(no subject)

I'm honestly grinning like an idiot.

As of midseason on Fox, Tim Roth (!) is starring in the new show Lie To Me, about a guy who's mastered the science of lie detection and heads a company that contracts out to police, FBI and private individuals.

<3 <3

I didn't realize it was a midseason premiere! I'm going to have two crazy shows about people solving crimes through the Power of Science. I'm so pleased, I just can't even.

If next season brings me three crime dramas all starring favorite actors of mine (Rufus Sewell, Tim Roth, William Fichtner) I think I might die from the squee.

(no subject)

There is little I find more irritating than cinephile elitism. I go to a near-Ivy League school, and I live in a dorm full of movie and television fans, and I see it all the damn time. To hear them talk, there's never been a movie that's reached half the level of Citizen Kane in terms of overall quality - and, moreover, they make a distinction between 'good' movies and movies they enjoy watching.

I'm pretty sure that if you watch a 'good' movie and you're miserable the entire time, you find it boring and/or gross (I'm looking at you, Eraserhead), and it doesn't change anything about you, it doesn't emotionally affect you, then it's doing something wrong. No matter how symbolic everything is, if it doesn't work a kind of magic on you, then holding it to some kind of objective standard and calling it good is false.

On the other hand, if there's a movie that everyone sees and everyone loves (with exceptions, of course, there are always exceptions) - like, say, The Dark Knight or Iron Man, you have no real right to call those movies 'bad' while claiming that enjoyment doesn't necessarily equal quality.

This just pisses me off unbelievably. It makes an elitist, snobbish judgment about 'most people' and their loose standards for good films, and portrays the general Hollywood-viewing public as a bunch of sheep who couldn't tell a good movie if it bit them on the ass.

Okay, so maybe this corresponds with the way artists treat any kind of art, but with movies, it annoys the crap out of me, because I love movies.

( Let's take, for example, Quantum of Solace. )