To quote an official MPAA movie ratings poster: "THE SYSTEM CAN'T WORK UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND THE SYSTEM."

How many NC-17-rated films did you see in the theater in the past year? Maybe one? That is if Ang Lee's Lust, Caution even played in your 'hood. And considering the most screens it ever played on in any single week was 143, I highly doubt it (understandably, it could have played in more than 143 locations over the course of its 20 weeks in theaters, but I doubt many more).

But if there had been more NC-17-rated films, and they actually played near you, would you have gone to see them? And if so, why? Because you expect something more titillating than the other releases to choose from? And if not, why? Are you afraid of others thinking you are going to see something dirty? Are you embarrassed about both attending and watching graphic sex on screen? Do you correlate the experience to going to a porno theater?

Lust, Caution is a great festival film; it's lush and long and loaded. It's also a bad festival film; I want to go back to it and think about it more, as if it were too delicate or intricate to be understood with the snap judgments and quick appraisals a festival can make you turn to at first resort. Like director Ang Lee's prior film, Brokeback Mountain, Lust, Caution takes a brisk, brief short story (Se, Jei by Eileen Chang) and makes it fill the screen, with plenty of room for visual rapture and strong performances -- and some space for doubts and questions to seep in, with a distant whisper of controversy about sex (for the R-rated Brokeback, over gay themes and characters; for the NC-17-rated Lust, over explicit straight sex) at the edge of hearing.

In wartime Shanghai, Mrs. Mak (Tang Wei) enters a parlor and travels to another world. She plays Mah-Jong with idle, wealthy women (who live in constant danger, in the middle of squalor) and slowly, carefully, carries out the steps in a plan to meet her lover, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung) -- husband to Mrs. Yee (Joan Chen), collaborator in service to the occupying Japanese, torturer. But Mrs. Mak's actions don't speak in the warm close whispers of a lover, but rather in the brittle conspiratorial tones of a criminal. ...

Because she is not Mrs. Mak; she is Wong Chia Chi, and she has been on a four-year journey to meet with Mr. Yee and be his lover. Until some later point, when he can be killed. Lust, Caution revolves around a plot, like a thriller, and we try to read it like that; but it also revolves around character and nature, like a drama, and we see it through that perspective. The movie -- and the audience -- jumps from intimate drama to glossy thrills.

Last week Peter Martin told us about rumors that Ang Lee might be working on a less explicit version of his NC-17-rated Lust, Caution for release in China. Now The Hollywood Reporter confirms it's true: Moviegoers in mainland China will see a version with less lust and more caution.

(With a film called Lust, Caution, and a story about cutting out the naughty parts, the headlines practically write themselves. I apologize.)

Lee's new film, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and is currently showing at Toronto, got its NC-17 rating for the United States a few weeks ago -- a rating he and Focus Features didn't argue with. As Monika Bartyzel reported on Aug. 24, Focus CEO James Schamus said, "When we screened the final cut of this film, we knew we weren't going to change a frame. Every moment up on that screen works and is an integral part of the emotional arc of the characters."

Well, apparently in China, about 30 minutes' worth of moments aren't quite as integral to the characters' emotional arcs. That's how much Lee has cut from the film's 156-minute running time to appease Chinese censors. (There's no rating system in China, so every film has to be generally acceptable for all audiences.) Lee reportedly has done the editing himself to maintain artistic integrity, and he's satisfied with the new version.

Which brings up a question: If the film works just as well when it's 30 minutes shorter and containing less sex and violence, why not release that version in the U.S., too, and avoid the box office death that an NC-17 rating all but ensures? I'm speaking from a purely financial standpoint. Obviously, if cutting stuff out harms the film's message or impact, leave it in and keep the rating. I suspect the film really isn't as good in its shorter form, and that Lee is doing what he has to in order to secure the lucrative Chinese box office. Sometimes you have to make tough decisions like that when art and commerce intersect.

