05/12/05

LC050512

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

PG or PG-13 means a movie is nonviolent, right? Maybe not.

Luci Jenkins>> There are PG films that have, you know, so many
acts of violence just like the R films.

Val>> And then, will a "Monster-in-Law" be "Unleashed" at the
box office this weekend? Inquiring "Mindhunters" want to know.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Parents depend on them to help choose movies that are
appropriate for their children, the movie rating system, the G,
PG, PG-13 and R. But can you trust that rating system?
According to a study by the Journal of Pediatrics, not all PGs
are created equal. Sam Louie takes a closer look at the MPAA
rating system.

[Film Clip]

Sam Louie>> Whether it's a PG --

[Film Clip]

Sam Louie>> PG-13 --

[Film Clip]

Sam Louie>> Or R-rated movies --

[Film Clip]

Sam Louie>> Critics feel the current movie rating system
doesn't offer a consistent standard to measure violence.

Luci Jenkins>> And what we found is that several PG and PG-13
films were actually just as violent as R-rated films.

Sam Louie>> Luci Jenkins is with the UCLA's School of Public
Health. She is one of the co-authors of this journal article
published in the American Academy of Pediatrics. The article
examines and evaluates the Motion Picture Association of America
otherwise known as the MPAA and its treatment of violence in its
rating system.

Luci Jenkins>> For the study, we looked at one hundred films
from 1994 that included PG, PG-13 and R-rated films. From those
films, we looked at the violent content within to see if the
ratings were distinctly different in terms of the violence
content.

Sam Louie>> Because of the large sampling of films in the
study, the authors say it gave them a unique opportunity to
dissect the violence scene by scene and find common trends among
the various rated movies.

Luci Jenkins>> First we looked at the frequency of the
violence, so any time there was a violent act, we stopped the
film and we decided how serious was that violent act and we
ranked it on a scale of one to three. A level one seriousness
would be something like a slap in the face where a level three
seriousness would be a weapon discharged.

Sam Louie>> The researchers say they also looked at how
explicit and graphic the violence was, whether there was blood
or flesh torn, and rated it accordingly. Not surprisingly, what
they found was that, on average, the frequency of violence
increased from a PG film to PG-13 to an R-rated movie, but they
were stunned by the fluctuation of violence they found even
among movies that shared the same rating.

[Film Clip]

Sam Louie>> Case in point? The study concluded the movie "True
Lies" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and the remake of "The
Jungle Book" were among the most violent movies in their sample.

[Film Clip]

Sam Louie>> Statistics from the research claim that "The Jungle
Book" had more acts of violence than "True Lies", yet "The
Jungle Book" was rated PG while "True Lies" got an R rating.

Luci Jenkins>> That was what we were concerned with, is that
there are PG films that have, you know, so many acts of violence
just like the R films.

Sam Louie>> And in your eyes, you feel there needs to be a more
consistent rating system?

Luci Jenkins>> The main conclusion from the study is that -- or
the big take-home message -- is that parents need to look beyond
just the age-based rating. They need to look beyond the PG, the
PG-13 and the R.

Sam Louie>> The study shows nearly seventy percent of all
parents check a film's rating before allowing their children to
see it. Researchers say this underscores the need for a more
thorough rating system.

Luci Jenkins>> This is highly serious violence and we feel like
the MPAA could do a better job at rating the films in terms of
the violence content.

Sam Louie>> The MPAA did not comment on camera, but released
this statement saying "the MPAA rating system has never
classified films merely based on counting the number of violent
acts in the film. The MPAA system considers graphics,
intensity, context, etc. - factors most parents consider not
just a numerical count. Under the MPAA system, films are rated
by parents. The MPAA rating descriptors are formulated by
parents immediately after seeing the film." On its website, we
learned eight to thirteen parents make up a ratings board based
in Los Angeles. The board views each film and, after a group
discussion, the board votes on the rating. Each rating is
decided by majority vote.

Dr. Teri Webb>> We think that they would be able to come
forward with much more concise, much more precise and
straightforward content-based ratings, which is what we are much
more in favor of.

