Reply to Topic
Even though I assume the question is in jest, I'll answer anyway: nah.
__________________
Are Marvel Movies Cinema?
My feeling of the subject is similar to the food marketplace.
You can have a sublime meal at your local family run restaurant. Fresh ingredients, exquisite experience, fine wine. Maybe that restaurant makes a profit some years. Maybe some years it doesn't. Sometimes the meals can be a bit pricey. But the food is more often than not lovely, hand crafted by a chef, lovingly prepared .
Or you can have a McDonalds. A mass marketed product enjoyed across the world for the everything now consumer. That makes the company $6Billion profit every year.
Sometimes you have a blow out and go for the 2nd option. But if you choose that option every single time, something's got to give.
You can have a sublime meal at your local family run restaurant. Fresh ingredients, exquisite experience, fine wine. Maybe that restaurant makes a profit some years. Maybe some years it doesn't. Sometimes the meals can be a bit pricey. But the food is more often than not lovely, hand crafted by a chef, lovingly prepared .
Or you can have a McDonalds. A mass marketed product enjoyed across the world for the everything now consumer. That makes the company $6Billion profit every year.
Sometimes you have a blow out and go for the 2nd option. But if you choose that option every single time, something's got to give.
I'm sure eating in that exquiste restaurant would cost a small fortune after a while so it is a treat you have every now and then.
The other thing is why is Mucky Ds so popular?
The mass appeal of a slab of meat in a bun with some lettuce and ketchup accompanied by some anorexic chips (fries to you Americans).
It's basic but people seem to love them.
A bit like a blockbuster movie.
Now the exquiste meal is not as popular but appreciated by the more discerning epicurist.
A bit like a Fellini film.
Different tastes appeal to different people.
You have got to admit though those top chefs do tend to look down their nose at the fast food outlets as if they are better than them while the FFOs just have to point to their popularity and their profits.
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
Speaking a a fairly regular Joe who stumbles across this site in 2003...
Far from feeling looked down upon or condescended to, I have, for the most part, felt more enriched and downright lucky to have fallen in with a group of people that are more widely versed and knowledgeable about film. I still watch all my run-of-the-mill stuff and blockbusters, but have also absorbed, and continue to absorb and explore, more shall we say refined cinema. For every Back to the Future, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Infinity War, I now also watch Stalker, Don't Look Now, or Three Colors: Blue. Without this site and its more dedicated, hard core cinema heads, I doubt that would be the case.
Ad for whether or not Marvel movies are cinema, I tend to lean towards yes - but I also think there are many types of "cinema" or, just to chuff Marty off, "content."
Far from feeling looked down upon or condescended to, I have, for the most part, felt more enriched and downright lucky to have fallen in with a group of people that are more widely versed and knowledgeable about film. I still watch all my run-of-the-mill stuff and blockbusters, but have also absorbed, and continue to absorb and explore, more shall we say refined cinema. For every Back to the Future, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Infinity War, I now also watch Stalker, Don't Look Now, or Three Colors: Blue. Without this site and its more dedicated, hard core cinema heads, I doubt that would be the case.
Ad for whether or not Marvel movies are cinema, I tend to lean towards yes - but I also think there are many types of "cinema" or, just to chuff Marty off, "content."
Definitely room for both. I can go to the theater with my boys to see the latest blockbuster, come home and fire up some pretension on the Criterion Channel. Life is good.
__________________
Letterboxd
Letterboxd
You have got to admit though those top chefs do tend to look down their nose at the fast food outlets as if they are better than them while the FFOs just have to point to their popularity and their profits.
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
Insults can fly pretty liberally from both sides of this particular cultural divide. But I'm not sure those who enjoy popular films are any more condescended to than those who like more 'art school' fare are considered snobs, elitists, phonies, pretentious and people who simply don't know how to have a good time. I've pretty regularly seen the notion that they are being 'fooled' by directors who are just con artists. That, sometimes, they are only pretending to like the movies they say they like (the good old Emperor's New Clothes argument). Sure, these movies forums do give more of a voice to those who like these smaller, weirder movies, but they certainly aren't exclusive to these views. You are simply getting a better representation of both sides of this argument. Blockbuster lovers are still here in full force. Back in the real world though, you're back to being the only person around who has these pretentious or eccentric views that people seem to be deeply distrustful of or confused by.
My experience may be coloured by a bizarrely heated argument I had after my viewing of Guardians of the Galaxy when a complete stranger took issue after overhearing a conversation with my friends where I explained my lukewarm reaction.
Even putting aside this condescension, I find it weird how defensive people get when you express you don't like these movies, at least in my experience.*I mean, they make billions, are well reviewed and generally well liked.*Are we not allowed to dislike them at all? There's a weird level of identification going on, as if an attack on these movies is an attack on the people who like them.*I'm sure somebody smarter than me has gone into this in more depth at some point.*
My experience may be coloured by a bizarrely heated argument I had after my viewing of Guardians of the Galaxy when a complete stranger took issue after overhearing a conversation with my friends where I explained my lukewarm reaction.
My experience may be coloured by a bizarrely heated argument I had after my viewing of Guardians of the Galaxy when a complete stranger took issue after overhearing a conversation with my friends where I explained my lukewarm reaction.
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
Martin Scorsese’s infinity war:
And to return to Scorsese’s latest, actual, point: Curation should be celebrated, just as expertise should be appreciated and encouraged. And there’s a reasonable place for the algorithm. The rapacious capitalistic dictates of what kinds of movies get seen, streamed, and distributed shouldn’t be swept under the rug, any more than the grim economic realities of our current era that led to that predicament. Sure, we can well assure Scorsese that we know the difference between varying kinds of content: A Fellini film and a YouTube video of a cat falling out a window to AWOLNATION’s “Sail” are very different things, thank you very much. But it’s disingenuous to pretend we’re his intended target: The corporations and bottom-line-minded decision makers who dictate the value of content don’t give a **** about qualitative differences, and certainly don’t care about the artistic merit of one over the other. Who controls our access to both art and entertainment is very much a matter of crucial importance, and the extremely rich people determining those matters do not need defending. They need the Martin Scorseses of the world to call them out; and rather than take umbrage at the suggestion that any movies we enjoy could be anything less than capital-A Art, maybe the rest of us need to support Scorsese, lest we eventually not even know what it is we’re missing out on.
|
|