Now that J.H. Wyman and his Frequency Films has partnered with former CBS exec Reid Shane, they're gearing up on a number of film and television projects. Top on the film roster -- a teen noir flick called NC-17. Teen and NC-17 together... sounds a bit strange, doesn't it? Considering the title, I'd imagine some sort of satire on the whole rating system, or maybe a horror film where kids who sneak into super-sexy movies found themselves victims of an MPAA-loving psycho killer. Well, maybe not, but it's not like the movie's actual premise ties in any better.

The film will focus on four 17-year-old students who team up to mastermind a crime. That's it; that's all we know about the plot. So, how the title fits in, beyond the fact that the students are 17, is beyond me. The script was written by Wyman himself, and will also be his directorial debut. However, this isn't his first screenplay. In 2001, he was the pen behind The Mexican, the film that assured that big names like Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt couldn't make just any story work. However, it's been a few years, and NC-17 is just one of many screenplays. He told Variety that he's been working on a number of specs, and 3 others are already in the works -- one of which is Tony Scott's remake of The Warriors. As for NC-17, the film is set to go into production with its $10 million in funding from Philippe Rousselet's Les Films de la Suane at the end of the year, so maybe the fog around the plot will clear soon.

MPAA leader Dan Glickman had a lot more to say about the ratings system this week during the ShoWest film exhibition and distribution convention. As you remember, the MPAA unveiled revisions to its system earlier this year, and since then it has had to continually explain, clarify, defend and fine tune its changes due to confusion and dissatisfaction. One thing that continues to be unclear, though, is if the MPAA is more interested in removing the stigma of the NC-17 rating or in altering the perception that an R-rated film is perfectly suitable for all ages. On Thursday the Classification and Ratings Administration, which operates the ratings system for the MPAA and the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), revealed a new advisory for the R rating that it hopes will be a better warning to parents. It will read: "Generally, it is not appropriate for parents to bring their young children with them to R-rated motion pictures."

Additionally, some theater chains are looking to go further and ban very young children from R-rated movies, a practice already observed by many art house cinemas. NATO head John Fithian also spoke about the ratings system at ShoWest, and it is apparent that theater owners have their own ideas regarding the subject. First he stressed the importance of having theatrical releases rated by the MPAA in order to perform well. Even though the NC-17 rating has a stigma attached, movies released with that rating earn more money than those released without a rating. He also claimed that without the ratings system we'd possibly have to deal instead with a government-run system of censorship.

Finally he made a request for Hollywood to stop releasing special unrated editions of DVDs -- or at least stop marketing them as being better because they are uncensored. He said that this practice undermines the authority and purpose of the ratings, plus it emphasizes the idea that for some movies it is better to avoid the theater and to wait for the more complete DVD. I guess we'll have to see if the studios abide by this request, but just be warned there may only be one version of Knocked Up, so you might as well just go see it in the theater. Grindhouse, on the other hand, will probably need an unrated DVD no matter what.

Forget about whether or not the MPAA is actually making improvements to the film ratings system. You can believe that it is, or you can believe that it isn't. The important thing is that the board should be communicating more clearly to moviegoers the point of film ratings and the reasons for a film being rated what it is rated. The worse thing for independent cinema is not that films may unfairly receive an NC-17 rating; it is that the public misunderstands the NC-17 rating. This problem is still mostly the fault of the MPAA, along with the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO). Fortunately, the MPAA may be finally acknowledging this.

Last week, when the MPAA's ratings revision proposal was announced, there was mention of a plan to provide more specific descriptors for R-rated films, addressing whether they are more or less inappropriate for children. I wrote hopefully that this was a plan to steer away from the poisonous NC-17 rating. But in his official declaration of the new policies, Dan Glickman stated the opposite. The MPAA, he said, would like the world to love and embrace the NC-17.

