Variety and Cinematical are discussing MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman's efforts to tweak the rating system, including a new way to deal with NC-17 or "hard R" rated movies.
It's clear that NC-17, despite best efforts to classify adult-related material that is not pornographic, has been a failure. Major theater chains won't show the films, newspapers won't run their advertisements, and Blockbuster won't carry the DVDs (although someone has to explain to me why Blockbuster will stock the "unrated" versions of films, as if that's different than an NC-17 rating). Roger Ebert has long championed an "A" rating for adult films (again... non-pornographic) and you can see his very strong feelings on the MPAA overall here.
"We need an A-for-adult rating between the R and the NC-17 (a.k.a. X), to separate non-porn adult films from pornography."
To me, however, the first commenter on Cinematical seems to have it right: whatever these films are labeled, I fail to see why they'll be treated differently by newspapers, video stores, and theater chains than today's NC-17 films (if you can find any, that is).
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