Friends,

First, I'd like to apologize for having gone so long without posting a new blog.  I've been keeping myself busy with some other side projects.  One of those projects is now ready to see the light of day.  I'm participating in a new weekly podcast called "SquireCast."  I hope you'll join me on this new venture.

For more information on the background and history of The Squires, please take a look at the SquireCast MySpace page.

To add SquireCast to your iTunes podcast subscriptions, click here. 

For RSS, XML, and non-iTunes podcatchers, use this link: http://podcast.squirecast.com

On behalf of everyone involved in SquireCast, we hope you enjoy the show. 

Ang Lee's new movie, "Lust, Caution," will be released this September with the controversial NC-17 rating.  This could be a very, very important turn of events.  Ang Lee is known around the world as a "serious" filmmaker.  He's a frequent nominee and winner of top movie awards.  (You may recall a recent critical darling featuring gay cowboys.)  Assuming that "Lust, Caution" will be yet another bit of Oscar bait, this movie could single-handedly change the perception of the NC-17 rating.

A BREIF HISTORY OF THE NC-17 RATING.

The MPAA -- the organization responsible for rating movies in the United States -- has always kept a trademarked copyright on all their rating distinctions.  Except for X.  They never registered X.  So the porn industry appropriated it.  Needless to say, in the public's eye, X = pornography; end of story.

The major movie exhibitors began rejecting all movies rated X, regardless of whether they were pornographic or simply adult-oriented (like that one X-rated Best Picture winner featuring a gay cowboy).  They wanted to assure their patrons that they were respectable, kid-friendly institutions.  "Never fear," they were implying.  "Your children won't be seated next to shady perverts in trench coats here."

Money talks.  If you can't get your movie exhibited, then you can't make money from it.  And the studios happen to be in the business of making money.  If they know with absolute certainty that they can't make money on a movie, then they're not going to make it.  So every studio release since the early '70s has been toned down to ensure an R rating or lower.  Leave the adult stuff to Europe.

In the 1990s, the MPAA came up with the NC-17 rating.  This was intended to grant more freedom to the studios.  The NC-17 rating -- this time, duly trademarked by the MPAA -- was a way to distinguish adult-themed material from simple porn.  Porn could continue rating itself with X-es, while mature-content studio movies could receive the MPAA's stamp of approval with the NC-17.

SO WHAT WENT WRONG?

One simple word: "Showgirls."  While one or two movies were released with the NC-17 rating previous, "Showgirls" was the first major, wide-release movie to hit theaters with an NC-17.

And that, my friends, was the beginning and the end of the story.  Since "Showgirls" is essentially soft porn -- though it claims to be satire -- the public had no choice but to associate the new NC-17 rating with the old X rating.  Before it even had a chance, the fate of the NC-17 was sealed.  "Showgirls" tanked, the studio lost money, NC-17 was equated with X, and movies with adult themes were once again left to the experts in Europe.

THE FALLOUT

"Respectable" theater chains instituted "family friendly" policies of not screening NC-17 movies.

Magazines and newspapers instituted policies of not running ads for NC-17 movies.

Television networks refuse to run ads for NC-17 movies.

Most TV networks, including HBO, refuse to air NC-17 material.

Blockbuster Entertainment and other rental chains, as well as most of the largest retailers -- including America's god, Wal-Mart -- refuse to stock NC-17 movies.

In other words, if you're a studio and you make an NC-17 movie, it WILL NOT make any money.  Guaranteed.  The entire purpose of the NC-17 rating has been completely undermined.

THE ANG LEE FACTOR

If "Lust, Caution" is on par with Ang Lee's best movies, then exhibitors will not be able to reject it outright.  It will get a lot of press, critics will throw all their weight into it, and awards recognition will make it impossible to ignore.  People will want to see it, and theater chains will be compelled to provide it to them.  They will make money.  The studio will make money.  The steel-reinforcement around the "no NC-17 policy" of theater chains will be broken.  U.S. filmmakers will actually be able to make movies for grown ups, and the NC-17 rating will fulfill its original purpose.

The thing is, Ang Lee cannot be ignored.  This is the same guy who got U.S. audiences to go see a foreign-language, subtitled film en masse, proving to the studios that such movies could make more than just a handful of art-house-crowd change.  "Lust, Caution" seems poised to do the same thing for an entire ratings classification.

THE HYPOCRISY OF THE MPAA

It's difficult to bring up a topic like this without discussing the de facto censorship policies of the MPAA.  There's an entire movie about it, as well as countless articles and interviews throughout the decades.

In their defense, the MPAA has done a lot of good.  First and foremost, let's all acknowledge that if the MPAA ratings board hadn't been created, the U.S. government would be in charge of regulating movies.  Can we all agree that things would be immeasurably worse if those were the circumstances?  Just ask David Cronenberg how he feels about government regulation for motion pictures.  The MPAA saved us from all that.

Additionally, the NC-17 rating was well-intentioned.  It wasn't the MPAA's fault that "Showgirls" was the herald of their new rating.  The real enemies in this situation are the boneheads who thought "Showgirls" was a great idea.

