes on and on.
‘Mild peril’ was our favorite, primarily because we liked the sound of the word ‘peril’ and, when prefaced by ‘mild,’ it sounds even better. “From now on when I invite people do things I’m going to provide them with an event rating and descriptors,” I informed my three movie goers and added, “Hopefully I’ll be able to use ‘peril’ in the description.” “Peril is nice,” That’s Not Chinese said. “Only when mild,” quipped MiniMe. “And animated,” Unfazed added. Animation makes porn seem innocent.
Just like the Motion Picture Association of America, I plan to convey with precision my reasons for my ratings. Take Rated R for example. It is quite obvious why she got this blog name – language (pervasive at times), some sexual references (when we ride together with her dog in her Subaru we pretend to be lesbians), brief nudity (she isn’t shy), rude humor (not mild – if that was the case her name would be PG-13), some sexuality (she hasn’t been ‘in the mood’ lately), and brief drug use (she grew up in a small town – everybody did drugs ). Oh, and peril. I give that last descriptor because I like the sound of it and I know she and I have been in peril on more than one occasion. In fact, I have conveyed with precision, in more than one blog entry, about our perilous activities and, I must add, it is usually Ice Cream Man who ends up in trouble.