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Nicholas Sparks Recently Went On Record As Saying He Is A Greater Novelist Than Cormac Mccarthy. This Is True In The Same Sense That I Am A Better Novelist Than William Shakespeare.

-Roger Ebert

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Nicholas Sparks Recently Went

Roger Ebert

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Nicholas Sparks Recently Went On Record As Saying He Is A Greater Novelist Than Cormac Mccarthy. This Is True In The Same Sense That I Am A Better Novelist Than William Shakespeare.

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A Truly Strong Woman Will Choose A Stong Man Who Disagrees With Her Over A Weak One Who Goes Along.

No Matter What They're Charging To Get In, It's Worth More To Get Out.

A Lot Of People Just Go To Movies That Feed Into Their Preexisting And Not So Noble Needs And Desires: They Just Go To Action Pictures, And Things Like That. But If You Go To Foreign Films, If You Go To Documentaries, If You Go To Independent Films, If You Go To Good Films, You Will Become A Better Person Because You Will Understand Human Nature Better. Movies Record Human Nature In A Better Way Than Any Other Art Form, That's For Sure.

We All Are Born With A Certain Package. We Are Who We Are: Where We Were Born, Who We Were Born As, How We Were Raised. We're Kind Of Stuck Inside That Person, And The Purpose Of Civilization And Growth Is To Be Able To Reach Out And Empathize A Little Bit With Other People. And For Me, The Movies Are Like A Machine That Generates Empathy. It Lets You Understand A Little Bit More About Different Hopes, Aspirations, Dreams And Fears. It Helps Us To Identify With The People Who Are Sharing This Journey With Us.

And The Sexes Eyeing Each Other Uneasily, For Nothing Is Easier For A Teenager To Imagine Than Rejection.

It Is Human Nature To Look Away From Illness. We Don't Enjoy A Reminder Of Our Own Fragile Mortality.

As I Swim Through The Summer Tide Of Vulgarity, I Find That's What I'm Looking For: Movies That At Least Feel Affection For Their Characters. Raunchy Is Ok. Cruel Is Not.

Teaching Prejudice To A Child Is Itself A Form Of Bullying. You've Got To Be Taught To Hate.

Doing Research On The Web Is Like Using A Library Assembled Piecemeal By Pack Rats And Vandalized Nightly.

Library Research

All Over The Web There Are Some Very Good Critics And It's Become For People Who Are Interested. It's Become A Very Good Way To Get To Reviews And Involve Yourself In Discussions.

Marlon Brando Is The Most Influential Movie Actor Of The Century.

Nicholas Sparks Recently Went On Record As Saying He Is A Greater Novelist Than Cormac Mccarthy. This Is True In The Same Sense That I Am A Better Novelist Than William Shakespeare.

Most People Choose Movies That Provide Exactly What They Expect, And Tell Them Things They Already Know. Others Are More Curious. We Are Put On This Planet Only Once, And To Limit Ourselves To The Familiar Is A Crime Against Our Minds.

When We're Discussing Who To Invite To A Dinner Party, My Wife Chaz And I Sometimes Use The Shorthand, 'good Value For Money,' Which Indicates Guests Expected To Be Entertaining.

If You Have To Ask What It Symbolizes, It Didn't.

It Often Strikes Me That The Actors In High School Movies Look Too Old.

When I Go To The Movies, One Of My Strongest Desires Is To Be Shown Something New. I Want To Go To New Places, Meet New People, Have New Experiences. When I See Hollywood Formulas Mindlessly Repeated, A Little Something Dies Inside Of Me: I Have Lost Two Hours To Boors Who Insist On Telling Me Stories I Have Heard Before.

New Experiences

It's Like The High School Production Of Something You Saw At Steppenwolf, With The Most Gifted Students In Drama Class Playing The John Malkovich And Joan Allen Roles.

This Sucks On So Many Levels." Dialogue From "jason X" Rare For A Movie To So Frankly Describe Itself. "jason X" Sucks On The Levels Of Storytelling, Character Development, Suspense, Special Effects, Originality, Punctuation, Neatness And Aptness Of Thought.

To Make Others Less Happy Is A Crime. To Make Ourselves Unhappy Is Where All Crime Starts. We Must Try To Contribute Joy To The World. That Is True No Matter What Our Problems, Our Health, Our Circumstances. We Must Try. I Didn't Always Know This And Am Happy I Lived Long Enough To Find It Out.

