how to find the rating for unrated films

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In case you like to watch foreign films that are unrated in the USA, but you care about what the film would be rated in the US, here’s the way to do it.

  1. Look up the film on IMDB.com.   For example, look at a movie I like, Stupeur et tremblements.
  2. Scroll down, past the cast, to the Additional details section.
  3. Look for the Certification.  That shows what the movie was rated everywhere that it was rated.  For example, for Stupeur et tremblements, it says, “Iceland:10 | Finland:K-11 | Hong Kong:IIA | Netherlands:AL | Norway:11 | Sweden:7 | Switzerland:10 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:10 (canton of Vaud) | UK:12A | USA:Unrated“
  4. And you can click on any of those links (e.g., UK:12A) to see other movies that had that rating: Angels & Demons, Akeelah and the Bee.
  5. If you want more detail on that rating, you can go to wikipedia’s page on a range of Motion Picture Rating Systems.

purpose of roads: to connect food joints

David Evans1 Comment

Roads exist for me…mainly to furnish reasonably direct connections between cafés and chili parlors, taco wagons and beaneries, eat shacks and confectioneries, burger joints and frozen-custard stands, barbecue sheds and fish camps.  In other words, roads are there to tie one reason for living to another.

from William Least Heat-Moon, Roads to Quoz, p37

movies with switching bodies: the complete(r) list!

David Evans3 Comments

I recently posted a list of movies that I and some friends could think of in which people switch bodies.  It turns out that Wikipedia has a much fuller list (surprise!), although it doesn’t have the Brazilian films Se eu fosse você 1 & 2, so it’s definitely not complete.

The Wikipedia list, below (they also list tv shows, novels, and other media where this phenomenon occurs)

List of movies with body swaps

intellectual controversies among magnificent, erudite dogs

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I was amused by this caricature of academic debates and the fascination they engender.  I also wondered if I’m not attending the wrong conferences.

Intellectual controversies tend to be like dog fights without the teeth, in which the barking not the biting does the damage.  In the case of Rotkopf and Urquiza, however, according to the report in The Gold-Bug, they had very nearly come to bites.  So much so that Oliver Johnson had to break off his discussion of Poe’s influence on Lovecraft…and leave the stage, with Rotkopf congratulating him, saying that every time an imbecile stopped talking, the intellectual climate on Earth improved slightly.  Oliver Johnson had sworn to kill Joachim Rotkopf one day, and Rotkopf and Urquiza had continued their argument in the pages of The Gold-Bug, in a series of increasingly vitriolic articles, which I had followed with fascination, never dreaming that I would one day hear those magnificent, erudite dogs trading insults for real.    (from Borges and the Eternal Orangutans, by Luís Fernando Veríssimo, tr by Margaret Jull Costa, p16-17)

people or dolphins? and the conquest of the Americas

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The other day I encountered this quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, excerpted in Angrist & Pischke’s Mostly Harmless Econometrics:

On the planet earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel, New York, wars and so on – while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.  But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same reasons. (MHE, p11)

which is funny and clever.  Then I read this quote in Luís Fernando Veríssimo’s Borges and the Eternal Orangutans:

Rotkopf…said that he did not understand the modern lament that the conquest of Latin America had been a cultural violation.  There had been no conquest, the natives had won, and the indolent, fatalistic culture still dominated the continent.  They merely allowed the whites to think they were in charge in order to expose them to constant frustration and ridicule.  (B&EO, tr from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, p15)

which reminded me of the HGG quote except for the massive body count of indigenous persons (as well as the racism of Rotkopf’s initial evaluation of native culture).

Of course, the dolphins have had a pretty massive body count at the hands of humans as well, so maybe Adams was wrong after all.

development in dangerous places: more military intervention?