Without having seen it yet, I'm going to go out on a limb and say "Lust, Caution" is probably closer to what the MPAA had in mind when it created the NC-17 rating.  It promises to be a good, mature story, intended for an intelligent, adult audience.  The graphic violence and sex are incidental to the plot, and not there just to titillate.

THE HYPOCRISY OF ME

Although I am looking forward to seeing some boobies.  Maturely and intelligently.

ADDITIONAL READING

List of NC-17 movies 

MPAA ratings system

Compiled "Lust, Caution" info

Is it strange that I don't have a laptop?  Or is it strange that I think it's strange that I don't have a laptop?  In this day and age, it almost feels like you're entitled to have one.  It's not a luxury item, it's a necessity.  "Here's your birth certificate, and here's your laptop."  (We'd need an amendment that guarantees free upgrades every two years or so in order for the government-issued laptop program to work, though.)

The secretary at my current job has foregone an office computer in favor of bringing her own laptop to work every day.  For this, they pay her an equipment rental fee of $25/week.  If she keeps this job for two years, that would just about pay off the cost of the computer.  Not bad.  Of course, by then, it will be time for her to buy a new one.

It's common for people to use laptops at their jobs, giving them the ability to take their computers into meetings with them.  I've never had the type of job where I need to take a computer into a meeting, but I'm looking forward to when I do.  It seems really impressive.  You know you're important when you're bringing your laptop into a meeting.  Your laptop and your Starbucks cup.  "There's someone who's getting shit done," they say about you.  And then your cell phone rings, and you say, "I'm sorry, I have to take this."  There's no topping that.

I'm curious to see what the future holds for the desktop.  Used to be that laptops couldn't compare in speed or storage capacity to desktops.  Now that they can, there's little reason to have a desktop at all.  You want a desktop, put your laptop on a desk.  Done.  Only the most demanding engineers and CG animators need the ultra power contained in modern tower-based computers anymore.

The point I'm trying to make is that everyone reading this should give me money so I can buy a laptop.  And an iPhone.  The end.

Lost in a Wikipedia clicking binge this afternoon, I noticed a link I'd never seen before.  It's titled "10 things you did not know about Wikipedia."  Among those ten things:  "We are not for sale," "You cannot change anything in Wikipedia, only add to it," and "We speak Banyumasan," which is their way of saying they're available in over 250 languages.

All well and good.  But digging into some of their other points made me feel a little uneasy.  Like "We are not alone."  Here they say, "Wikipedia is part of a growing movement for free knowledge that is beginning to permeate science and education."

My reflex instinct is that this is good; knowledge should be free for the masses.  But then I get visions of cautionary science fiction in my mind.  You know, some scientist starts out with good intentions, but eventually becomes too smart and too powerful.  By the time people realize he's gone too far, it's nearly impossible to stop him.  Think Sylar, or the Lawnmower Man.  Ok, don't think about the Lawnmower Man.

While we can't download all the information from the internet into our brains (yet), the internet itself is like humanity's external hard drive.  Everything -- yes, EV. ER. Y. THING -- is on there for us to access.  Most of it is free.  The rest of it is also free, if you know the right hack or "borrow" the right password.

And it lasts forever.  One of the first things an internet privacy advocate will tell you is that, even if you think you deleted something, it's still out there somewhere.  And it always will be.  There are just acres and acres of hard drives out there, and they retain all information given them, forever.

"We are in it for the long haul," says Wikipedia.  "We want Wikipedia to be around at least a hundred years from now."

I recently had a conversation with a friend who likes to delete his messages in Gmail right away, not trusting the 30-day wait period that Gmail employs before cycling out your trashed mail.  "Google probably archives your e-mail, regardless," I told him.  "If you want your mail to disappear completely, use Hotmail.  You think Microsoft can keep track of your messages?"  Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

I recently fell for the whole Twitter thing.  For those of you unaware, Twitter is a lot like blogging, only shorter and quicker, and therefor easier to keep up with.  Let's face it, even the most avid bloggers sometimes dispel an idea because it's too time-consuming to sit down, write it out, and then post.  (Or am I the only one who feels that way?)  With Twitter, you're only allowed to write 160 characters per post.  Who doesn't have time for that?

One look at Twittervision, and it becomes clear that everyone does, indeed, have time for it.  Twittervision is hypnotic and compelling.  And it really makes you feel omniscient.  You stand back from the world, gaze down upon it, and you know what everyone is thinking.  You're the Riddler.

Of course, Twitter doesn't invade your mind and steal your thoughts.  It only displays what its users are willfully volunteering.  So far.

I don't mean to be too much of an alarmist about all of this.  I love it.  Just yesterday, my girlfriend was trying to remember the name of a lesser-known R.L. Stine book series while we were out with friends.  Some clicking around on a cell phone with mobile internet, and we were set.  You don't even have to wait until you get home to your computer anymore.  It's everywhere.

Now, if science fiction has taught me anything, it's that the machines will eventually become cognizant and turn on us, killing most and enslaving the rest.  In the meantime, I just hope a shadow government doesn't wipe my identity from all electronic records and use information manipulation techniques to frame me for a crime I didn't commit.  That would suck.  But until The Grid turns against us, it's our most powerful ally.