Dude! That was me!
Wasn’t that a hairy landing? Reminds me of that time Castor Troy was trying to take off in that plane with the helicopter pouncing on the tail fin! Wheeeww! Good times.

I’m cool with all DVD fans (unless they like movies that I don’t, then I scream “Jaccuse!”)
Also, anyone who gets my hopes up to see Gollum’s face and plays me for a suckah!











(just kidding, I laughed at my own naivete :) )

When it comes to this 'Snobs Vs JSP' wars, I am decidely split right down the middle. I like oddball, left of center stuff AND I like some mainstream stuff. The only people that rub me the wrong way are the ones who think it's just plain wrong to like something that they don't like.

I'm smart enough to know that not every movie has to be deep and meaningful to be entertaining, and I'm realistic enough to admit that every 'art' film isn't necessarily a treat to watch.

Failure to cultivate taste does not mean one's tastes are wrong, only undeveloped.

I refer anyone who would like to understand this position in more detail to Richard Caves' Creative Industries : Contracts Between Art & Commerce. It's available from Amazon but it's a bit pricey; I'd request it from interlibrary loan if you aren't by a large university-quality library.

I wouldn't treat anyone that way. I would, however, inquire as to what movies they do like and what reasoning they offer.

Of course, if the best they can offer is "I like them because I like them", then there's little more to say. If they do have expressable, non-circular reasons behind their preferences, than it is possible to discuss how other movies with similar characteristics, how well the movies they prefer use those characteristics, etc.

I also have no problem with people who don't, for example, like black and white movies because they are in black and white. That's certainly a matter of taste. Ditto for people who don't like subtitled movies, movies over 100 minutes long, or movies that lack 5-channel surround sound. That's also a matter of taste.

I might, however, question their love of movies in general if they are only open to an extremely narrow subset of them (such as the DTS example above). For example, if someone said they only like anime and SF action films, I would consider it more accurate to say they like anime and SF action films instead of saying they like movies.

This point is perhaps less controversial when expressed in terms of music. Most people have developed a taste for more complex and developed music than, say, Raffi - or teen pop of the sort by New Kids on the Block, the Backstreet Boys, etc. (You'll notice these groups lose relevance as their own audiences outgrow them!)

There is nothing wrong with undeveloped tastes as long as one recognizes the own limitations of one's own background.

Fun and smart is not impossible. As an example, I would cite The Matrix, Die Hard, or even Speed, which looks like a masterwork of coherency and continuity compared to Armageddon.

One of the better justifications I can think of for Armageddon's issues is that it was intended to be a big, dumb movie, made for an anticipated audience that preferred dumbness to the alternative.

And with respect to the trailer: what ever happened to not judging a book by its cover? :)

There's a reason we have the term "guilty pleasure": for things that we like despite their evident flaws. Is it really the case that people don't see the flaws or consider them to be positives/irrelevant?

Who cares?

Does it matter what others think of your taste? In fact, does it matter what *you* think of other people's taste?

I think much better time and effort could be spent on other things than berating others for being "Elite snobs" or "Uncouth commoners". Do other people affect your viewing tastes at all? Not really. People aren't going to change just by labeling them as some incredibly generic stereotypes.

In summary: watch what you like. If you agree with some people, good. If not, good as well. No need to start labeling and hating them.

Bravo. :)

.

Dave, that's entirely my point. Not every movie has to be Schindler's List. I really didn't care about "coherency and continuity" when I saw Armageddon. It was fun and I enjoyed it, simple as that. I didn't need to be taught any lesson from it. However, if we were discussing Schindler's List the case would be very different. My point is that not every movie has to be a distinguished piece of art and those people that look down on the ones that aren't because it is "beneath" them are nothing short of annoying and filled with their own self-importance. If someone didn't like Armageddon I couldn't care less. It's when the reason is because it's not "art" and that person feels the need to point that out to me.

There is no "issue". If it was intended to be a big, dumb movie as you say (and rightly so), then so be it. It wasn't trying to be the alternative.

No, it is the case that *most* people *do* see the flaws and consider them to be passable in those movies that were intended to be "big and dumb" (like Armageddon).

