It's good to write for The New York Times.

I should point out that I don't blame Stephen Holden (though he's not a favorite of mine) or even [i]The New York Times[/i] for this. For all I know, he stood by passively after apologizing to a publicist that he'd have to duck out on his screening if it wasn't going to start on time while said publicist moved heaven and earth to clear the room for him. It just illustrates the insane amount of pull the [i]Times[/i] has as an arbiter of which films make their per-screen targets in Manhattan, etc, and which ones don't -- especially for smaller and foreign-language films, which might not get distribution at all if an [i]Times[/i] reviewer is unkind after catching a festival screening.

All that said, it would be funny if Holden panned the thing, wouldn't it?

Puppet Sex Leads to Rating Rift

"We blow Janeane Garofalo's head clean off, [but for the MPAA] it's all about the positions of the dolls having sex," Trey Parker said. "It's not funny — it's tragic."