Want to watch the perfect movie to celebrate the change of guard in the Oval Office? Check out Master’s of Horror episode “Homecoming” by Director Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling). It’s out on DVD so you can rent or buy it and it runs just under 1 hour. It is a satirical look at the Bush administration, Fox News, and the un-American way in which these forces treated the public and our friends and family in the armed forces. Check out the trailer here:
This is a fun film to watch as you get to tag along with the filmmakers in a devious act as they hire private investigators to track down the identities of the MPAA’s highly guarded secret groups, 1) the raters (those individuals who “slap” movies with arbitrary ratings); 2) the appeals board (those super-secret-people whose job it is to act as judge and jury of your appeal to get a lower rating — for example, you might show a 1.5 second flash of a women’s pubic hair in your film and they gave you a NC-17 (aka “X”) rating but you disagree with their call as come on, it’s not like the actress in question is spread eagle at the dinner table with a speculum inserted as the family sits down to “dinner”…guess who is behind this do-gooder group?!!!
“This Film…” shows the MPAA to be present mainly to protect the dominance and control of big movie companies. Secondarily, they function as the moral gatekeepers for the minority class of reactionary America. But we already could figure this out, however, the film does a fairly good job in showing exactly how this works and looks like. “This Film….” exposes the MPAA’s self-justification for existence as the smoke and mirrors it is. All is exposed as the names and faces of the secret cabal of MPAA movie raters and “judges” (aka the Appeals Board) all of whose identities are hidden because the MPAA don’t want them to be influenced by “negative” forces. Or is it because then they could stand to lose their Wizard of Oz like power?
One of the best moments is when the MPAA, a HUGE force behind the whole “making a copy of a movie is piracy and evil” frenzy, actually makes an unauthorized copy of a movie! They say it’s okay because the copy is safely held in a vault. Hear that kiddies? If you have ever made an “illegal” copy of a movie just throw it in a “vault” and you are no longer a danger to society! Yaaaaaaa! Anyway, the film is good piece of investigative reporting style documentary work with a clear message.
![[Valid RSS]](http://www.hellasolutions.com/images/valid-rss-rogers.png "Validate my RSS feed")