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Given my own (past, all in the past) propensity to find danger in developing places, I was drawn to this Boston Review Forum on Development in Dangerous Places, in which

I completely recommend it all, and especially Nancy Birdsall’s comments.

resenha de filme: O Xangô de Baker Street

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uma divertida sátira do Sherlock Holmes andando canhestro no Rio

No Rio de Janeiro no ano 1886, o imperador do Brasil deu um violão de alto valor para uma atriz francesa que é amante do imperador. Mas quando o violão foi roubado e inicia uma série de homicidas, a atriz sugere que o imperador convide a Sherlock Holmes a vir até Rio para resolver o misterio. Holmes (e seu amigo, o Doutor Watson) passam um pouco de tempo trabalhando no caso mas o resto passam almoçando com a aristocracia local e asistindo ao teatro.

O que segue é menos uma narrativa coerente que uma série de cenas cômicas. Por exemplo,

• O Doutor Watson está possuído pelo espírito de um dos deuses afro-brasileiros

• Sherlock Holmes prova alguma droga brasileira que só o deixa com fome a pesar de estar com uma mulher linda

• Holmes se revela como vírgem e vemos sua falta de experiência com uma atriz brasileira de quem ele se enamora

• E meu favorito: Holmes corre atrás do assassino mas precisa deixá-lo escapar pela diarréia que tem depois de comer comida brasileira.

A pesar de uma trama fraca, o filme é suficientemente divertido e nunca cansa de se burlar da imagem tradicional de Sherlock Holmes. O ator que intepreta Holmes é excelente. (Fala portugués no filme porque estudou os venenos em Macao.)

Uma coisinha que me pareceu estranha foi uma cena – quase ao final – quando Holmes se está despedindo da sua namorada e parece que a cena está cortada antes do final da piada.

Nota sobre o conteúdo: O filme mostra pelo menos duas mulheres mortas e nuas, e um par de vezes se ve os seios de mulheres vivas, uma das vezes dentro de uma cena de sexo (que não chega muito longe e que é cómica).

in defense of walking in ignorance (but appreciation) of nature

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How much you get from walking will depend, in the last resort, upon yourself, rather than the country.  One mind will get more out of a few fields than another will from a range of mountains.  It is a matter of developing a breadth of interests. …

The ideal walker would, I suppose, have geology and all other -ologies at his fingertips.  He would be steeped in history and literary associations.  He would be able to analyse a cathedral into its constituent parts and tag each with a date and style.  He would talk knowledgeably to the locals about crops and craftsa nd industries.  Such a man (supposing his head did not burst) would cover about one mile in a summer’s day.  I prefer to air my ignorance on the hills and walk twenty, noticing what I can.  But certainly a little knowledge of all or any of these things, far from being dangerous, adds immensely to one’s pleasure.

I always wish I could identify more trees, bushes, clouds, etc., but never have the diligence to consistently invest.  So I will continue to “air my ignorance” and see if I can pick up “a little knowledge” here and there.  I’m in Ithaca, New York, where there are ten thousand waterfalls.  I love this town.

from Walking in England, by Geoffrey Tease, quoted in The Walker’s Companion, by Malcolm Tait, p53.  (I own and loved The Moviegoer’s Companion, from the same series.)

Steven King’s Summer Reading Book 2 is a hit! The Tourist, by Steinhauer

David Evans1 Comment

Spies for the CIA, working against and with and next to the DHS (not the Demographic and Health Surveys, as I often mistakenly assume) and the … other intelligence agencies.

Lots of excitement and intrigue.  This book kept me going through my big early child development conference in Rio two weeks ago.

Definitely recommended!

So far, that’s two for two (the other was Dog On It; here’s the whole list).

I’d read the next one, but I’m going to allow myself to be sidetracked by Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s El príncipe de la niebla (a young adult book he wrote some years ago).

what gmail REALLY needs

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Gmail keeps coming out with cool additions: an “undo” button that lets you change your mind for a few seconds after sending an email; the drunk test, that makes you answer a couple of arithmetic problems before letting you send a stupid email at 2am.

I admit that every time I open my work email, I am in fear that I’ll have some email that a survey has gone badly or that a budget has disappeared or that I’ve insulted some international official (but the latter happens too often to really worry).

Can someone develop a gmail add-on that warns you whether you are likely to have bad news emails?  Right after you log in, it plays a peaceful tune and says, Just Relax, There’s Some Bad News Coming, but You Can Handle It.  Everything’s Going to Be Fine.  Breathe Deeply.

Please?