Sam Louie>> However, Dr. Teri Webb, the other co-author of the
study, believes the MPAA should take the lead and formulate a
more exhaustive review system.

Dr. Teri Webb>> That would mean designing a method that could
capture both frequency as well as seriousness of violence and,
then again, maybe frequency and seriousness of language
transgressions, maybe frequency and graphicness of sexual
representations. So they could add a more objective element, a
sort of systematic methodology, to their analysis or to their
ratings schema. It is an alternative to the MPAA rating system.

Sam Louie>> Dr. Webb points to a review system known as PSV
ratings, which she hopes the MPAA will one day model. The
website says the ratings are conducted by child development
specialists in which each film is rated in three categories:
profanity, sexuality and violence. A simple stoplight color-
code is assigned to the different categories for each movie.

Dr. Teri Webb>> You have a kind of streetlight system so that
you get the red, yellow and green. And how they lay it out is
that, for each film, they give you a rating on those three
parameters: profanity, sexuality and violence. They give you a
green light, a yellow light or a red light.

Elaine Ahmad>> Violence is probably the biggest thing that
concerns me and probably sexual content for the younger ones.

Sam Louie>> Some moviegoers we talked with believe the MPAA
offers a good first step for evaluating movies.

Jessica Keith>> They seem to do a pretty good job. They pick
the movies and rate the movies according to how they think they
will sell. They target the ones to kids to kids, the ones to
adults to adults and teens to teens.

Sam Louie>> But they also feel strongly that its ratings should
not be the final factor in your decision-making.

Elaine Ahmad>> Well, I do think it could use improvement, but
at the same time, I do feel like it is the parents'
responsibility to screen the movies themselves and decide which
ones are appropriate for their children.

Sam Louie>> Despite the difference of opinion over the current
rating system, the MPAA suggests that parents do more than just
check the rating. They should read movie reviews, parents'
magazines and consult other rating systems before making a movie
choice for your child. This way, there will be fewer surprises
for both you as a parent and your child as a viewer.

[Film Clip]

Sam Louie>> I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts
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and Times".

Val>> Get ready for the final ad blitz in the race for Los
Angeles Mayor. Los Angeles City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa
is challenging incumbent, James Hahn. I talked with Kevin
Roderick, a seasoned journalist who's been covering Los Angeles
and California politics for Los Angeles magazines. His most
recent article lists the ten issues that will have the biggest
impact on the election, including support from labor unions
whose leader, Miguel Contreras, died unexpectedly last week. So
how does the death of Miguel Contreras -- unexpectedly,
obviously a loss to Los Angeles -- how does his death affect the
race?

Kevin Roderick>> Well, it's a sad development and we've never
had anything happen quite this way in a Los Angeles race, so
it's hard to tell exactly how it plays out. But the potential
impacts are interesting. Miguel Contreras was a close personal
friend of Antonio Villaraigosa, was his daily consiglieri and
advisor in the last campaign four years ago. After Hahn won,
Contreras and labor made their peace with the new mayor and
Contreras became an airport commissioner and very close to Hahn
and indeed most of his unions have endorsed the mayor this time
around. But in the primary, we saw that most labor union
members were supporting Villaraigosa and I wonder if now, with
the death of their leader, a very emotional moment in the
movement, whether that will help turn people even more to
Villaraigosa's corner.

Val>> From almost a sentimental point of view.

Kevin Roderick>> Exactly, just out of sentiment. Because it
was always a hard sell to get many of these labor union members
to support Hahn even though he was a friend of labor. But
Villaraigosa actually comes out of the labor ranks. He was a
labor organizer and has been in the trenches with them for a
long time.

Val>> Now Mayor Hahn has been bringing attention whenever he
has the chance to his record on crime, that crime has gone down
under him, and his appointment of Chief Bratton. How big an
issue will that be?