No Movie Featuring Either Harry Dean Stanton Or M. Emmet Walsh In A Supporting Role Can Be Altogether Bad.

Supporting Roles

I Wear A Pedometer, A Little Device That Counts Every Step. It Works As A Goad, Because You Walk Additional Distances To Pile Up The Numbers. The Average Person Walks 2,000 To 3,000 Steps A Day. I Walk 10,000 Steps A Day. I Have Lost A Lot Of Weight As A Result.

I Am Not A Believer, Not An Atheist, Not An Agnostic. I Am Still Awake At Night, Asking How? I Am More Content With The Question Than I Would Be With An Answer.

One Of The Weapons Marvel Used In Its Climb To Comic-book Dominance Was A Willingness To Invent New Characters At A Dizzying Speed. There Are So Many Marvel Universes, Indeed, That Some Superheroes Do Not Even Exist In One Another's Worlds, Preventing Gridlock.

There Are Two Things You Can't Argue In Film: Comedy And Eroticism. If Something Doesn't Make You Laugh, No One Can Tell You Why It's Funny, And It's Difficult To Reason Someone Out Of An Erection.

Well, You Know What, I'm 60 Years Old, And I've Been Interested In Politics Since I Was On My Daddy's Knee. During The 1948 Election, We Were Praying For Truman. I Know A Lot About Politics.

We Are The Playthings Of The Gods.

To Call It An Anticlimax Would Be An Insult Not Only To Climaxes But To Prefixes. It's A Crummy Secret, About One Step Up The Ladder Of Narrative Originality From It Was All A Dream. It's So Witless, In Fact, That When We Do Discover The Secret, We Want To Rewind The Film So We Don't Know The Secret Anymore. And Then Keep On Rewinding, And Rewinding, Until We're Back At The Beginning, And Can Get Up From Our Seats And Walk Backward Out Of The Theater And Go Down The Up Escalator And Watch The Money Spring From The Cash Register Into Our Pockets.

You Can Have A Movie With Hardly Any Cuts, Or Very Few Cuts, That Is Fascinating, You Can't Take Your Eyes Away From It... Look At Some Of The Long Takes In Citizen Kane.

The Time In Between My Clapping Is Ma. If You Just Have Non-stop Action With No Breathing Space At All, It's Just Busyness, But If You Take A Moment, Then The Tension Building In The Film Can Grow Into A Wider Dimension. If You Just Have Constant Tension At 80 Degrees All The Time You Just Get Numb.

Breathing Space

When I Am Writing My Problems Become Invisible And I Am The Same Person I Always Was. All Is Well. I Am As I Should Be.

Because We Are Human, Because We Are Bound By Gravity And The Limitations Of Our Bodies, Because We Live In A World Where The News Is Often Bad And The Prospects Disturbing, There Is A Need For Another World Somewhere, A World Where Fred Astaire And Ginger Rogers Live.

Many Really Good Films Allow Us To Empathize With Other Lives.

Someone Once Said The Fundamental Reason We Get Married Is Because Have A Universal Human Need For A Witness.

Praise Without Merit Is More Harmful Than Unearned Criticism.

While I Am Usually In Despair When A Movie Abandons Its Plot For A Third Act Given Over Entirely To Action, I Have No Problem With The Way Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets Ends, Because It Has Been Pointing Toward This Ending, Hinting About It, Preparing Us For It, All The Way Through. What A Glorious Movie.

Sometimes Miraculous Films Come Into Being, Made By People You've Never Heard Of, Starring Unknown Faces, Blindsiding You With Creative Genius.

Clouds Do Not Really Look Like Camels Or Sailing Ships Or Castles In The Sky. They Are Simply A Natural Process At Work. So Too, Perhaps, Are Our Lives.

I Am Utterly Bored By Celebrity Interviews. Most Celebrities Are Devoid Of Interest.

The Golden Thumb Is Not As Good As The Oscar, But It Is A Lot Of Fun.

Matthew Mcconaughey And Kate Hudson Star. I Neglected To Mention That, Maybe Because I Was Trying To Place Them In This Review's Version Of The Witness Protection Program. If I Were Taken Off The Movie Beat And Assigned To Cover The Interior Design Of Bowling Alleys, I Would Have Some Idea Of How They Must Have Felt As They Made This Film.

I Think We Have To Get Beyond The Idea That We Have To Categorize People. We Can Now Have Action Movies With Two Stars Where One Might Be African American And One Might Be Asian American. One Of Them Doesn't Have To Be White, And The Other One Doesn't Have To Be The Ethnic Sidekick. We're Way Over That. And I Think It's Happening In Society, Too.

