I think writing third person (or omni) distanced camera eye is a legitimate stylistic choice, though it's not one I'm especially enamoured with. What really grates on me is when people try to do that stuff in close third or even first, where it makes no sense. The thing that drives me mad is "start with action", as if anybody cares about action happening to strangers. And my least favourite of all is starting with some faux excitement and then going back to where things ought to start only with the tension all screwed up. Ick. I'll take a father and daughter playing chess and infodumping above some vague body rolling for cover.

I think there's an actual problem that people are trying to solve in a simplistic way -- like a lot of writing advice. I don't think it's always a problem of "make it like a movie", though when people say that you ought to be able to "see" everything and never mention other senses I do think that's a movie issue. The actual problem is to do with reader investment. The reader needs to care, and that's a genuine issue. But what people are being told to do to ensure that is -- well, it's appealing to some imagined reader who isn't me, who cares about bullets whizzing over the heads of strangers.

When you start reading something, it could go anywhere, but you don't care yet. You have to care, and the beginning has to make you care, and there are a whole pile of ways of doing that. And talking about this sounds really cynical and manipulative, which might be why people put this advice about starting with a bang instead of talking about address.

Actually it's quite interesting to think of books where I'm not part of the implicit "you" being addressed that fail to be interesting to me. Nothing is for everyone.

(I've started books with philosophical reflections, I've started them with dialogue, I've started them with world intros...)