it comes in pints?

Critics are annoyed when the viewing public flocks to movies they rated poorly and are equally annoyed when they gush about films that the viewing public ignores. I read reviews AFTER I've seen the film. FWIW, I liked POTC:DMC.

As for music, I listen to a lot of obscure stuff and it doesn't much matter to me if anyone else thinks it's good. That "good music lasts comment" is retarded. The music I have will last as long as my CD or album will last.

Rob,
That's why I found the snobbish tone of the whole thing irritating. He's basically saying viewers are wrong and critics are right, but they're not really right because it's just their opinion, of which viewers are not entitled to respond to because they're just the audience and what do they know?

Plus, anybody who brings up that damn Velvet Underground quote has got to be a pretentious twit. Most VU fans are.

Speaking of pretentious twits, the guy lost points with me as soon as he cited Rolling Stone Magazine. Nothing but pretentious twits there.

Hahaha, no kidding. Again, a bad example if he's going to make a case for what does and does not endure over time. Isn't Rolling Stone the magazine that panned acts like the Beatles, Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd?

(Yeah, I know, you probably haven't heard of them given that only "good" stands the test of time and they were just merely popular in their day)

I read most issues at the newsstand in the early 70s. I remember them liking The Beatles but they trashed Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, The Who, and most other British bands. Not sure what they thought of Pink Floyd. I wasn't following them then.

Hahahaha...so, pretty much all the forgetable flashes-in-the-pan from that era?

Popular does not equal good - check. I think everybody knows that. But people like this guy seem to think it means popular automatically equals not good. This attitude is EXTREMELY common and irritates the shit out of me. It leads to idiot statements like "they were good until they went commercial".

I agree, Ken. There's just something very elitist about people who refuse to like something just because it's popular. That's the attitude of a teenager obsessed with keeping his "cool" credibility.

I'm fully willing to admit that I have at least once refused to do something because it was faddish (more accurately, I quit doing something I normally do because it was suddenly faddish, then started again because the fad faded).

But I don't make a fetish about such things.

Back when Rocking Ricky & The Velvet Collars were playing to 7 disinterested old blokes in the back room of Mad Kenny's All-Night Drinker they were, like, totally keeping it real. Now they've signed to Sony and play infront of festival crowds. They've, like, totally sold out to the man.

Hahahaha. I still remember how bitter a lot of people were when R.E.M. had their first bonafide hit single with "The One I Love" and shortly thereafter made the unforgiveable decision to *gasp* move to a label that offered them more money and better benefits. If a banker changes jobs for the same reason, do his co-banker friends call him a "sell-out," I wonder? Because it's not like a lot of these bands that do manage to hit it big after years in the trenches do so by changing their sound or persona until you can't recognize them.

When I think of "popular does not equal good," the first thing that pops in my mind is Titanic - complete with hollow cast, love triangle involving three unimpressive characters, and a seeming downplaying of the heroism that occurred on the real HMS Titanic.

I would cite much of post-1990 music as Exhibit B. Heck, the best song of the past 16 years featured a '70s band ("Smooth," Santana/Rob Thomas). Time to put on some Don Henley. Kick em when they're up, kick em when they're down...

"kick 'em when they're up..."

You just had to cite Don Henley after he went bad.

Perhaps a small film can be damaged by bad reviews (or saved by good reviews), but a big-budget blockbuster like "Pirates" is going to do well regardless of what a critic thinks.

Yeah, like "Waterworld" and "Ishtar"...

B, sometimes bad is also not popular.

Tommy was bad and unpopular. And the last Jack Nicholson musical I ever want to see.

Something I've tended to notice about critics (well, some critics at least), is that they seem incapable of understanding that sometimes, people just want to be entertained.

We don't want to be preached at
We don't want to be "enlightened"
We don't want our consciousnesses raised*

We want to be entertained.

We just want to laugh, or to scream, or to see stuff blow up on the screen. And what's so wrong about that?

Sometimes we just want movies that have nothing to do with "real life." Because frankly, for a lot of people, "real life" sucks pretty hard a lot of the time, and the movies maybe represent one place where you can laugh and clap and be amazed and forget for a little while about your pile of debt, or your awful kids, or your evil boss, or your insane in-laws.

In many cases, the most "critically acclaimed" things I've seen have been the things I've walked out of feeling the most depressed. And you know, that's really not what I want on a Friday night.

(*not that there aren't times where many/most people want those things, it's just, we don't want them shoved in our faces all the time)

Jack Nicholson was in Tommy? That's the oddest musical factoid I've heard since I learned that Clint Eastwood was in Paint Your Wagon.

Ricki, exactly. I don't remember just where I read it but there was a quote from a guy about television, to the effect of "After I busted my ass all day I just want to relax. If I want Shakespeare I'll go to the theater."

Sorry Ken; what I was refering to was his "a big budget blockbuster will always do well" statement.

i fully agree that bad may not be popular.

Ricki,
Exactly. The problem with critics is that they take movies so damn seriously. Couple that with the tendencies of journalists to be elitist snobs that hold themselves above the mob and you get crap like what Todd Leopold wrote. How dare the little people have the nerve to question the opinions of critics? Um, because they have opinions themselves?!?!

Critics hate movies like Pirates for that reason. They are just stupidly entertaining and don't give them the opportunity to feel like they're smarter and better than everyone else for watching a Really Important Movie. And let's not even touch on the idiocy of people who feel like they actually learn things from movies.

Well I watched a review on Late Review on the BBC about the Pirates of Carribean II in which they said it was bad because it was racist! I was wondering at the time whether it was about the fact that half-man/half-fish were portrayed in a bad light and that the Kraken was badly treated.

Racist?!?! Did they give any reasons or examples? Hahaha. This is why I love the stupidity of film critics. They'll usually find racism where there is none and then heap praise on really, really racist crap like Traffic because it's just sooooo gritty and real.

Well, The Lion King was racist, I hear.

I love the Tommy movie. Talking about Jack Nicholson's part - a big cheque for one day's work on an off day during shooting another film in London, thank you very much - on the DVD's director's commentary Ken Russell is positively cracking up during the scene at Nicholson's "singing". "I wyshe eye newe".

On a semi-related note, the song "Pinball Wizard" makes me want to kill people.

That is all.

How do you think he does it?/I don't know!/What makes him so good?

Aiieeee.... now that song is in my head! Where is my hammer...

Sure plays a mean pinball!

Where's Dan Aykroyd when we need him?