Xard wrote:I just watched Haibane Renmei and I absolutely loved it. In middle episodes I saw a lot of cutting and camerawork which were nigh non-existent before Evangelion. I watched Paranoia Agent some time ago. Before Eva such show would've been impossible to make. And "pillow shots" weren't even nearly as often seen before Eva than after it.
@Haibane Renemei: Glad to hear it!
@Pillow Shots: *cough*GraveoftheFireflies*cough* ;)
@Rest of Rant: Dead on.
However, I'm less... enthusiastic about this point than I once was. Perhaps because I now know of many great artists I respect who had the mentality of creating for an audience rather than for themselves. Two good examples; The commentary for All About Eve has a quote from Joseph L. Mankiewicz whom hated the auteurism side of film, essentially saying that by moving the camera and experimenting with visuals the directors were saying "Look at me! Look at what I can do!" and ignoring the goings-on on-screen. Billy Wilder also famously said "An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius."
So there will always be this debate about the nature of an artist working for an audience VS an audience working for the artist. I think I've always sided with the latter simply because it seems the most profound art has always come out of a personal need to express, rather than a want to please. Most every complaint about NGE comes from the POV of people wanting what they desire out of entertainment. They want heroes, they only want mysteries if they're explained, they want growth and optimism. People don't want reality invading fantasy and mucking it up. They don't want realism - they get enough of that in life.
I think the only place that group go wrong is in criticizing the works and artists for not catering to them. There are plenty that do, so why must they slam the few that don't? I mean, good grief, every summer there's at least 10 movies that come out that are formula-ready-made to please a mass audience. I think condemning the few malcontents who try to do something new/different (quite often with the result of benefiting the medium and future works) is incredibly narcissistic and inconsiderate.
Xard wrote:Try to become beliavable film critic without ever seeing Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Godfather etc. and let's see how you fare.
Not so much with IGN game reviewers. Their twentysomething jerkheads couldn't care less to know anything about gaming apart from today's ever narrowing and more dumbed down titles. Heaven bless them if they've even ever heard of titles such as Ultima, Fallout, Starcraft not to mention even older ones such as legenary Elite. Or worst of all, X-Com.
That's probably because Gaming is the last medium left where it's still 95% entertainment and 5% art, and knowing gaming history is only relevant to the art aspect.