Red-Band Trailers Reach Underage Audiences

Posted on February 23, 2010 at 9:36 pm

I am quoted in Brooks Barnes’ New York Times article today about the “red-band” trailer for a new superhero movie called “Kick-Ass.” Red-band trailers contain R-rated material and are supposed to be shown to adults only. In theaters, they are restricted to being shown before R-rated movies but online it has been impossible to stop them from being virally disseminated. The name comes from the red background on the notice of the content at the beginning of the trailer. In theory, it is red like a red light for a car, meaning stop. In reality, it is red like a red cape for a bull, meaning full steam ahead.
In the red-band trailers for “Kick-Ass,” an eleven-year old girl uses some of the strongest language possible and engages in a good deal of violent mayhem, killing many people. The girl is played by Chloë Moretz, who is now 13.

“Studios hide behind the notion of an age requirement for these trailers, but it’s pure fiction,” said Nell Minow, a lawyer who reviews films for radio stations and Beliefnet.com under the name Movie Mom. “It’s easy for kids to access, and that’s exactly how the industry wants it.”

Moreover, the severity of age policing varies, with some sites — including the Trailer Park section of MySpace, which had the red-band version as of Tuesday — seemingly leaving it to the honor system and asking for only an easily lied-about birth date. (A MySpace spokeswoman, Tracy Akelrud, said the site used other controls to detect under-age users. “If you are under 17, you will be blocked,” she said.)

The global nature of the Internet poses another challenge: foreign Web sites, which do not fall under control of the motion picture association, are easily reached through Google.

The studio, Lionsgate, has a good point when they say that the “suitable for appropriate audiences” green band trailer for the film gives a misleading impression of the movie’s content. Barnes quoted their statement: “It’s really important for people to know what kind of movie this is so they can make an appropriate decision about whether or not they want to see it.”
But it is also really important for people to be able to make that decision without exposing themselves or their children to the very material they think is unsuitable.
To express concerns about this issue, contact:
Marilyn Gordon
Vice Chair of the Classification and Ratings Administration (CARA)
15301 Ventura Blvd., Building E
Sherman Oaks, California 91403
(818) 995-6600 (main)
(818) 285-4403 (fax)

Farewell to the Music Greats of 2009

Posted on December 29, 2009 at 10:19 pm

The New York Times has a superb video tribute to the music greats we lost in 2009, from Michael Jackson to Koko Taylor, Mary Travers, and Sky Saxon, all in under five minutes. Well worth a look.

Related Tags:

Music

Disney Admits that Baby Einstein Does Not Help Babies

Posted on October 26, 2009 at 8:00 am

Disney, which had to drop the word “educational” from its marketing of Baby Einstein DVDs following complaints from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), has now had to back down further and offer a refund.
The New York Times reports that the $200 million a year business, which is predicated on the idea that DVD-watching is beneficial to infants even though the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time of any kind, television, DVDs, or computers, before age 2, is so pervasive that as many as a third of all American babies have seen at least one of these DVDs. In what the company is calling an “enhanced consumer satisfaction guarantee” and the CCFC is characterizing as capitulation, the company will refund $15.99 for up to four “Baby Einstein” DVDs per household, bought between June 5, 2004, and Sept. 5, 2009, and returned to the company.
I have been a furious opponent of Baby Einstein and the other DVDs for infants since I published the one of the first exposes of them as a racket in the mainstream media, a 2005 article in the Chicago Tribune. When I was working on the article, a company representative’s absurd response to my question about academic studies showing no benefits in learning from their products that their DVDs were “not research-based.” The New York Times story reports that even though they had to remove the word “educational” from their literature following CCFC complaints and a Federal Trade Commission investigation, the website still promises “number recognition” and introduction of shapes. And, of course, the name itself implies that the products increase knowledge or intellectual capacity.
The academic studies show that what infants learn from watching a family member once takes them four times as long to absorb in a DVD. And the very act of watching a DVD with the pulsing refresh rate of the screen can be at the same time soporific and stimulating, making it more difficult for them to get restful sleep. The only thing they learn from these DVDs is how to watch television. Susan Linn of the CCFC was a terrific resource for me in my work on this issue and I am delighted to see her success in bringing to parents’ attention how useless these DVDs are.

My Other Job

Posted on October 23, 2009 at 12:00 pm

I’ve been speaking out a lot on overpaid executives this week and commenting on the pay cuts imposed by the Obama adminstration’s on the top executives of seven of the bailout companies. I appeared on Bloomberg, the Nightly Business Report, and the NBC Nightly News, and in the New York Times. The Oregonian was nice enough to quote me as a leading expert in its editorial. And I am in the midst of a debate with University of Chicago professor Steve Kaplan on whether executives are fairly paid. I’m arguing that they are overpaid. If you agree, you can vote on my side.

Now, back to the movies!

Related Tags:

Media Appearances

List: Movies About Corporate Governance

Posted on April 19, 2009 at 8:39 am

The New York Times interviewed me for its “Corner Office” section and asked me for a list of my favorite movies about corporate governance.

“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” (2005). Must viewing for an almost operatic rise-and-fall story of greed and hubris.

“The Solid Gold Cadillac” (1956). Add a couple of zeros to the numbers and this classic comedy about a small shareholder who takes on a big conglomerate could have been filmed this year. Ripe for a remake!

“The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994). The Coen Brothers’ take on corporations is both spoof and satire, making some shrewd points about success and corruption.

“Roger & Me” (1989). Must viewing in the era of the bailout. Watch for the many indicators of poor business judgment, including a “Me and My Buddy” exhibit with a mechanized worker singing to the machine that put him out of a job.

“Startup.com” (2001). The go-go madness of the dot-com era amplifies the challenge of finding that fine line between vision and hubris. Unforgettable characters.

“Boiler Room” (2000). Set in an illegal pump-and-dump brokerage, this movie perfectly captures the adrenaline rush of money-making.

“Executive Suite” (1954). A rare movie that focuses on the boardroom with a post-World War II C.E.O. succession struggle between the green-eyeshade C.F.O. Fredric March and the stakeholder proponent William Holden. See also the terrific animated movie “Robots” (2005) for a similar struggle.

“Owning Mahowny” (2003). This fact-based film stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as a Canadian bank executive who embezzled millions of dollars and lost every penny in gambling casinos. What is fascinating is the way that every single person in the film, from the bank loan officers to the auditors and investigators and casino managers to the embezzler himself, are constantly assessing risk.

“The Corporation” (2003). A provocative documentary that measures corporate behavior against the standard diagnostics for human behavior and concludes that it fits the profile of a sociopath.

“How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” (1967). This outrageous musical comedy about a mail clerk’s rise to the top of a corporation is less of an exaggeration than it appears.

“Office Space” (1999). A cult classic about a Dilbert-ized world of workers oppressed by an endless series of management fads.

“Tucker: The Man and His Dream” (1988). A fact-based cautionary tale about corporations subverting the market. See also the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” (2006) for an updated version.

“Sabrina” (1954). This elegant confection of a love triangle, with Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, also includes one of the most stirring defenses of the public corporation as a force for opportunity and creativity that has ever been put on film.