Kids In Mind

The MPAA and the BBFC give films age ratings so you know if they're appropriate for your children. And recently they've started giving a brief bit of consumer advice alongside, like the laughable "Contains mild peril" (Finding Nemo), or the ridiculous "Rated PG for non-stop frenetic animated action" (The Powerpuff Girls).

But Kids-In-Mind reckons that's not enough - parents need better information so they can make up their own minds rather than the MPAA deciding for them. Kids-In-Mind claims to provide "Ratings that work".

To this end, they've condensed all worldly vices into three categories: 1. Sex & nudity; 2. Violence & gore; 3. Profanity. And they've given every film a score out of ten for each. (Apparently, other morally dubious activities such as drug taking, theft, racism, etc. don't matter so much.)

So, for example, the recent remake of Halloween gets 10.10.10. The 10 for sex/nudity is for a variety of reasons including, shockingly, "A husband and wife kiss."

The Muppet Christmas Carol gets 0.1.0. The 1 for violence/gore is because "some of the ghost scenes are a little scary and may bother younger viewers."

Year One gets 8.7.5 - a high score despite being only a PG-13. The Favor gets 3.2.3, a very low score for an R.

For me, this just serves to highlight the absurdity of any supposedly objective ratings system. The idea of a bunch of indignant puritans subjecting themselves to ghastly movies just so they can warn other pious parents that there are 398 instances of the word "fuck" in Casino strikes me as hilarious.

This is all very harmless and amusing, but the fact that the official ratings organisations routinely cut material out of films before we can watch them is something else. Why should I be allowed to watch some of the rapey sex and wincey violence in Ichi the Killer, but not all of it? How is anyone qualified to draw that line for all sixty million of us Brits? What's the point if I can just get the uncut version anyway? Isn't the whole system deeply flawed and deeply hypocritical?

Kids-In-Mind might not be the right solution, but they're raising good questions.

Up

#37 at time of writing.

My wife and I attended a preview screening of Pixar's tenth feature at the BFI Southbank last week. My love for Pixar only grows.

There was a particular sequence within the first 15 minutes of the film that made me cry. Within the first 15 minutes! I can't think of any other film that has achieved that, ever. Beautiful, touching, bold, genius. It was followed by a good hour of belly-laugh comedy excellence, and then the end just about lived up to the beginning.

The plot of Up is (typically for Pixar) wonderfully left-of-centre. A 78-year old widower ties thousands of balloons to his home and flies it to the tepuis of South America, accompanied by an unexpected companion. I can't think of any Hollywood films that dare to have an old widower in the starring role since, I dunno, About Schmidt.

Director Pete Docter and producer Jonas Rivera were in attendance for a Q&A after the film. It's wonderful watching a film alongside its creators - the audience was much more vocal than a normal cinema audience, clapping and cheering and laughing out loud.

Pete had lost his voice, so Jonas did all the talking. He spoke of many things. There were no new technical challenges in Up (like fur in Monsters Inc, water in Finding Nemo), which allowed them to focus on design. And it shows - Up is gorgeous. Although come to think of it, isn't being in 3D a new technical challenge?

Talking of 3D, the extra dimension is used subtly to add depth to the sweeping Venezuelan vistas, rather than to make things jump out of the screen. This was the first 3D film, as well as the first animated film, ever to open the Cannes Film Festival.

The producer admitted that they had trouble with the villain character, and indeed I think the villain's story is the weakest link in an otherwise flawless film. The villain Charles Muntz is named after Charles Mintz, the Universal Pictures executive who in 1928 stole Walt Disney's production rights to his highly-successful "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" cartoon series. This led Walt Disney to create Mickey Mouse, who soon eclipsed Oswald in popularity.

Up with Pixar, say I! Bring on Toy Story 3, Cars 2, The Bear and the Bow and Newt! (And 1906!)

Finding Nemo

#112 at time of writing.

A better children's film has never been made. Well, except for maybe Toy Story. And The Incredibles. And, well, you get the idea. Pixar rock.

I have been lucky enough to go scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. It was fantastic, the stuff of dreams. Coral so colourful it could have been designed by Walt Disney. Clams so big you could believe that they'd swallow you whole. The occasional troop of reef sharks minding their own business. Big tubular things straight out of an H. R. Giger nightmare.

Pixar captured it all, and made it larger than life. But that's entirely incidental. The story and the characters are what make this film unforgettable - even to the extent that every now and then my girlfriend still flits around the house singing in Dory's voice, "Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim. Ha ha ha ha ho ho..."

And what fun this must have been to research! The production crew were apparently all treated to visits to aquariums, and diving trips to Monterey, Hawaii and Australia.

As you can see, Finding Nemo doesn't just appeal to kids. And it definitely appeals to me.

Mine!

The Incredibles

#80 at time of writing.

Pixar are a phenomenon. They blasted into the box office with Toy Story, redefining what could be done with computer animation. They followed it up with A Bug's Life, which was at least as good as DreamWorks' contemporary computer-animated ant movie (what are the odds?), Antz. Then, against all odds, they outdid the first Toy Story film with its sequel. For an encore, they produced Monsters, Inc. - a triumph of imaginative comedy.

That's when they pulled out the big guns. Finding Nemo was mind-blowing. Beautiful, touching, hilarious, epic... and absolutely impossible to follow.

The trailers for The Incredibles aroused excitement and cynicism in equal measure. Yay! Another Pixar film! But superheroes? Surely they've lost their touch after a lucky run. Surely after their first five near-perfect films they'll slip up, or lose momentum.

Couldn't be more wrong. The Incredibles is just that. Incredible.

The sheer number and variety of characters, scenes and textures raises the bar sky-high for computer animated films. The idea is simple enough: a family of undercover superheroes, while trying to live the quiet suburban life, are forced into action to save the world. But the result is sublime. A supremely comic and stunningly imaginative blend of the mundane and the fantastic. It makes me want to get up from my seat and dance. Or double over laughing. Or shed a gooey sentimental tear.

This summer, Pixar's seventh feature film will be released, Cars. Yay! Another Pixar film! But cars? Surely they've lost their touch after a lucky run...