That's your own opinion, Kumars. I personally found both of those movies very entertaining.

I agree that forsaking an artist or film because it has become popular is absurd, and also that people do indeed judge others based on their taste in films and music.

I am not opposed to mainstream music and cinema. I totally agree that if a song is #1 on the charts and really merits praise for its artistry, you have every claim to embrace it and its quality. I'm opposed to BAD music and cinema, be it mainstream or independent. As much as some would like to push this idea of total relativism in art, cinema and music are exactly that - art. And art can be done well or it can be done poorly. There are objective standards by which films can be judged, regardless of taste. Elements of film like cinematography, dialogue, continuity, character development, thematic nuance, and others are components which can be done well in many different ways relative to the film as a whole, but they can also be done poorly and ineffectively. The same, though I admit, to a lesser degree, is true of music. The ability to recognize and appreciate subtlety/nuance, complexity and beauty is definitely grounds for judging a person. It is, after all, a reflection of that person's worldview, if only as an independent component of that perspective. I consider perspective about the world legitimate grounds for judgment of a person. Unless, of course, you subscribe to total relativism and multi-culturalism, in which case it really doesn't matter what I say here, and someone could legitimately tell me that a recording of a fart is a work of art equal in worth to "The Thin Red Line."

It just so happens that in this particular era and society, a majority of the films and music which the common folk champion, i.e. "300" or Yung Joc, is of an in-your-face, spelled-out, contrived aesthetic that is incompatible with the complexity and nuance of art. In the 1970's, intelligent works of art such as "The Godfather" and "The Deer Hunter" were popular, well-known, and, indeed, of the mainstream. In the early 1990's, intelligent, artistically-minded, aesthetically conscious rappers like the Wu-Tang Clan and Nas were, like the aforementioned films, popular, well-known, and mainstream. They were insanely popular; this is not debatable. The qualities that those who are not "posers" and truly appreciate art recognized in "The Godfather" and Nasir Jones are now generally absent in the mainstream and more dominant in the independent scene. It is likely, even inevitable, that these artistic values will be reversed in the forseeable future.

Anyway, what we could be encountering here, and in contemporary American society, is a disconnect between the concepts of entertainment and quality. Many things entertain me. Some are inappropriate and should not be mentioned here. Others are films, and music. But whether or not I "have fun" or am "entertained" does NOT assign a degree of artistry or quality reflective of the artist's talent/creativity/effort. Or else, one could posit that a film is bad because one did not enjoy it while sober, but then, once one watches it while under the influence of drugs, the film entertains them and is therefore "good" or contains artistic merit.