philip wood may well be right in claiming that
>> the complexity and validity of his points about Jarman's Blue proves
that
>> this film exists because of and for vastly different reasons than
Singin' in the
>> Rain
or that
>> because minority areas of film culture remain obscure and inaccessible,
>> doesn't mean that they are any less valid than Casablanca. . . .
. . . in short it's certainly possible to find legitimate and compelling grounds
on the
basis of which to defend 'art film' and 'difficult' cinema generally . . . and
we hardly
need to justify such films on the basis of their residual benefit for other
cinemas despite
the likelihood that
>> a lot of academics will quickly point to how Bunuel, Fassbinder etc.
have
>> influenced the mainstream
. . . but when philip wood adds that
>> that there is an important distinction and difference between film as
>> entertainment and film as art - or film as business and film as culture.
>> Both have different motives, methods and results and so it is misleading
>> to apply the same criteria or expectations to both.
i think it not only necessary but also important to object . . . by this same
argument we could not make ethical judgments about murderers because clearly
they have their own
motives and we therefore certainly cannot judge their actions by the criteria
that
apply to moral folks . . .
there may be many, perhaps different, even mutually exclusive standards by which
the quality of a film's achievement may be judged, but surely selling a lot of
tickets is not
one of them, at least not for those of us who care about cinematic quality
[whatever the
hell that might mean] . . . obviously there are those who care not a damn about
cinematic
quality, and for whom financial success is the only success that matters-- but i
doubt that
many such people are participating in discussion on this list
mike frank
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