Kevin Roderick>> Well, you know, people do feel safer, I think,
these days than they did a few years ago, although lately there
have been some unsettling events like the freeway shootings and,
you know, the riots at the high school. That's sort of
disturbed peoples' sense of safety, I think. But there's no
doubt about it that Chief Bratton is Jim Hahn's best weapon in
his bid to get re-elected. He stands next to him as much as he
can in photo opportunities and press conferences. In fact, I'm
surprised that Chief Bratton ever gets any time to run the
police department because the mayor is always taking him out
into the city to stand next to him and it makes the mayor look
good. Villaraigosa, though, has played that correctly, I think,
because he has said that, if he is elected, he is going to be a
full-fledged supporter of Chief Bratton. In fact, he calls
Chief Bratton the best police officer in the country.

Val>> You've covered Jim Hahn. He's not known for being a
dynamic, scintillating personality (laughter). How much of a
factor will that be in this election?

Kevin Roderick>> Well, I've always thought that that's a little
bit over-rated as a factor in Los Angeles. If you look back at
the mayors that Los Angeles has elected in the past, none of
them were Mr. Charisma. I mean, Richard Riordan, an
accomplished man, a nice man, but not the life of the part.
Certainly Tom Bradley and Sam Yorty were not and, before that,
everybody is a faceless name out of the past. They're not
people who you'd remember. But Hahn's lack of charisma and sort
of his blandness has been something that people have commented
on a lot in this race. Particularly four years ago, there was a
real contrast from Antonio Villaraigosa. This time around,
Antonio has been toning down his personality some and you do --

Val>> -- why do you think that is?

Kevin Roderick>> Well, I think he's been advised to -- the last
time around, he got attacked by Hahn and Villaraigosa played the
nice guy and did not really fire back. He was advised by his
consultants this time to stand up to anything that's accused of
him, to fire back, and he's been doing that. But it does seem
to take just a little bit of the sparkle out of his personality.
You know, I've heard from people on his side of the race who are
confused by the personality that he's been projecting in this
race and, in some cases, quite bothered by it.

Val>> Both the candidates make a big deal out of education.
They're going to improve schools and so forth, but the mayor's
office doesn't have any control over the school districts. It's
a completely separate entity, right?

Kevin Roderick>> Well, it's the flavor of the moment to have
the mayor talk about the schools and to use his office as a
bully pulpit to try and solve what's wrong with education in the
city. But you're right. Officially, the mayor has no authority
there and very little power and it would be a very tricky thing
to assert the power of the mayor's office over a school district
that represents, I believe, two dozen cities where the people
who live in those school districts don't get a chance to even
vote for the mayor, so why should the mayor get to choose their
school board members?

Val>> Do they just use the school issue because they know that
schools are important to people?

Kevin Roderick>> Every poll shows that where people who are not
feeling unsafe about crime, their next number one issue is the
state of the schools in Los Angeles. So in that sense, it's a
winning issue for the mayor to go after. It's not that he will
be able to solve the problem. That doesn't seem to be required
by the voters. It's just that the mayor as a candidate pay
attention to the schools. You can see that both sides have
embraced it wholeheartedly and are pushing that issue.

Val>> What kind of atmosphere -- or what would the word be --
would you expect to come out of City Hall if Hahn were to win
and if Villaraigosa were to win?

Kevin Roderick>> Well, if Hahn were to win, I think the first
reaction in the mayor's office would be relief (laughter)
because they are running this as underdogs even though they've
been in office for four years.

Val>> Relief and surprise (laughter).

Kevin Roderick>> Yes, I think, to some degree. But seriously,
though, I think there probably would be a little bit of cleaning
house that would happen. Hahn has been criticized for the
mistakes of his staff in many cases and also, if he was going to
be looking toward running for an office in four years when he is
termed out and no longer eligible to run for mayor, he's going
to have to show himself to have kind of a new aggressiveness and
a new skill level there within his staff. There has been a lot
of criticism within the building of just how good his staff is.

If Villaraigosa were to become mayor, I think we would see
certainly a new cast of characters in the mayor's office. Many
of them would be the same. I think you would see the same sort
of representatives from labor and other special interests that
have been around Hahn because they've been holding commissions
in City Hall for generations. There's nothing new about that.
I don't expect that would change with Villaraigosa. Beyond
that, it's hard to say quite what would be different about
Villaraigosa as mayor.

