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The age rating for the 1964 “Mary Poppins” has been increased in the U.K. due to “discriminatory language.”

On Friday, the British Board of Film Classification upped the Disney movie’s cinema rating from U, meaning it contained “no material likely to offend or harm,” to PG for “discriminatory language.”

In a statement to Variety, a BBFC spokesperson said that the film “includes two uses of the discriminatory term ‘hottentots’. While ‘Mary Poppins’ has a historical context, the use of discriminatory language is not condemned, and ultimately exceeds our guidelines for acceptable language at U. We therefore classified the film PG for discriminatory language.”

The word is a racially insensitive term for the Khoekhoe, an indigenous group in South Africa. The BBFC further explained that the word is used in the film by Admiral Boom (Reginald Owen), including when referring to the chimney sweeps whose faces are covered in soot.

In the new Hulu comedy-drama “Quiz Lady,” the shy Anne (Awkwafina) has found solace since childhood from her irresponsible mother, Mia father and her boring job watching a “Jeopardy”-esque game show every weeknight. And she even envisions the host (Will Ferrell) as a father figure. Though game show fans don’t usually have such high drama in their lives, most of the contestants on “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” are literally lifelong aficionados. But not every quiz or game show is a “Jeopardy!” “Wheel of Fortune” or even a “Family Feud.”

There have been a lot of quiz and game show series that were offbeat, short-lived or downright hideous, like CBS’ “You’re in the Picture,” which premiered Jan. 20, 1961, the same night as President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. The show was hosted by none other than Jackie Gleason, who was one of the biggest stars on the Tiffany...

One of the quirks of Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna's annual jamboree celebrating restored or rediscovered movies, is that expensive products of the Hollywood studio system can be just as obscure and hard-to-see as low-budget oddities, foreign arthouse affairs and forgotten silents from a hundred years ago. Dave Kehr's retrospective of neglected items from Universal's vaults demonstrates this clearly.James Whale always liked to say By Candlelight was his favorite of his own films, bypassing the more celebrated Frankenstein films. It's a romantic comedy of confused identities and it's no surprise that P.G. Wodehouse had a hand in the stage source.But in this movie, when a butler impersonates his master in order to seduce a wealthy lady who turns out to be a maid impersonating her mistress, all the irony of Wodehouse's inversion of traditional ideas about class has gone. All right, so George Orwell argued persuasively that Wodehouse...

Ron Moody as Fagin in 'Oliver!' based on Charles Dickens' 'Oliver Twist.' Ron Moody as Fagin in Dickens musical 'Oliver!': Box office and critical hit (See previous post: "Ron Moody: 'Oliver!' Actor, Academy Award Nominee Dead at 91.") Although British made, Oliver! turned out to be an elephantine release along the lines of – exclamation point or no – Gypsy, Star!, Hello Dolly!, and other Hollywood mega-musicals from the mid'-50s to the early '70s.[1] But however bloated and conventional the final result, and a cast whose best-known name was that of director Carol Reed's nephew, Oliver Reed, Oliver! found countless fans.[2] The mostly British production became a huge financial and critical success in the U.S. at a time when star-studded mega-musicals had become perilous – at times downright disastrous – ventures.[3] Upon the American release of Oliver! in Dec. 1968, frequently acerbic The...

[Editor's note: We are going to be supplementing our usual critical fare with more new, previously unpublished creative pieces. We've done a bit of this in the past, most notably with Ken Krimstein's cartoons and Dusty Wright's music; now we plan to increase our publication of this type of content. Please contact us if you would like to contribute original work.

Warning: the chapter below contains "adult situations."]

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress by Roman AkLeff

"We only walk by continually beginning to fall forward." - William Gibson, Zero History

August 1979

Walter Faber packed his sales case for his last weekly exercise in futility. He was looking forward to college, but for this summer, at least, it had been a giant liability. Nobody would hire him knowing that by the end of August, he'd be gone.

Then again, he hadn't been in demand even before that. He'd quit his job at the Friendly's in the mall after his hours per week had dropped into the single digits, opting for Arthur Treacher's instead. That had been an improvement for a while, hours-wise and in terms of camaraderie – the holiday party, and the night when he'd won a bet by eating a whole cup of...

“Some day you’ll learn that greatness is only the seizing of opportunity – clutching with your bare hands ’til the knuckles show white!”

MGM, America’s starriest studio during the Second World War, managed to reach perfection in its writing, music, attitude, and above all the acting performances of its young stars in 1944’s National Velvet. 12-year old Elizabeth Taylor (as Velvet), Jackie Jenkins (as little brother Donald, with his insect necklace), willowy 19-year old Angela Lansbury (as boy-mad older sister Edwina), and 24-year old Mickey Rooney (as Mi Taylor, the jockey with a past, bubbling with resentment of the world), are all outstanding.

The story is a simple and far-fetched one: Velvet Brown dreams of horses, owning them, training them, winning them. Naturally when the chance comes to win a problem horse in a raffle she has to go for it; from here on in, she’s set on...

My wife knows how to make me smile: she just gave me some shoeshine cloths featuring Edward Everett Horton on the package! As a fan and connoisseur of character actors from Hollywood’s golden age, nothing could please me more. And who knows, maybe I’ll even use the disposable wipes to make my shoes look better. I don’t imagine the people at The Decent Man’s Grooming Tools could identify Mr. Horton: whoever designed their product line probably looked for amusing shots in a photo morgue, and that’s that. If the researcher had been more movie-savvy he or she might have sought out a pose of Arthur Treacher, who, after all, was the ultimate movie butler. (He even played P.G. Wodehouse’s...

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Mickey Rooney movie schedule (Pt): TCM on August 13 See previous post: “Mickey Rooney Movies: Music and Murder.” Photo: Mickey Rooney ca. 1940. 3:00 Am Death On The Diamond (1934). Director: Edward Sedgwick. Cast: Robert Young, Madge Evans, Nat Pendleton, Mickey Rooney. Bw-71 mins. 4:15 Am A Midsummer Night’S Dream (1935). Director: Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle. Cast: James Cagney, Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, Ross Alexander, Anita Louise, Mickey Rooney, Joe E. Brown, Victor Jory, Ian Hunter, Verree Teasdale, Jean Muir, Frank McHugh, Grant Mitchell, Hobart Cavanaugh, Dewey Robinson, Hugh Herbert, Arthur Treacher, Otis Harlan, Helen Westcott, Fred Sale, Billy Barty, Rags Ragland. Bw-143 mins. 6:45 Am A Family Affair (1936). Director: George B. Seitz. Cast: Mickey Rooney, Lionel Barrymore, Cecilia Parker, Eric Linden. Bw-69 mins. 8:00 Am Boys Town (1938). Director: Norman Taurog. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Henry Hull, Leslie Fenton, Gene Reynolds, Edward Norris, Addison Richards, Minor Watson, Jonathan Hale,...

Even longtime fans of David Cross may not have seen his latest show, "The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret," a limited-run British-American comedy that can be difficult to find. In the United States, the show began its second-season stint Friday on the Independent Film Channel (also known for "Portlandia," another cult comedy series).

Compared to the kudos Cross got as Tobias Funke on "Arrested Development," or as one-half of the brilliantly surreal "Mr. Show With Bob And David," the response to his latest project has been lukewarm. The Los Angeles Times called Margaret, an office temp hoodwinked into moving to England to sell an impossibly large inventory of an energy drink, "exhausting company," while The New York Timeswent with "yucky."

But Margaret is also the most distilled expression of Cross' talents to date. Where Funke's weird adventures were tangential to the Bluth family's, and the sketch structure of "Mr. Show...