So in a bit of Oscar news, The King's Speech was won all the precursor awards and is pretty much a lock to sweep at the Academys. Which is kind of disappointing--as I said before, it's pretty much the definition of the safe choice, and we're all going to be looking back in years' time and wondering why they chose it over other quality contenders (i.e. Social Network, Black Swan)--but I didn't HATE the film, and actually enjoyed it quite a bit.

Also... and this is kind of old, but there are preliminary plans to re-edit the film so they can achieve a PG-13 rating instead of an R. Because... you know, more money = more Oscars? I don't know. I have a couple of thoughts on this:

1) I kind of want to hate the s*** out of the film now. The only reason the film had an R rating in the first place is because there is a pivotal scene in which a bunch of expletives are thrown out in a moment of catharsis. The film would be worse off without the scene and I can't imagine how they would make an edit and still maintaining that moment of catharsis. To even consider it boggles my mind.

2) Everyone knows the MPAA is ridiculous anyway (cause a string of expletives that a 12 year old has probably heard hundreds of times before = more damaging to young minds than violence), so if you have a crowd-pleasing R-rated movie, why don't you just go to the press and derail the hypocrisy of the MPAA and thus promoting it as a "safe" R-rated film?

3) And this is a movie about a member of the royal family struggling with a speech impediment. Exactly how many 14 year olds are going to want to go see this with their friends anyway?

4) Thankfully, Tom Hooper (the director) has come out and said he's against the idea... I don't know how much power he has over Mr. Weinstein, but if he hadn't done this, I probably would rage hard when he eventually wins Best Director. I mean, he doesn't deserve it anyway... but even less so if he felt like submitting power over his film to someone else.