Content might not be surprising to a Boing Boing reading crowd, or anyone who has paid attention to the media monopoly. But this is well done, engaging, and human, an excellent documentary on the MPAA’s secret rating board. A subject that would be quirky and odd if it wasn’t so problematic.

Make sure to watch the deleted scenes on the DVD, I think they cut some of the best material from the movie.

You may have to be a Netflix subscriber to get this on DVD, as they seem to be the primary distributor for this film.

A children’s movie unsuitable for children. A study in beauty that lingers lovingly over primitive surgery and brutality. A pretty, pretty meditation on fantasy, faerie, and fascism.

Someone asked me, “Sure it was pretty, but was it good?”

Does it matter?

A break-neck, intellectual joy ride very much in the spirit of Guns, Germs, and Steel (and significantly more fun then Collapse), I found it enthralling, and a page turner.

To his credit Mann manages to represent multiple confliciting views (even wrong ones alas!) in a balanced nuanced manner (guarenteed to drive experts crazy), delicate and fraught given how political charged the study of history in the Americas is.

These grand generalist histories, with millenial sweep fill the void of “just so” stories for the 21st century, explaing the big bad world in an engaging, entertaining way. Pure candy if you’re into that kind of thing.