Art house film-goers think they're seeing today's best movies. They're wrong. By CHARLES TAYLOR Illustration by Brian Biggs perhaps the most persistent myth of moviegoing is that art houses are run by connoisseurs who select only the best films for their customers. It's not hard to see why that notion has such a durable shelf life. It allows people to entertain visions of themselves as cultured and refined -- and not venturing beyond the art house is a lot easier than doing the work of sorting through what's actually out there. But, as "specialty films" have become more and more lucrative (their collective box office was up 40 percent this summer over last year, while the mainstream box office petered out after the wham-bam-thank you ma'am of summer's big blockbusters), it's become harder to ignore an unpleasant reality: art houses have been taken over by the same marketing and distribution forces that rule the multiplexes. Art-house audiences are now doing just what they've always looked down on the mainstream audience for doing: going for the big pictures sold to them by publicity people.

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