Re:Sick of reviewers, critics, skeptics, guides, e
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While your opinion is widespread and almost understandable in modern times, it is completely wrong. Movies are not merely a form of entertainment. Movies can and should be one of the legitimate forms of art and therefore represent all the potential avaliable to art.
Having said this you have to understand the definition and purpose of art. Art is defined as "A selective recreation of reality based on the artist's metaphysical value judgments." This means that an artist takes only what he sees as important and creates a reality composed of only those things. This gets us to the purpose of art. The main purpose of art is to give a perceptual presentation of a complex concept. This is most easily understood when looking at the art form of painting. When an artist selectively recreates reality in his painting, you are able to look at that painting and perceptually see the complex concept of its selective reality. You see the idea of what he thought was important in mind when he painted it, and this is important because you don't have to independantly create the concept from the vast ammount of your own knowledge, but through the perception of sight you can look at the artwork and say "yes, this represents a concept." I'm not saying that you can mindlesly obsorbe concepts from works of art. What I am saying is that when percieving art, the mind can focus on the selective image the artist has chosen to represent without having all the distractions that may be accociated with it in nature. The whole concept of what the artist thinks is important is presented for you visually. This purpose fulfills a human need to understand important concepts relating to reality. This is the same process in movies, but the most important person artistically to a movie is the screen writer. They are the ones that make the plots that represent the selective reality, the actors are merely the means of presenting it. I'm not saying actors are not important, because a bad actor can ruin the best screen play, but they take second chair to the person that wrote the story.
Getting back to movies, you might be saying, "but almost every movie I have ever seen has been horribly inconsistent with no message greater than presenting the events of any random person's life." or... "The messages that are in movies are shallow and have no meaning to my own life so they might as well just be entertaining."... And in both cases you'd be right. Movies have historically been horrible works of art. This is mainly the fault of the screen writers who don't understand that a plot is a logical progression of events leading to a climax that solves all the problems of the story. 45 minutes of car chases followed by a sex scene and then a gun battle won't make a good movie no matter how good the computer graphics are. They are just random events and therefore don't form an integrated view of anything. and for that matter, neither will a movie about the life of your average neighborhood drugstore janitor because that's not a selective recreation of reality, that is reality. If I could learn anything profound from a drugstore janitor, I'd be at the drugstore right now.
Because of the lack of good movies as proof that the medium can be meaningful artistically, I can almost understand why you would never consider movies to be anything other than pure entertainment, but you would still be wrong. Just because you've never seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There are a few examples of good movies with complex messages that relate to reality and you can learn something from. One of them would be the recent "Chocolat". For the most part this is a prime example of cinema following the definition and fulfilling the purpose of good art. If you have seen it, you know that it is obviously not naturalistic. The message of this movie is relevant to life in reality and therefore timeless and the events progress logically to a climax that solves all of the conflicts. You can see this movie and come out of it with a conceptual understanding of a complex idea about reality just by seeing that things had to happen as they did following the logical progression of events that you as the viewer merely perceived visually.
If that makes any since then good.. if it doesn't then we both need to go read up on aesthetics. While they historically, for the most part, have fallen short of impressive, Movies really can be more than merely entertainment and someone needs to come along with a strong understanding of good art and make this happen.
I love it when a highly modded important question like this one gets absolutly no real answer, but all the stupid questions have plenty. this is a legidimate question. is it just that noone can come up with anything?
it is the right of a any programmer to make a living off his creative work. He doesn't have to show you how he made what he made or even how everything works. If it's a good product and it helps you do what you need to do, then buy it and use it. If not, don't buy it and look somewhere else for whatever you need. It's that simple. If you don't like it, don't buy it.
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While your opinion is widespread and almost understandable in modern times, it is completely wrong. Movies are not merely a form of entertainment. Movies can and should be one of the legitimate forms of art and therefore represent all the potential avaliable to art.
... And in both cases you'd be right. Movies have historically been horrible works of art. This is mainly the fault of the screen writers who don't understand that a plot is a logical progression of events leading to a climax that solves all the problems of the story. 45 minutes of car chases followed by a sex scene and then a gun battle won't make a good movie no matter how good the computer graphics are. They are just random events and therefore don't form an integrated view of anything. and for that matter, neither will a movie about the life of your average neighborhood drugstore janitor because that's not a selective recreation of reality, that is reality. If I could learn anything profound from a drugstore janitor, I'd be at the drugstore right now.
Having said this you have to understand the definition and purpose of art. Art is defined as "A selective recreation of reality based on the artist's metaphysical value judgments." This means that an artist takes only what he sees as important and creates a reality composed of only those things. This gets us to the purpose of art. The main purpose of art is to give a perceptual presentation of a complex concept. This is most easily understood when looking at the art form of painting. When an artist selectively recreates reality in his painting, you are able to look at that painting and perceptually see the complex concept of its selective reality. You see the idea of what he thought was important in mind when he painted it, and this is important because you don't have to independantly create the concept from the vast ammount of your own knowledge, but through the perception of sight you can look at the artwork and say "yes, this represents a concept." I'm not saying that you can mindlesly obsorbe concepts from works of art. What I am saying is that when percieving art, the mind can focus on the selective image the artist has chosen to represent without having all the distractions that may be accociated with it in nature. The whole concept of what the artist thinks is important is presented for you visually. This purpose fulfills a human need to understand important concepts relating to reality. This is the same process in movies, but the most important person artistically to a movie is the screen writer. They are the ones that make the plots that represent the selective reality, the actors are merely the means of presenting it. I'm not saying actors are not important, because a bad actor can ruin the best screen play, but they take second chair to the person that wrote the story.
Getting back to movies, you might be saying, "but almost every movie I have ever seen has been horribly inconsistent with no message greater than presenting the events of any random person's life." or... "The messages that are in movies are shallow and have no meaning to my own life so they might as well just be entertaining."
Because of the lack of good movies as proof that the medium can be meaningful artistically, I can almost understand why you would never consider movies to be anything other than pure entertainment, but you would still be wrong. Just because you've never seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There are a few examples of good movies with complex messages that relate to reality and you can learn something from. One of them would be the recent "Chocolat". For the most part this is a prime example of cinema following the definition and fulfilling the purpose of good art. If you have seen it, you know that it is obviously not naturalistic. The message of this movie is relevant to life in reality and therefore timeless and the events progress logically to a climax that solves all of the conflicts. You can see this movie and come out of it with a conceptual understanding of a complex idea about reality just by seeing that things had to happen as they did following the logical progression of events that you as the viewer merely perceived visually. If that makes any since then good.. if it doesn't then we both need to go read up on aesthetics. While they historically, for the most part, have fallen short of impressive, Movies really can be more than merely entertainment and someone needs to come along with a strong understanding of good art and make this happen.
I love it when a highly modded important question like this one gets absolutly no real answer, but all the stupid questions have plenty. this is a legidimate question. is it just that noone can come up with anything?
it is the right of a any programmer to make a living off his creative work. He doesn't have to show you how he made what he made or even how everything works. If it's a good product and it helps you do what you need to do, then buy it and use it. If not, don't buy it and look somewhere else for whatever you need. It's that simple. If you don't like it, don't buy it.