Q: Is "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" not yet dated?

A: ...or is it? The answer may surprise you. Unless you have no idea what I'm talking about, in which case, I refer you to this bit of news out of Sundance:

Ratings Group to Work With Filmmakers [AP]

PARK CITY, Utah -- The organization responsible for rating movies announced changes Monday aimed at making the process more meaningful to filmmakers.

The Motion Picture Association of America said a longtime employee will become a liaison to filmmakers to offer advice on scripts and explain the ratings process.

"It's an attempt to listen and build relationships and see if there are some things we can improve," MPAA chief Dan Glickman told reporters. "There's an impression we haven't been as accessible or approachable."

What makes this particularly noteworthy is that the "impression" Glickman refers to -- that the MPAA is neither accessible nor approachable in regards to the process of rating a film -- provides the central thesis for Kirby Dick's 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

The IFC film's official site even offers visitors the chance to sign a petition calling for just this sort of reform.

TFINYR has already been nominated for Best Documentary Feature by the Broadcast Film Critics Association (unsurprisingly, An Inconvenient Truth won). Whether it will be recognized by the Academy will be revealed in a few hours.

My completely uninformed prediction: It will. And you have to wonder if the MPAA felt inclined to trumpet these changes first, as a bit of a preemptive strike against an Oscar slap in the face. Because if Academy voters officially honor Dick's filmic attack, it'll only provide more evidence that Hollywood hates the current film-ratings system (and by most accounts, it does).

Whether TFINYR has any chance to beat Al Gore to the Oscar podium doesn't really matter; in the ways that really matter, Kirby Dick may have already won.

(Um, unless the MPAA "changes" turn out to be little more than window dressing. Which is, you know, almost certainly the case.)

RELATED: This Film Is Not Yet Rated is released to DVD today. How convenient. IFC may very well have timed the release to coincide with this morning's Oscar noms, but the MPAA's announcement, of course, makes the film all the more timely.

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UPDATE (10:25 AM): Dan Glickman has officially responded to this post. In fact, he reads The Answer May Surprise You so closely that he issued his response before my post had even been written. Damn, these guys are good. Anyway, his denials pretty much guarantee that I'm right.

The Oscar nominees have been announced, by the way -- and This Film Is Not Yet Rated is Not Yet Nominated. So please ignore the above prediction. It was obviously a typo.