There’s no shortage, as usual, of exasperated critics this morning in the wake of the announcement of nominees for the 84th Academy Awards. Our quick first favorite is the rant from the eminently qualified Richard Roeper.

He starts off his look a this year’s Oscar snubs with an always welcome Shawshank Redemption reference, followed by a salient media observation:

Amazing, but these guys still think the best way to announce the Oscar nominations is to hold a press conference at 5:30 a.m. Pacific time in order to get maximum coverage from the morning chat shows.

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It seems like a stigma that should have been broken long ago, and yet, an NC-17 rating for a U.S. theatrical release remains a perceived kiss of commercial death. However, per a great look at this issue from AP writer Jake Coyle, the arrival stateside on December 2 of the critically acclaimed sex addict drama Shame could mark the beginning of an adult ratings marketplace shift.

National Association of Theatre Owners president John Fithian tells Coyle the idea that NC-17 films cannot be advertised in newspapers is something of a myth. As long as the materials are tasteful, it’s not really a problem he argues. (Online, there are no real restrictions.) Also, somewhat surprisingly, he suggests filmmakers are ultimately the ones feeding the stigma:

In surveying 100 theaters, the theater owners’ group found that 97 would play a NC-17 film… “What we currently have is a system that’s slightly flawed in the reluctance of filmmakers and distributors to use the NC-17,” Fithian says. “What they’ll do is cut and trim and try to cram a movie into the R rating category so that it escapes the NC-17, and that’s not a legitimate use of the system. We end up with a very broad R category.”

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