Movie Ratings

The blood and gore in Mel Gibson's latest epic "Apocalypto" are suitable fare for children, Italy's cinema review board has ruled, bucking a trend to impose age limits on the movie across Europe and prompting a consumer group Thursday to say it would appeal the decision in court. "The film is probably very beautiful and well done," Carlo Rienzi, president of the Codacons consumer group, said in a statement.

Long criticized as arbitrary and secretive, the Motion Picture Assn. of America's system for rating movies has been revised. For the first time, filmmakers appealing a rating can cite examples from other movies that were judged less harshly. What's more, some R-rated movies will carry a warning to parents that they are unsuitable for younger children, according to Variety.

Movies and cigarettes used to go together like Bogie and Bacall, with Hollywood and its stars glamorizing the habit on screen and off. Now films could earn a tougher rating if their characters light up. Under a policy announced Thursday, the Motion Picture Assn. of America said its movie raters would take into account "depictions that glamorize smoking or movies that feature pervasive smoking outside of a historic or other mitigating context."

The streets of Hollywood are littered with the corpses of R-rated action trilogies that once were, with their Terminators and Aliens and Rambos all hobbling around on canes and pulling oxygen tanks. So it's no wonder that as the release of the fourth "Die Hard" film, "Live Free or Die Hard," draws near, Bruce Willis finds himself reaching out directly to angry fans to avoid that fate.

It takes a lot of creativity, and sometimes even a thesaurus, to be a movie rater these days. From their San Fernando Valley screening room, the Motion Picture Assn. of America's raters watch more movies in a year than some people see in a lifetime. With each one, they try to summarize potentially objectionable parts while not giving away the plot.

Oscar-winning director Ang Lee's erotic espionage thriller, "Lust, Caution," has been given an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Assn. of America, signaling to parents that the film may be inappropriate for audiences 17 and under, and restricting admission to only those 18 and older. The film earned the MPAA's strict rating because of "some explicit sexuality."

His new spy thriller, "Lust, Caution," has received the most restrictive "NC-17" rating, but Oscar-winning director Ang Lee says he hopes the movie will change the public perception that the category is reserved for pornography. "In the past, NC-17 movies were equated with pornographic movies. Most movie theaters don't show them," Lee said after arriving to attend the Venice Film Festival, where "Lust, Caution" is competing for the top Golden Lion prize. "We hope to send the message in the U.S.

The NC-17 rating has long been the movie industry's equivalent of the scarlet letter. Slap the label on a movie and audiences would shun it, many theater owners would refuse to show it and the film certainly would be a long shot for an Academy Award. But some in Hollywood are hoping the latest film by Taiwanese director Ang Lee will change the way American audiences perceive the NC-17 label.

In one trailer for "No Country for Old Men," the Coen brothers' tale of murder and mayhem near the Rio Grande, a driver is pulled over by a police car on a stretch of desolate highway and has his brains blown away by a man holding an oxygen tank and nozzle, which he places to the man's forehead.

IS the leader in the global fight against movie piracy a pirate too? That's exactly what director Kirby Dick is charging. He says the Motion Picture Assn. of America made a bootleg copy of "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," his angry broadside against the organization's film rating system. The MPAA has admitted that it duplicated the documentary without the filmmaker's permission -- Dick had submitted his movie to its rating board in November.