SCORSESE VERSUS THE SUPERHEROES.......WHO WINS? WHICH ONE'S CINEMA??

                    Having taken our shots at a fair amount of comic book movies, we figured it's time we tossed in our own 2 cents into this real life Clash Of The Titans.......

                     By that we mean, of course, Martin Scorsese firing off a nuclear powered blast at the onslaught of Marvel and DC movies..........

                     Says Marty:  They're not cinema.

                    Ouch. No....make that Infinity Stone-power Ouch........

                     Cue the onslaught of comic movie fans (and filmmakers) screeching "Blasphemy! Sacrilege!"

                     And Scorsese's already doubled down on this opinion. He means it.

                      So......where does BQ stand?  Okay, let's get real and talk common sense here.

                     The comic book movies, repetitive, noisy, overlong and wildly overrated by both their audiences and critics........yes, they're cinema.

                      They tell their mythic stories with the help of vast amounts of studio cash and all the up-to-the-minute technological advances available to them.........

                       And bear in mind, this is a 360 degree turnaround from the way Hollywood studios used to treat fantasy/sci-fi movies for decades.........as low-rent trash, worthy of laughable special effects and poverty row budgets.......

                      Bur they're undeniably cinema......... just as much as Martin Scorsese's gritty, violent explorations of gangsters, psychopaths and assorted tormented lowlifes who populate his stories.......

                     Yes, Marty, it's ALL cinema.

                    We feel his pain, though........the way the spandex crowd and their bloated movies have clogged up theaters and studio production schedules like giant, mutant globs of cholesterol........

                      Hollywood's lost all interest in telling stories about real people........not when they can pump 200 million into a movie  with actors in designer Halloween costumes tossing each other through the air like footballs..........and then rake in 3 billion from ticket buyers (mostly in China)

                    Yet, undeniably.......they're cinema. But not human cinema.  Nothing that ever truly reaches or moves an audience by illuminating the struggles and triumphs, comedic, dramatic and tragic, of we humans on planet Earth.....

                    The actors in these films can blah-blah-blah all day long about their characters' "journey", but at the end of the day, they remain cartoon toys......flesh and blood actions figures for millions of guys who still live in their parents' basement.

                    But like it or not, Marty, comic book movies are cinema.

                    Let's use the astounding diversity of some 1964 releases as an example......"Goldfinger" is cinema......."Dr. Strangelove" is cinema......."Becket" is cinema......"Mary Poppins" is cinema......"Night Of The Iguana" is cinema........"Zulu" is cinema.......

                     And that, in BQ's humble opinion, is the real issue today......look at the incredible line-up of those 1964 movies. Would you ever see anything close to that variety of films today?  Don't hold your breath.

                     You're expected to gobble your corporate Marvel CGI candy corn and like it......

                     Scorsese might have been better off if he'd ditched that dopey "not cinema" thing and instead spoke some plain, honest truth-to-power.....

                   ........ that critics, TV and media yakkers and fanboys should stop grovelling at the feet of every over-hyped comic book movie as if it was the Second Coming........and maybe start expecting something better out of a film than spiffy wisecracks and a computer digitized cast  bouncing off each other like they were ping pong balls inside a State Lottery drawing bin...........

                       Everything's cinema, Marty......the problem here today is lop-sided cinema........an all-you-can-eat buffet with nothing but overpriced, fatty desserts.