-exConn

Suppose none of this truly matters. Does that mean it's wrong or irrational for me to care? (*)

I would say it does matter, though my ability to impact it is negligible at best. What I see is dictated by what gets made, which is dictated by what people will pay to see. I rarely intrude into other people's threads on a given movie to crap all over their liking of it, but that doesn't mean I'll pass on a meta-thread like this that discusses the issues at a higher level.

(*) This criterion would dictate I not vote, for example, if I don't derive some satisfaction from the act of voting itself.

If that's true, why did it bother Bay that it was so heavily criticized in certain quarters? From Newsweek (http://www.michaelbay.com/newsweek_m..._to%20_ph.html): "Bay, stung by “Armageddon’s” reviews, wanted to make a movie “with more weight.”...A premium was placed on authenticity"

It would be hard to have less authenticity than Armageddon, which had an asteroid rotating in three dimensions while the people on the asteroid looked at the exact same view of the earth, a superarmored shuttlecraft that fast-moving meteorites don't affect but the crew can blast out of using guns, etc. I would equate these with "dumb", inasmuch as when people say Armageddon is dumb, they mean something along these lines.

Can we all agree that if someone stated they Armageddon was their favorite movie because of its authenticity and realism, it would be an unusually hard opinion to defend?

At this point one can argue for complete relativism: no, all opinions are opinions, they have nothing to do with facts. Then I can ignore one and one's opinion, by one's own reasoning.

Or one can accept that all opinions are not equal, and then the discussion can move from there. I go this route to argue that not all tastes are equally informed, and that people, given the broader exposure to cinema that a longer and longer life provides, will tend to see their tastes move in a particular direction.

For what it's worth, one could also argue that "Armageddon is my favorite movie because of its authenticity and realism" is a mesh of opinion and justification instead of pure opinion like "Armageddon is my favorite movie". Then, of course, we again wind up at the point of asking what's behind the opinion. If nothing, then of course it's all a matter of taste; everything is circular. "I like Armageddon (Citizen Kane) because it's Armageddon (Citizen Kane)."

What gets on my nerves is when people are clearly more into the presentaion (the A/V experience) and the extras than they are into the actual film.

I just don't get the whole idea of a "demo disc". It seems that people will pick up DVDs of movies they don't even like, just because it looks and sounds good. This is the collector that rubs me the wrong way, just because I don't get it.

I suppose the discussion I've sparked is related to whether one believes in high and low art, or not. I came across this; it's a rather interesting opinion on the subject.

http://www.frostburg.edu/dept/phil/forum/HighArt.htm

I'd be interested in hearing people's responses to this piece.

I don't even agree with that article. It's still a generalization. You'd have to define "art" itself below you even start calling something "high" or "low" art.

So what would you call this? High or low art? Or is it even art?

http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/ne...por_right.html

Turner Prize won by man who turns lights off
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
(Filed: 10/12/2001)

THE £20,000 annual Turner Prize, sometimes also known as the Prize for the Emperor's New Clothes, was awarded last night to an artist who exhibited an empty room with lights that flicker on and off every five seconds.

Martin Creed: 'Meanings are made in people's heads'
Martin Creed had warned that people should not look for too much meaning in his Work 227: The lights going on and off. Enthusiasts had called it a statement against the clutter and consumerism in the world.

When his entry for the Turner Prize exhibition was unveiled at the Tate Britain in London last month, it met with a mixture of incredulity, attempts at deep philosophising and plain outrage.

Several visitors walked out, saying the exhibit was unfit to be considered for the most celebrated prize in the art world.

Even by the standards of a prize that has been contested by Chris Offili's elephant dung paintings, Tracey Emin's soiled bed and dirty knickers and Damien Hirst's sliced and pickled animals, Creed's work is widely considered exceptionally odd and is likely to quicken debate about the prize's future.

Previous work by Creed, who was brought up in Glasgow by Quaker parents, include a scrunched-up piece of plain A4 paper, a ball of Blu Tak stuck to a wall, and several neon signs bearing messages such as The Whole World + The Work = The Whole World and Everything Is Going To Be All Right.

