Roger Ebert hates 3D; is Sacha Baron Cohen worth $20 million?; Brits playing American; and more: leftover links

Even though Mr. Ebert and I are currently not speaking to each other due to his stubborn insistence that video games are not and can never be art, I am 100% with him on the 3D issue, and I absolutely refuse to see a film in 3D unless I know it was intended that way from the beginning. Of the recent crop of 3D films, I have only watched Coraline and Avatar in 3D. I was on the fence about Up, but enough people I know saw it in 3D and told me it didn't really add much to the experience, so I gave it a pass.

I actually mostly agree with Ebert about video games - and this is coming from someone who loves video games. I've only ever played one game that I would call art - Planescape Torment. I would give a quasi-concurring opinion then: games are RARELY art, and that rarity is indeed a factor inherent in its medium. Games as a medium are not particularly conducive to art. They can be art in spite of themselves, but their very format makes it difficult.

That doesn't mean games can be aesthetically beautiful. A car isn't art, but it can be beautiful. Baseball isn't art, but it's a beautiful game. We shouldn't begrudge games for being art so rarely.

"We are often referred to in Los Angeles as white Mexicans," he told an audience of British hopefuls at a seminar on how to make it in America.

Yeah, right. ;-)

I heard that term used a time or two here in Dallas and the people using it weren't referring to British actors.

And while Hollywood's penchant for outsourcing is hardly news to anyone--even during the Great Depression, a lot of Hollywood's biggest names--Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Errol Flynn, Marlene Dietrich, Charlie Chaplin, etc.--were foreign-born actors--it does seem funny that we're just calling attention to it now.

Where were the person who wrote this article nine years ago when I kept talking about how neat it was that Aussies like Toni Collette and Cate Blatchett could speak with more convincingly American accents than some American actors I could mention? :-)

BBQ: Then you don't agree with Ebert at all. The very fact that you have played a game you would consider art means you don't agree with him. What he is saying is that it is inherently impossible for a video game to be a work of art, which I think is utter garbage, and apparently so do you.

Speaking from the POV of a guy who played D&D, the trouble with games as art is the discontect between the Person who made the world and the People who play in it. If the Person who builds the world intends a theme of Good vs Evil, and most of the People are just after the loot... well, I guess you have religion, not art.