I Value The Kind Of Prayer When You Stand At The Edge Of The Sea, Or Beneath A Tree, Or Smell A Flower, Or Love Someone, Or Do A Good Thing. Those Prayers Validate Existence And Snatch It Away From Meaningless Routine.

It Is An Interesting Law Of Romance That A Truly Strong Woman Will Choose A Strong Man Who Disagrees With Her Over A Weak One Who Goes Along. Strength Demands Intelligence, Intelligence Demands Stimulation, And Weakness Is Boring. It Is Better To Find A Partner You Can Contend With For A Lifetime Than One Who Accommodates You Because He Doesn't Really Care.

It Goes To Show You How We In The Press So Often Miss The Big Stories That Are Right Under Our Noses. There Is A Famous Journalistic Legend About The Time A Young Reporter Covered The Johnstown Flood Of 1889. The Kid Wrote: God Sat On A Hillside Overlooking Johnstown Today And Looked At The Destruction He Had Wrought. His Editor Cabled Back: Forget Flood. Interview God.

Immortals Is Without Doubt The Best-looking Awful Movie You Will Ever See. Eiko Ishioka's Costume Designs Alone Deserve An Oscar Nomination. "they Weren't At All Historically Accurate," Grumbled A Woman In The Elevator After The Sneak Preview, As If Lots Of Documentation Exists About The Wardrobes Of The Gods. She Added: "i Guess That's What We Deserve For Using Free Tickets We Got At A Blackhawks Game.

Absolutists Frighten Me. During All The Endless Discussions On My Blog About Evolution, Intelligent Design, God, And The Afterworld, Numbering Altogether Thousands Of Comments, I Have Never Named My Beliefs, Although Readers Have Freely Informed Me That I Am An Atheist, And Agnostic, Or At The Very Least A Secular Humanist - Which I Am.

The Genius Is Not In How Much Stanley Kubrick Does In “2001: A Space Odyssey,'' But In How Little. This Is The Work Of An Artist So Sublimely Confident That He Doesn't Include A Single Shot Simply To Keep Our Attention. He Reduces Each Scene To Its Essence, And Leaves It On Screen Long Enough For Us To Contemplate It, To Inhabit It In Our Imaginations. Alone Among Science-fiction Movies, “2001'' Is Not Concerned With Thrilling Us, But With Inspiring Our Awe.

Movies Absorb Our Attention More Completely, I Think.

I Begin To Feel Like I Was In The Last Generation Of Americans Who Took A Civics Class.

We Can't Help Identifying With The Protagonist. It's Coded In Our Movie-going Dna.

The Ability Of So Many People To Live Comfortably With The Idea Of Capital Punishment Is Perhaps A Clue To How So Many Europeans Were Able To Live With The Idea Of The Holocaust: Once You Accept The Notion That The State Has The Right To Kill Someone And The Right To Define What Is A Capital Crime, Aren't You Halfway There?

The Bucket List Is A Movie About Two Old Codgers Who Are Nothing Like People, Both Suffering From Cancer That Is Nothing Like Cancer, And Setting Off On Adventures That Are Nothing Like Possible. I Urgently Advise Hospitals: Do Not Make The Dvd Available To Your Patients; There May Be An Outbreak Of Bedpans Thrown At Tv Screens.

Here's How Much I Know About Hockey. Mike Royko And I Were In A Tiny Bar One Winter Night, And The Radio Kept Reporting Goals By The Blackhawks. I Mentioned How Frequently The Team Was Scoring. 'you're Listening To The Highlights,' Royko Observed.

Improvisation Is A Weird Word Because We Often Think It Means That You Make Things Up Out Of Whole Cloth Right There On The Spot, And That's Rarely The Case In Acting. You Have To Know Who The Character Is, What The Situation Is And What Is Needed.

No Movie Has Ever Been Able To Provide A Catharsis For The Holocaust, And I Suspect None Will Ever Be Able To Provide One For 9/11. Such Subjects Overwhelm Art.

Mad Dog Time Is The First Movie I Have Seen That Does Not Improve On The Sight Of A Blank Screen Viewed For The Same Length Of Time. Oh, I've Seen Bad Movies Before. But They Usually Made Me Care About How Bad They Were. Watching Mad Dog Time Is Like Waiting For The Bus In A City Where You're Not Sure They Have A Bus Line.

