Thanks for sharing your insights on this thread. While I think you have a point, the upside of the popular appeal of movies is that the medium tends to resist becoming the insider's game that visual art has become - terrain populated mostly by academics and wealthy patrons.
Much visual art criticism seems preoccupied with pointless navel-gazing or is set on constituting new forms of exoticism to titillate museum curators and rich collectors. While its true that a few people are "willing to admit the advantages offered
by a trained ear in music or a trained eye in painting", most people are completely indifferent when it comes to visual art.
BTW - would you recommend some critics and/or texts on Robert Altman's work?
Thanks,
Greg Boozell gboozell at juno.com
>
> Another problem lies with the medium of film itself. It appears
> to be much more transparent/straight forward than it actually is.
> People seem much more willing to admit the advantages offered
> by a trained ear in music or a trained eye in painting, than those
> conferred by a trained eye for cinema. Cinema's accessibility
> seems to lead people to believe that films cannot be complex
> works of art that reward close attention and investigation, but are
> merely just good trrashy fun (Kael's know-nothing approach).
>
> Brian
>
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