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I guess we shouldn't be surprised (horrified is more like it), but gun violence in movies has tripled since 1985, the year the rating was introduced. According to newswise.com, "The most popular PG-13 movies of 2011 and 2012 showed significantly more gun violence than R-rated movies of the same time period, a new study reveals." Could we be any more depressed?  I read yesterday that a gun rights advocate who wrote a (very mild) piece for Guns and Ammo about how maybe we should consider regulating guns just a little, was immediately fired from the magazine and vilified and threatened by his peers, while his editor wrote a meek apology for publishing the story, and was himself fired. Meanwhile, the killings in real life continue, with (you're not going to believe this) 16 mass killings since Newtown, where 20 first graders and six adults were gunned down last December.  (I so dread the anniversary coming up, especially because the vile NRA has promised to hold...

When was the last time you saw someone smoking in a movie?  Used to be that everyone smoked on-screen.  But today it seems only the bad guys are the ones who smoke, almost as if that's another reason we shouldn't like them. But alcohol, on the other hand, has become much more visible at the movies, according to a story by Reuters, as reported by Fox News. Movie characters smoke less since 1998 regulations that stopped tobacco companies from buying on-screen brand placements, according to a new study. But the number of times alcohol brands appear has exploded in movies rated PG-13 and below, while the amount of time characters spend drinking hasn't changed. I love "Two and a Half Men," at least, when Charlie Sheen was on, and there was never a scene where he didn't have some kind of glass in his hand. A lot of people see this as a real problem.  "In movie reality, it seems like every occasion is right for a drink," David Jernigan, head of t...