Can anybody who actually subjected themselves to this film (Catherine Wheel?) verify my prediction?

On the one hand, yeah, it's pretty amazing how quality and profitability can be inversely-related. On the other hand... these days, I don't find myself feeling much frustration about mass-appeal media. There was a time when I lamented that Katy Perry and Lady Gaga make billions while what I thought of as "real music" (in middle school, at least) slid under the radar. Looking back, it seems more like a position I staked out in order to elevate myself above the "rabble" in an attempt to increase my self-perceived sophistication, than anything else.

I tend not to draw much of a distinction between high and low culture, and though mass-appeal and art are often separated, I don't think they are mutually-exclusive, and think that there will always be instances where artistic merit and corporate profit coincide. I'm no film connoisseur (there's probably not a single medium or subject of which I am or will ever be), but I think even films about licensed characters can be good, if the people working on them have the care and competence and vision to explore some interesting themes through engaging devices. I think it was Ebert who's maxim was, "it's not what the movie is about, but it's how it's about it."

But, as Sturgeon's Law dictates, 90% of everything is shit, so yeah, we're gonna see way more stinkers from Hollywood than good things.

Yeah, I was more explaining why the movies got different reactions from audiences. For me, I don't see much difference between a film like Green Lantern and a film like Iron Man, even though one was loathed and the other won accolades. I was like, "hey, these were both kinda boring and thin." If Green Lantern only had non-shit CGI, people probably would had loved it as much as any Marvel Studios film. But people prefer a sturdy-but-tacky armchair to an equally-tacky one that is shoddily put together.

There are a lot of art movies that eschew conventional narrative, but I think people can tend to tell the difference between a work creating meaning through alternative means to narrative, and one trying for narrative, but failing at it.

Then again, there will always be grey areas. Some people find David Finch movies on par with Batman v. Superman, and feel that all the claims that they are not meant to be logical are just excuses for poor narrative by viewers willfully blind to the emperor's genitals. I'd disagree with them, but I'm sure people of either opinion could come up with reasons to support theirs.

Yeah. I was reading some Grell Green Arrow, and ordered another O'Neil Question trade.

JLI was good, too. I really hope that DC collects other '80s Giffen stuff, like L.E.G.I.O.N. and Omega Men.

Have you read the semi-recent Superior Foes of Spider-Man? I loved it, and it seemed reminiscent of the tone of JLI to me.

While I get what you're saying and agree with much of it, I don't feel that music and film are adequately analogous due to the significantly higher barriers to entry likely experienced by would-be filmmakers. I may be relating to the concepts of artistic merit and high culture versus low, but my complaint is essentially that one thing is preventing the existence of another and not simply overshadowing it.

It may be true that artistic merit and commercial viability can coexist, but it's also not exactly common. Perhaps things are different in bigger cities, but it's only once or twice a year that I could hope to see something I'd like in any of the regular theatres.


Do you really think so?

I'm really stubborn and I started out with an attitude that I was going to make films the way I and those people I chose to collaborate with want to make them and I've just stuck to that. I'm not seduced by money or the things that Hollywood tries to offer you, and in exchange you have to make the film the way some businessmen tell you to. I just would not be good at that. So I have a system where I try to avoid having American money in my films, because with that comes a lot of strings attached and script meetings and casting consultations. I can't work that way. I don't tell the business people who finance the films how to run their business, so why should they tell me how to make a film?
- Jim Jarmusch


If the allocation of resources were not tied to creative control in such a way that the artist might find their work adapted to meet economic objectives, there would be no need for this sort of mentality.

P.S. I'm sorry for doing this in the comics thread.

I never thought of that. Yeah, essentially anybody can pick up an instrument and create something, but the level of organization and costs required for even the lowest-budget films are pretty high and tend to require some investment.

There are even reports that Warner Bros. will be releasing fewer films and focusing more on tentpoles due to the under-performance of some of their recent films. I can only imagine that independent studios must be having a harder time securing distributors (I dunno how the film industry works).

That's okay. Posters will probably find this bit of thread-drift more interesting than when I hijack a thread to talk about awkward moments attempting to compliment women on their footwear.

To keep it somewhat thread-related, the issue of executive creative demands is hillariously illustrated by Kevin Smith's account of when he was once hired to pen a Superman reboot.

Yo Bonnie, you ever read Bryan Talbot's The Tale of One Bad Rat? I dunno, I think you'd dig it.

Trying to think of comics that would appear to some boarders here. Already gave b0lly! a rec. I'll recommend more people stuff when more comics come to mind.

I will read on the train tomorrow

http://www.readcomics.tv/tale-of-one...1994/chapter-1

Really dug this. A lot of myself in it. Also "umbelliferie" yaaaas
Gonna buy it :")

Just read the first two issues of No Angel from Black Mask comics. Not bad. Waiting to see where it goes.

Also really like right now The Deciples.

Watchmen thread made me think of comics again. I miss comics. Haven't had any time to read any for a while.

Last one I really dug was Tom King and Mitch Gerads' Mister Miracle. It takes the Jack Kirby Fourth World character, but takes the complete opposite approach from Kirby's bombastic, psychedelic, and epic style. Instead, it's like this melancholic drama focusing on Scott Free and Big Barda's relationship, as well as PTSD and depression, with a distant never-ending cosmic war intruding upon their earthly domestic life.

Other than that, I bought Rusty Brown, which has finally been compiled into a single volume, but haven't read it yet. I've only read excerpts here and there in the past, as well as the entirety of the "Lint" sub-story.