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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>By now, anyone who would agree to the label of "film fan" knows the legendary Phil Tippett. Perhaps the greatest visual effects artist of the last 50 years (if not ever), Tippett brought to life the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park and the creatures of Star Wars while also enriching many, many stellar visual feasts like RoboCop, Willow, and Starship Troopers.

As a European into classic and arthouse cinema, from the resume he rather sounds like someone we'd call a "film fan" would not know, if not actively avoid the movies he was involved.

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RoboCop and Starship Troopers are both far headier movies than what a lot of arthouse snobs would consider high art. And they actually made money!

You can deliver a quality film with a substantive plot while still making an action movie for the masses.

I'm just as into film as you are, if not possibly more so, but please just fuck off with your snobbish anti-Hollywood nonsense. Most of Europe's actors, directors, & what-have-you all work in Hollywood from time to time to eat.

Shit, while we're on the topic of Paul Verhoeven, the guy made the most successful (most seen) film in the history of Dutch cinema (1973's Turkish Delight) and put Rutger Hauer on the map with it. And did it again later with The Fourth Man (loosely remade later as Basic Instinct) which was a global hit and the most financially successful film made in the Netherlands.

Don't forget the also excellent "Black Book".

I don't really think this kind of pretentious gatekeeping is helpful or welcoming. The works of both Spielberg and Tarkovsky are worth watching.

I'd go so far as to state that a true film "fan" appreciates both high-brow and popular cinema. There's no such thing as a "guilty" pleasure if you truly enjoy something.

>I don't really think this kind of pretentious gatekeeping is helpful or welcoming.

No, but it's culture-building. "Everything goes" seldom builds any great appreciation, it just makes everything a big interchangeable blob.

>The works of both Spielberg and Tarkovsky are worth watching.

Well, that's not some natural law. It's just an expression of a specific cultural norm.

It just says a lot about your “taste”. You may not like the lack of character building in Jurassic Park but you can’t deny the amount of work that went into practical effects in order to make that movie (same with Every single Harry Potter movie by the way).

Same thing with Starship Troopers which by itself is also quite a funny piece of political satire apart from creative use of gore and trashy characters.

What is arthouse for you? A man and a woman speaking french and driving into the sunset?

No, you watch those movies specifically for the miniature work. Similarly, terrible shonen anime with sakuga cuts by relevant animators.

And I'd argue anyone who doesn't know most of those movies are not much of a film fan.

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