Val>> Well, how about the fact that he would be the second
Latino ever to be mayor of Los Angeles?

Kevin Roderick>> Well, he would be the first one in about a
hundred forty years, something like that, and there is high
symbolic value in that. There is no doubt. When it comes down
to actually governing the city, I'm not sure that that would
matter that much.

Val>> So in addition to writing, you've also entered the
"blogosphere". What can you do on blogging that you can't
necessarily do in conventional journalism?

Kevin Roderick>> Well, one thing, you can react a lot more
cohesive to the news. You know, you can hear something that's
going on or have a thought and post it on the internet and, in
five minutes, it will be read by a fairly large number of
people. That's one of the best things. Also, you can have a
little bit more freedom to express my opinions in some cases or
my analysis of the political kinds of things that are going on.
You know, you can be a little cheekier, also. I've posted
scenes from the campaign in the style of screenplays. I went
out to the photo ops that the candidates held. They got a good
reaction from readers and I think people like to see a little
bit of a different approach to campaign coverage that you can do
on a blog.

Val>> Well, Kevin Roderick, thank you so much for your time and
we'll see what happens on May 17.

Kevin Roderick>> Thank you, Val.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

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Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm
Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film this week is the
comedy, "Monster-in-Law", which features the cinematic return of
Jane Fonda along with Jennifer Lopez.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Henry Sheehan of
henrysheehan.com, and Andy Klein of City Beat and Valley Beat.
Henry, what did you think of "Monster-in-Law"?

Henry Sheehan>> Oh, this was monstrous. Out of bounds
monstrous. What a comeback for Jane Fonda to appear in a fright
wig and an over-the-top performance. Someone mentioned Phyllis
Diller before and that's pretty much what she's trying to do,
channel Phyllis Diller as the mother-in-law or mother-in-law-to
be of Jennifer Lopez who's about to marry Fonda's character's
one and only son.

Fonda's character is a media star who's recently lost her job on
the air. She's kind of a Barbara Walters type. This supposedly
has sent her into a crisis, so there's supposed to be some
excuse for this wild over-the-top animosity towards Jennifer
Lopez. But, you know, it begs frugality that the woman would
have reacted like this in the first place, since Lopez always
has to be presented as, you know, the next best thing to a
saint. So it just becomes a kind of big cat fight for an hour
and a half, but none of the jokes are funny. It's just
outrageously bad.

Larry Mantle>> What did you think, Andy?

Andy Klein>> Henry is too, too kind (laughter). I mean, to me,
this was the worst film I've seen since "Christmas With the
Kranks", another comedy I loved. It is really awful.
Occasionally, two or three times maybe, it rises to the level of
nearly funny, mostly when Elaine Stritch shows up for a cameo in
the last, what, ten or fifteen minutes of the film.

But basically, this is pretty excruciating stuff. It's very
ugly in tone without actually having faith in its own ugliness.
I mean, it has a very dark subtext that I think is like oedipal
in really nasty ways, but they kind of hint at it and then they
never do anything with it, for which reason they have to make
the lead guy be a complete nonentity. I mean, this guy looks
like they just got him from the factory assembly line and
switched him on (laughter).

Larry Mantle>> Well, our second film this week is the action
flick, "Unleashed", starring action star Jet Li along with Bob
Hoskins and Morgan Freeman.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Andy Klein, "Unleashed"?

Andy Klein>> Well, Jet Li is an actor who hasn't been very well
served in his Hollywood career. He did, you know, something
like eighteen films, ten of which were terrific in Hong Kong in
about an eight year period. Now he's been here seven or eight
years and he's made four or five films. The only film he's made
in that period that was really good was "Hero" which was
Chinese. This one is probably the best of his American films.

