[Amake]

Ah, I should have known it was too much like a genuine revelation to come from Ebert. Well, as I've said before in related topics, audience participation starts when you open your mouth to share an idea, it's impossible to have a work of art that isn't experienced differently depending on who experiences it. (Or when or where or why or with whom.) Games are not different because they put a controller in your hand, they're different because Ebert says so.

Also the rules argument is crap. I'm pretty sure there's a rule against me eating the Mona Lisa, however vital that may be to my objective of experiencing the painting.*

Meanwhile I have to point out Epic Movie got a few chuckles from me. Meet the Spartans is the real bottom of the barrel of unfunny, cheap-assed, meaningless, not-even-so-bad-it's-awful-it-just-sits-there-about-as-blank-as-a-last-stage-Alzheimer-patient movies not even trying to recreate memorable scenes from other movies but settling for recreating unremarkable moments from piss-poor low budget comatose uninteresting what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-the-world-that-even-one-of-these-shows-gets-watched reality TV.

Now, I thought I'd conclude by being forced to admit that it's nonetheless art, but on reflection it might fail even the most liberal definitions. No creativity has been put into it, no will to make something new that wasn't in the world before - it doesn't have any original or even parodied characters or plot points. It's not the result of an act not immediately related to surviving or improving one's situation - it's a blatant cash grab. It doesn't make anyone proud to be human, quite the reverse. It's not an attempt to look at anything from a new perspective, or giving anyone a new perspective. The production values are so low it's questionable if even the physical effort or craft involved in making it account for anything. It's made for the a very obvious function of making the audience pay for a ticket and grunt in recognition. If they made more movies like this, maybe Ebert would question movies as a valid art form?