Come on, folks, the reason that Hollywood movies, big-league sports, and political primaries in little tiny states get screaming international headlines is the same reason that Nobel Prize-winning poets don’t:
Money. Period. If big bucks are involved, something must be “important.”
Well, with regards to the OP, I would point out that AOL is part of the Time Warner conglomerate, owner of Warner Brothers Pictures and New Line Cinemas – who has a substantial stake in the Academy Awards, as they produced LoTR. Of course they’re going to talk about their product. It’s not really news so much as advertising.
As for the Olympics…yes, beautiful women in skin-tight suits are good. But it seems to me that the games themselves are little more than self-congratulatory wank sessions designed to glorify the Western nations.
That’s one of many reasons I would recommend not using AOL, but that’s a whole 'nother thread.
Regarding movies, they are art. Some of them are just really boring, commercialistic art. And yes, the media and movie compnanies are interested in money and almost nothing else. For that matter, so is the music industry…
I’m not sure what Lethal Weapon has to do with anything, since I certainly didn’t mention it, and I don’t think it ever won an Academy Award, which is what the OP was discussing. The film I mentioned, Lost in Translation, is nominated for an Academy Award, is an excallent film, and certainly deserves to be called art, and good art at that.
But, yes, Lethal Weapon is art. Why shouldn’t it be? Where is the requirement that art be good? Lethal weapon is art just like Thomas Kinkade or Tom Clancy is art. It may be populist art with little redeeming value, but so what? If I cover my arse in red paint and rub it against a canvas, it’s art, even if it isn’t good art.
There are good films and good art being nominated in this years Academy Awards. That’s why I’m interested.
No, I’m making the argument that I’m interested in the story the OP is commenting on because it concerns a film I like. The media, obviously, devotes time to films like Lethal Weapon because people are interested.
Now **that ** would be worth watching!
Exactly—that’s my point. The OP is bored by movie “news,” I am bored by sports “news,” and we both have to learn to suck it up and deal with it.
Eve, you temporarily restore my faith in humanity.
And I’m bored with Democratic primary “news” so that makes three of us!
Same here and I went to, and am going again to, a Super Bowl party.
I take it as a reason to gather with friends and socially interact. It is one of the few times the TV stays on around my crowd - it is otherwise known as the party sucker
[QUOTE=UncleBeer]
If you disagree then please explain to me the “art” of such films as, say, Lethal Weapon.
[QUOTE]
Mel Gibson’s ass.
Movies are important because for that 2hours while watching a movie we can forget what a hell hole real life can be. For a brief time we can imagine life as we would like it to be. Where the guy always gets the girl, the good guys win, and a cure is always found.
Anything that can make someone laugh, smile, think or even cry is important. Plus you can see boobies.
Most people have sucky lives. Actors and sports stars have GLAMOUROUS DRAMATIC LIVES that we little people can only envy. Why, who WOULDN’T want to be able to buy a thousand Ferraris from three days of work? Who WOULDN’T want to be able to buy out the Chicago Reader a dozen times over off the proceeds you get from a single weekend? Who WOULDN’T want to buy the World’s Largest Hotdog?
Any sort of media outlet is gonna give us little people what it thinks we crave. That’s why we get so many movies like Gigli and Kangaroo Jack… stupid, stupid, STUPID movies, that are just plain STUPID, with a side order of STUPID and extra STUPID lathered on top, with a nice big cup of STUPID to wash it all down, paid for with a STUPID EXPRESS credit card to the STUPID waiter, then you get in your STUPID car and drive back to your STUPID house and wank off to STUPID porn…
Yes, it’s THAT stupid.
Why? It’s punishment. Divine retribution, unleashed on the public for letting Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and The Core be anything but the flops that they are. God was so offended by the hordes of people that stampeded to see Titanic that he unleashed a plague of idiocy and shit.
And not only do we get the movies, TV tries to follow suit. So we get STUPID movies being pushed down our STUPID throats by STUPID infotainers…
Anyway, the ultimate point is that we’re just getting our just deserts.
Bored? You’re bored with the Democratic primaries? Come on, that bizarre, screeching war-whoop that somehow escaped from Howard Dean’s gut was fucking magic!
Yeah, I’m bored too.
Those who want to pick their own poison (politics, science, business and world news in my case; entertainment and sports for others) are encouraged to try My Yahoo. They give you full control over your page.