One of the few movies that has been almost universally praised at Cannes thus far is John Cameron Mitchell's (he of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame) Shortbus -- the film is screening out of competition and won't be winning any big awards, but critics have loved it. You'd think, then, that at a festival where the sales market is reportedly pathetically light on quality films, distributors would be lining up to buy Mitchell's film. There's one problem, though: The movie is charming and funny, but also happens to feature real sex, including an opening made up of "a young man performing oral sex on himself in front of a camera, another a young man masturbating as he is whipped by a dominatrix and ... a couple having acrobatic sex in their apartment." So yeah, distributors are facing a bit of a dilemma.

In the US, for example, the movie will obviously be slapped (and like it) with an NC-17 rating, immediately slashing the number of theaters that will even screen the film, in addition to making mainstream advertising practically impossible. While the film could still be released by a canny distributor -- witness ThinkFilm's success with the NC-17-rated Aristocrats last year -- it nevertheless represents a very risky investment in an industry that is nothing if not profit-driven.

James' Shortbus review -- like everyone else, he dug it -- is here; distribution updates will come as we get them.

Picking what films you want to see based on the Sundance catalogue is challenging. Frankly, I pick what films to see largely based on what people are talking about in the press room (the volunteers are a great source of information). The catalogue is written from a fans' perspective. In fact, it's written by the Sundance selection committee, so it's even more than a fans' perspective--it's the opinion of someone who pushed to have the film in the festival above thousands of other films. It makes sense that they would be glowing.

At the start of Sundance you're really picking films based on the talent, the director, the title, and the photo--that's the truth. It's impossible to know which first time directors will breakout, that's the majic of Sundance and that magic occurs over five days. No one would ever have selected Napoleon Dynamite as something they "had to see" based on the catalogue, for example.

That being said, here are my seven in no particular order.

All Aboard: Rosie's Family Cruise

Wow, a documentary about Rosie at Sundance--that's got legs (at the very least to base a drinking game on). The film was one of three films that still had tickets availble to the public today. The other two were the Shorts Selection and TBD. When your film is neck and neck with "TBD" on the available ticket list you know something is up. This film has camp written all over it, but who knows... I'll try and keep an open mind.

(more after the jump)

Personally, I can only handle movies about "blood-thirsty mutant famil[ies]" if they're campy, and after watching the trailer for Alexandre Aja's remake of The Hills Have Eyes, I feel confident reporting that this one is very serious indeed. Aja's version of producer Wes Craven's horror classic has been in the news because of its battle with the MPAA over the film's NC-17 rating (no update on that, as far as we know), but fans of the original are hopeful that Craven's involvement will ensure a quality product.

While we won't know until March if the movie is actually any good, the trailer is awfully promising. It opens with great, news-reel style footage of nuclear tests, accompanied by text about mutation and fallout. Then the images switch to the present day, and the soundtrack turns to the Mamas and the Papas' California Dreamin'. How awesome is that? All bouncy and optimistic-sounding, thinking about sunshine and freedom - and the scary starts. Happily, none of the extreme, NC-17-style violence is featured, but it's very effectively suggested, and the editing creates incredible tension. I've said many times here that I carefully avoid horror movies, but this thing looks good. It might even turn out to be one of those rare remakes that is actually welcomed by fans of the original.

[via Twitch]

As Karina told us, Atom Egoyan is refusing to blur or otherwise edit the big, thrust-filled threesome scene in Where the Truth Lies. He's sticking to his artistic principles and taking his NC-17 rating like a man. Sort of. Word now comes that, though the film's theatrical release will be unaltered, the film will be edited down to an R for home video. Specifically, Egoyan will make changes for Blockbuster and Wal-Mart, neither of which will carry the film without them. In what is possibly the first-ever example of a director being pleased about pan-and-scan, Egoyan thinks that the narrowed frame of the DVD release will enable him to make his film less thrusty without losing much actual footage. Which is good, since he reportedly doesn't have coverage of the scene and would have to totally remove offending sequences instead of simply cutting to less explicit angles.

No doubt whoever owns the DVD rights to this sucker is salivating at the prospect of many different editions, so that Egoyan completeists can be royally fleeced.