Movie and game ratings are silly.

I went to school both here in Belgrade and in the United States. In the States there were all these restrictions on what could be shown on TV, and what movies you could go and see without your parents. In Belgrade there were none – you could go to a theater and see a porn movie, and newspaper kiosks displayed magazine covers with naked women and porn photos. Yet on both sides of the Atlantic my friends were pretty much the same: sex-obsessed teenagers that have somehow managed to get their hands on a porn tape or two.

So the two different systems pretty much produce the same result.

Also, he current rating system that tabulates violence, sex and indecent language is broken. It doesn’t take into count the emotions behind those things. My son can watch Tom and Jerry explode dynamite sticks in each other’s faces without being affected, yet the first five minutes of Finding Nemo left him in tears.

The way to incite violent behavior is not by displaying it, but by making people afraid. My country went to two wars during the ’90s. In both cases the people were persuaded not by imagery of us kicking ass, but by displays of (real or made up) savagery by the other side.

I saw Batman begins on Saturday. When it first came out I didn’t want to watch it because the first three films were so awful, but changed my mind after I saw the astronomical IMDB user rating (most good mainstream movies are 7.x, yet this one got an 8.3).

Best movie this year. It has plot, it has pace, it has good acting. Nothing like the first three that insulted their audience with idiotic two-dimensional antagonists that speak using only bad puns.

Batman was also played masterfully by Christian Bale. I’ve seen him in American Psycho, Equilibrium, and The Machinist, and while I didn’t like any of those movies, I definitely liked his acting. His transformation in The Machinist was particularly impressive.

The only bad thing about the movie are the fighting scenes. Darkness and fast camera work make it all a blur, so what’s the point? Why didn’t they hire the guy that choreographed the fighting in the Bourne Identity? That movie had some pretty impressive and refreshing hand-to-hand combat.