Ratings
4 August

Well, the first week back at work after my hectic sojourn passed swiftly.

Actually, I had been looking forwards to my return with all sorts of trepidation. I was afraid that, in my absence, all sorts of political blunders would have been perpetrated. In the event, all seems to have gone well. But it's a measure of my lack of basic trust in some of my colleagues - mostly those above me in the general hierarchy - that I even considered the matter.

The Monday gave us a meeting of the training team. The meeting was supposed to introduce us to our brave new commercial future. It was the sort of washout that most of us expected. Our lords and masters really do seem to expect us to come up with money making schemes and ground breaking strategies without ever telling us about the business context into which these notions must fit. It then becomes very easy for them to discount anything that they don't like because we do not possess the criteria which they have available to them.

Still, five days of reasonable work passed quickly with the passing compliment of the work that I'm doing being approved of by our major investor.

Then it was a quiet weekend with two DVDs from the local video shop.

We'd had one the previous weekend - Treasure Planet - Disney's latest cartoon adventure which was good fun and probably at about the right intellectual level for us at that time. Ross enjoyed it enormously but that was probably because I detected a great similarity between the cartoon hero and Mr di Caprio. A good three star film.

Friday, we entered the weekend with Final Destination 2 which was a definite pizza movie which at 65 minutes knew how not to outstay its welcome and still pack the goods. It was a quick track through a list of gory deaths which were superbly staged and placed with great aplomb. It was a fun no brainer and worth another three stars.

In a different league altogether, Saturday brought City of God - a tough and gritty tale of drug dealing in the slums of Rio. I can imagine someone like Ken Loach doing this and it would be completely harrowing. This film was all of that at times but was also good fun, exhilarating, cinematically fabulous and full of a carnival energy. Though the final images of the film, with a new and younger generation entering the drug dealing business, were depressing, overall the film had a great sense of optimism about it all. This really was a step up from the other two and worth the extra star.

City of God was understandably rated as an . It's main story line was about drugs; there was a little nudity and some of the violence was quite nasty. Treasure Planet was understandably rated as a . There was nothing there to offend anyone. What I couldn't understand was the given to Final Destination 2.

With an , 17 year olds slip in and some 16 years olds. With a , it's the 14 year olds and 13 year olds who are making the running. Now I know that Final Destination 2 is comic book stuff, it is unbelievable and wears its gore very lightly. It didn't dwell on matters and was quite content to provide the same shock that a good Boo will give you. However, all of the accidents are quite possible (if not probable) and are not nice. Maybe it's another sign of age but I worry about 14 years olds getting into a cinema to see it.

I put my concerns to the guy at the video shop and he completely agreed with me. He went further. He mentioned the fact that the Lord of the Rings films are all certificated as advisory for fantasy violence. Well, it may be fantasy violence but the battle scenes are pretty horrific. Not many years ago, the same intensity would have been the provenance of adults only.

I couldn't understand it but my mentor simply said that that the 12-14 year old market is where the money is these days. And that, to put it simply, is why the ratings system operates the way it does.