The artist, who recently moved to the island of Alicudi, near Sicily, says his work is about the qualities of "nothing".

He has said of The lights going on and off that "it activates the whole of the space it occupies without anything physically being added and I like that because in a way it's a really big work with nothing being there".

He added: "If I can make something without adding any objects I feel more comfortable. It's like, if I can't decide whether to have the lights on or off then I have them both on and off and I feel better about it.

Take any definition of art D doesn't include or exclude (overlap)any of points (1)-(9) of the piece's definition of high art. (If it does, then the definition precludes the existence of high art, low art, or both.) Given definition D, object O is either art A or non-art ~A. If ~A, the article's classification is irrelevant. If A, then it is high art HA, low art LA, or midcult MA according to whether it satisfies all, none, or some of (1)-(9).

I don't see how postulating a particular D1 versus an alternative D2 makes a difference, given that Salo and snuff films are not the issue here, but rather whether or not all film preferences are a matter of taste, or not.

I'm quite comfortable with the notion that people's preferences for watching films where people eat feces and actually murder others are a matter of taste.

So so-called "fun" movies are above criticism? Nah, I don't think so. While you shouldn't judge a summer action film like Armageddon using the same criteria as say, Wild Strawberries, you can still form an opinion about it. There are good pictures of this type (Terminator 2) and bad pictures of this type (Wild Wild West).

No, no. I completely agree. That one line you quoted me on needs to be taken in context with the rest of my post. However, I could have been more clear. No movie is above criticism.

Very well stated. I completely agree with this. You've summed up what my long-windedness failed to do. What I've been trying to say (though not very well) is that to me it's a person using the same criteria for all movies that gets on my nerves.

-exConn

How about people who think that as long as it's a Criterion, it's worth owning?

how about the people who put links to their dvd collection on the bottom of all their posts? What is the idea behind the purchases? To own films that you enjoy, or to win bragging rights?

Do you have DVD collection envy? :)

I view them to get ideas for movies that I may not have ever heard of and I post mine for others to see for the same reason.

Face/Off did rock. :)

#1 type people really bother me. I like many action movies. They may not win best picture any time soon but I'll take Die Hard any day over Ladri di biciclette. I also hate people who are really fickle and spell Disney as Di$ney. People who endlessly bash on George Lucas, Steven Speilberg, and Micheal Bay also make me angry. People who bash them can ruin almost and thread in minutes. i.e. "Dang, Ernest Goes to Jail is Full Frame only." "Yeah that suck almost as much as George Lucas."

:up: :up: classic

I hate movie nazis, who can't believe that I didn't think the Matrix was the greatest movie of all time, or didn't love the Godfather, or think Martin Scorsese is god or why I didn't like Pulp Fiction.

Though those critics who always keep on putting Citizen Kane on the top 1 of the top 100 lists can be a bit difficult.

I am partial to Michael Bay myself.
Gasp! That might put me in the fourth categ.
but i'm more of the the third categ.
though i am interested in moving into the second categ. for awhile. :D

My God...I feel like a phoenix, arisen from the ashes...:)

Whoo-wee! Yeah, it's an old thread, but what a great discussion! :D

How did a year-old thread get resurrected?

I sort of agree with Dave955. My father used to listen to his music on a stereo that sounded like it was playing through a toilet paper tube, muddy and muffled. He didn't even want to shop for a better system, because he was happy and didn't want to hear what he had been missing. This is not an ignorant man: he a world authority in his field who'd published 100 papers in chemistry journals. But he saw no point in expanding his horizons if he was happy with what he had.

The world is full of people happy not to expand their horizons. So producers give them what they want, in movies, music, television programs, and books that are mostly rearrangements of what they've seen before and liked. To me it represents a loss of potential.

I like dumb movies, but I like other kinds as well. If lots more people liked them too, I wouldn't have so much trouble seeing them. When we saw The Fast and the Furious, the theater was full. On the other hand, in the last couple of months we've seen Citizen Kane, The Secretary, The Godfather, and Metropolis in a new "art" theater. There were always under a dozen people in the audience. I don't think that theater will last very long.