Oh, I think so, as personal tastes vary -- I agree 100 percent on "I Got You, Babe," for instance, Adam -- and, also key, the time and circumstances when we encounter a creative work also play an important part in our emotional and intellectual attraction to it. We have to be ready or be made ready for it. (That's where good teachers often come in.) I tried to watch "Casablanca" when I was about 14 or so, for example, and it didn't take me in. Just a couple of years later, I was captured by it, and over the many years since have fallen further under its spell. 

A lot has to do with what we bring to a work of art, a song, a movie, a book. I think we owe it to ourselves to be informed about this kind of thing. I don't fancy a great deal of what used to be called modern art, but I recognize its artistry and the place it has in our culture. 

I taught a great deal of literature for many years as a teacher. I recognize "Death of a Salesman" as a work of art and respect what Miller accomplished in it, and I think I can tell you what's great about it, but it never sings to me the way Shakespeare does. 

I think it helps when a work of art provides us what I always think of as a way in; most often it's through a character we an identify ourselves with, and in most great works of art, that character changes as we grow older and our lives change. It's why I loved Superboy comics back in the Silver Age when I was 8, 9, 10 years old; both Clark and Superboy were characters I could sympathize with, empathize with, and aspire to become, depending on the story. Thus, I have an affection for them even now when I look back at them. 

I think, it's why, over the many years I taught a Shakespeare elective to high school kids (they'd come to it having read both "R and J" and "Macbeth" in their freshman and sophomore years), the play they named year after year as the one I should never replace or rotate out of the syllabus was "Othello."

It has so many ways in for teenagers -- jealousy, insecurity, gossip, violence, anger, shortsightedness, pride, forbidden love, passion, intensity, revenge, fantasizing, take your pick --  that they have little trouble falling under its spell. The language never was an obstacle as it was in other plays; they were sucked in by each of the main characters, even -- perhaps especially-- Iago;  and were riveted by the pitiable descent of Othello into near madness at the hands of the increasingly diabolical Iago.

You've never heard anything till you've heard 60 "I've-seen-it-all" high school kids as one as they watch Othello smother Desdemona 20 feet from them on stage. And yes, there were tears, too.

Now Superboy 125 isn't Shakespeare, but both tap into what make us human. That's what art does. It reassures us, bedevils us, challenges us, and continues to raise the bar for all of us.

How the hell did I get there from Sonny and Cher?!

Apologies. I tend to be ADD at times.

Just to get this straight, is that the 1995 "Heat" with de Niro and Pacino?

Two-colour Technicolor is best Technicolor.

There is little to nothing I can say better or to add on what has already been said here. I will just stick to co-signing the idea that people who are intellectually honest about their approach to art can recognize quality separately from preference.

One of my pet peeves is "I don't like it, therefore it sucks!" instead of "I don't like it, but I can tell those folks are skilled." There are plenty of things that take monumental skill that just don't do it for me. See, most jazz I've heard post the big bang stuff. It's not my thing, but I'm not stupid enough to think it's because it's not any good.

Being open minded in a world of belligerent social media is a hard thing to do. Growing up in New Orleans kind of gives you a taste for Jazz and Blues and I'll admit that I haven't listened to much in that area, but I do love me some R&B

Tell me about tit. ...