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‘Kick-Ass’ trailer stirs controversy
In the case of SXSW Film opener “Kick-Ass,” the controversy about red-band trailers and how rated-R movies are marketed online is reaching new heights thanks to the fact that the adult content in this case involves a foul-mouthed, gun-toting 11-year-old girl.
Brook Barnes writes the following on NYTIMES.com:
In the trailer Hit Girl salts her conversation with language so graphic that it would make a biker blanch; it’s well beyond the kind of garden- variety profanity that has seeped into mainstream culture. She then shoots a man in the face and uses a whip to kill another.Lionsgate, which acquired the North American distribution rights to this independently produced film, released another red-band trailer on Friday. This one adds references to masturbation in the boy’s voice and has another cascade of under-age cursing.
In both instances Lionsgate complied with industry rules for red-band trailers. The Motion Picture Association of America, the trade organization that bestows ratings and regulates movie advertising, restricts release of these ads to sites that require viewers to pass an age-verification test, in which viewers 17 and older have to match their names, birthdays and ZIP codes against public records on file.
The problem is that the raunchy trailers pop up on sites without age restrictions almost instantaneously. Fans copy them to their own blogs and Facebook profiles and post them outside of YouTube’s so-called age gates. All movie trailers go viral, but the red-band ones speed across the Internet with an added velocity because of their “can you believe what they just said” nature.
Read the entire piece here. [NYTIMES.com]
To watch the controversial international red-band trailer, click here. Obviously, it is very much not safe for work or for delicate sensibilities, so you’ve been warned.
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By Jacob
February 26, 2010 5:35 PM | Link to this
Ya, we are in Texas. The doctors hands you a gun when you leave the birth canal.
By Mike
February 26, 2010 8:47 AM | Link to this
So?