I want to be Neatorama!

One of the absolutely greatest sites on the great wide intarw3b is Neatorama. I like it almost as much as I like boingboing (which gets bonus points because of Cory Doctorow – one of my favorite online peoply-persons – and Xeni Jardin – one of the sexiest online weblishly-folks), particularly because the frequent oddities that get posted like this Ultimate Geeks compilation.

Tracking down and posting all this greatness is inspiring, and I wish I had the time, tenacity, and skill to find and put together all the cool stuff that they give us over at Neatorama.

[tags]Neatorama, Ultimate geeks, YouTube, boingboing[/tags]

Grokking movie ratings

I’ve not seen Beowulf yet, but I would like to eventually. So while looking for reviews and bits of info on the movie today, I found this restricted audiences only intarweb trailer for the movie. And this begins my wondering at just how little the motion picture ratings board understand rating motion pictures.

(I have no idea if this video will even work embedded, but I’ll try it)

To watch the video on YouTube, you have to log in and verify your age. I believe it restricts viewers under the age of 18 (at least, for those who tell the truth in verifying their age) from accessing the trailer.  But what piques my curiosity is how a trailer, composed of scenes from the movie, could be restricted and require an age check when the movie itself is rated PG-13.  Anybody know?

So I start looking, and I find out that I’m not the only one curious about the movie’s rating.  Most of the stuff I find, though, is commentary from before the release of the restricted trailer, so not too many people talk about that.  One site I found with commentary on this idiocy has a list of a few other movies that are similarly baffling in their ratings and show the politics/idiocy/WTF? nature of the movie ratings board.  But hey, if anyone can tell me why 2 hours of semi-realistic animated nudity and extreme violence is appropriate for ages 13 and up but the 2.5 minutes of semi-realistic animated nudity and extreme violence is restricted, I’m all ears.

Oh, and by the way – I have a friend who says every time he sees Angelina Jolie’s face it makes him think of her father, and that pretty much kills her sex-appeal for him.  I completely agree with that, but man I could look at her body a long time and totally forget about her face long enough to think inappropriately about Ms. Jolie.

[tags]Beowulf, Angelina Jolie, Boobies, Motion picture ratings[/tags]