Sex seems to be a requirement for a movie to make it at the box
office if it lacks a strong enough story. Incredibly enough,
studios don’t seem to care much about how obvious the
manipulative appeal of the element can be. Wedding Crashes begins
with a frenzied introduction of the boys dancing like two enraged
baboons in the middle of hundreds and jump cutting to them
pushing naked girls onto the bed. Breasts are aplenty and every
time, it gets a laugh out of the audience.
Is there an easy way to get cheers than through violence or a
sex? Probably not. The one film in recent years that kept its
integrity and still had a solid entertainment and educative value
was The Incredibles. Granted, it was an animation feature
targeted towards kids and there wasn’t much room for any of the
vices. Nevertheless, it proved once and for all that it is
possible to make a great movie without having to use sex as a
bouncing board.
Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series focused mainly on violence,
and not just any type of violence. Comic red heads flying off and
blood pouring out as if it was out of a fountain of death kind of
violence. It did great at the box office and in video stores but
it wasn’t recognized for any awards. "The Academy tends to lean
towards those films that make an effort to appeal to everyone in
the family. While sex and violence are part of our stories, we
want to make sure that they are not gratuitous. The academy
wouldn’t have any problems with it, as long as it is truly
necessary to the story," said Jim Friedman of Hollywood, CA,
about the Oscars.
Crash and Machiavelli Hangman, although they don’t use sex or
violence in excess, do nevertheless push the envelope when it
comes to dialogue. "The characters are real and therefore they
speak like real people and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with
that. That’s why there’s a rating system. If it goes overboard
then it’ll get an R rating, if it’s completely out there, it’ll
get NC-17," says Cleveland Rogers of Miran Films, Inc; the
studio that produced Machiavelli Hangman.
When it comes to creating a sensual atmosphere in a scene, most
often than not, less is more. For example, in Basic Instinct,
Sharon Stone’s best scenes happened when she had some sort of
clothing on as opposed to her nude scenes. The same should apply
for the rest of the films that come out.
Midnight Cowboy was the first film to be rated X and win the
Oscar for Best Picture. However, what was considered a X Rating
in 1969 could barely be considered R today. With a couple of
clips deleted, that film would fall under the PG-13 grouping.
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