He plays a guy who, from childhood, was raised as though he were
somebody's pet dog and a killing pet dog, for that. Bob Hoskins
is a gangster who uses him this way. It's a plot that gives
room for a lot of really first-rate action scenes, but also a
certain amount of genuine character development which we
generally don't see in a Jet Li Hollywood film. So I found it
satisfying on both levels. There's a little too much sort of
bullet time Matrix special effects stuff during some of the
fights, but not enough to detract from the pleasure of the film.

Larry Mantle>> You agree, Henry?

Henry Sheehan>> Well, I thought the martial arts scenes were
very good. I mean, they were well shot and Jet Li is a great
fighter. He's not an acrobat like Jackie Chan. He's the former
Kung Fu champion of Mainland China and he's as good as that
implies. But I have a lot of problems. It was produced by Luc
Besson, not directed by him, but generally the directors who
direct for him are really proxies.

Besson has this fixation with Beauty and the Beast. You know,
if you look at "The Professional" with John Reneau and Natalie
Portman and now this, you have a lot of combinations. There's
an innocent little girl and Morgan Freeman plays a blind piano
tuner. You know, they're philosophically opposed to Bob
Hoskins, the evil gangster. You have this kind of strange
monstrous Jet Li character that, you know, essentially they kiss
and turn back into the prince. This all happens at such a kind
of exaggerated over-the-top manner that I found it very hard to
take in as anything approaching a real emotional drama. So a
lot of the film that's not fighting plays pretty false, at least
in my opinion.

Larry Mantle>> And our final film this week is the serial
killer thriller, "Mindhunters", which stars an ensemble cast
featuring Christian Slater and Val Kilmer.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Henry Sheehan, your take on "Mindhunters"?

Henry Sheehan>> Well, this is a movie by Renny Harlin who has
specialized through his career on action sequels. You know, you
can see why because he elevates violence and action above all
other values in a film which, in this case, isn't a bad idea
since this is like the umpteenth version of the Agatha Christie
story, "Ten Little Indians", in which you assemble a group --
ten in Agatha Christie, I think seven or eight here -- in an
isolated location, here an island. People start dying one by
one and everyone realizes that it has to be one of the survivors
who's doing the killing because nobody else is around.

The twist is that the people here are young serial killer
hunters in training for the FBI. It really doesn't amount to
much. The personalities are drawn in very broad caricatured
ways. All of Harlin's energy goes into the depth of the
characters one by one and it's incredibly graphic violence. I
mean, someone has liquid nitrogen spilled all over their body
and they crack up, the skin pulls away, you know, revealing all
the innards which shatter. I mean, that's the type of movie
this is. It absolutely lacks any real emotional suspense.

Larry Mantle>> What do you think, Andy?

Andy Klein>> I was pretty irritated by the plot construction.
You know it's supposed to be silly and I'm not supposed to worry
about this stuff, Henry (laughter), but if you're going to have
a whodunit where you're wondering all along which one of these
people it is and, in fact, there's no human way any of these
people could have done.

I mean, the guy sets up these elaborate Rube Goldberg things
with ten thousand dominos and all that and he's never been to
the island. He's never seen it. They're all like hanging
around with each other all the time. Somehow he slips away in
the middle of the night for two or three minutes, sets up a trap
which depends on somebody being in exactly the right location at
exactly the right moment to trigger it. It just began to drive
me up a wall. I mean, even by "Jason Meets Freddy" standards,
this was implausible and illogical.

Larry Mantle>> Well, thanks so much for joining us for another
edition of FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3
KPCC joined by critics Andy Klein of City Beat and Valley Beat,
and Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com. Please join us again
next week at this same time for FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val>> And remember you can hear a full hour of FilmWeek every
Friday morning at 11:00 a.m. on KPCC 89.3. And that's our
program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times,
thanks for watching. We'll see you tomorrow.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

The governor wants to build up the cargo industry. It would
bring in thousands of new jobs, but it would also bring
something no one wants.

>> And it's ongoing noise, lights and pollution all day long.
In the past, it wasn't always like that, but because of the
added capacity, it just continues to grow and grow and grow and
it's virtually right up against the houses now.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.