I Felt It Would To Add A Great Deal To My Legend For Eccentricity.

To Say That George Lucas Cannot Write A Love Scene Is An Understatement; Greeting Cards Have Expressed More Passion.

How Quickly Do We Grow Accustomed To Wonders. I Am Reminded Of The Isaac Asimov Story Nightfall, About The Planet Where The Stars Were Visible Only Once In A Thousand Years. So Awesome Was The Sight That It Drove Men Mad. We Who Can See The Stars Every Night Glance Up Casually At The Cosmos And Then Quickly Down Again, Searching For A Dairy Queen.

The Muse Visits During The Process Of Creation, Not Before.

Blockbusters Run The Mainstream Industry. We May Never Again Have A Decade Like The 1970s, When Directors Were Able To Find Such Freedom.

Films To The Degree That They Glorify Mindlessness And Short Attention Span They Are Bad, To The Degree That They Encourage Empathy With People Not Like Ourselves And Encourage Us To Think About Life, They Are Good.

Dear Bill (o'reilly)...i Am Concerned That You Have Been Losing Touch With Reality Recently. Did You Really Say You Are More Powerful Than Any Politician? That Reminds Me Of The Famous Story About Squeaky The Chicago Mouse. It Seems That Squeaky Was Floating On His Back Along The Chicago River One Day. Approaching The Michigan Avenue Lift Bridge, He Called Out: Raise The Bridge! I Have An Erection!

People Never Think Of Themselves As Choosing To Be Politically Correct. They Simply Think In The Way That They Do.

I Do Suspect My Star Ratings Average Too High. But, Of Course, Star Ratings Are Ridiculous. I'm Stuck With Them.

I Think That Probably The - I Don't Give Quotes To Studios. They Have To Get Those Out Of The Paper Or From Television. So They Wouldn't Have Had My Quote Opening Day.

When I Write, I Fall Into The Zone Many Writers, Painters, Musicians, Athletes, And Craftsmen Of All Sorts Seem To Share: In Doing Something I Enjoy And Am Expert At, Deliberate Thought Falls Aside And It Is All Just There. I Think Of The Next Word No More Than The Composer Thinks Of The Next Note.

A Film Is A Terrible Thing To Waste.

If You Find An Occupation You Love And Spend Your Entire Life Working At It, Is That Enough?

When I Had Been A Film Critic For Ten Minutes, I Treated Doris Day As A Target For Cheap Shots. I Have Learned Enough To Say Today That The Woman Was Remarkably Gifted.

I Was Instructed Long Ago By A Wise Editor, "if You Understand Something You Can Explain It So That Almost Anyone Can Understand It. If You Don't, You Won't Be Able To Understand Your Own Explanation." That Is Why 90% Of Academic Film Theory Is Bullshit. Jargon Is The Last Refuge Of The Scoundrel.

Now I See That All Relationships Are Virtual, Even Those That Take Place In Person. Whether We Use Our Bodies Or A Keyboard, It All Comes Down To Two Minds Crying Out From Their Solitude.

Steve Coogan Picks Up Enough To Lecture An Interviewer: This Is A Postmodern Novel Before There Was Any Modernism To Be Post About. Later It's Claimed That Tristram Shandy Was No. 8 On The Observer's List Of The Greatest Novels, Which Cheers Everyone Until They Discover The List Was Chronological.

All I Know Is, It Is Better To Be The Whale Than The Squid.

People Read The Papers Not In The Hopes Of Learning Something New, But In The Expectation Of Being Told What They Already Know. This Is A Form Of Living Death. Its Apotheosis Is The Daily Poll In Usa Today, Which Informs Us What Percentage Of A Small Number Of Unscientifically Selected People Called A Toll Number To Vote On Questions That Cannot Possibly Be Responded To With A Yes Or No.

Learning Something New

Sometimes You Only Need To Have A Few Words With A Person To Know You Would Like To Have Many More.

The Purpose Of Civilization And Growth Is To Be Able To Reach Out And Empathize With Other People... For Me, The Movies Are Like A Machine That Generates Empathy.

But Considering That I Walked In Expecting No Complexity At All, Let Alone The Visual Wonderments, "snow White And The Huntsman" Is A Considerable Experience.

Friends Don't Let Jackasses Drink And Drive.

Drink And Drive

We Live In A Box Of Space And Time. Movies Are Windows In Its Walls.

Catholic Theology Accounts For The Fact That There's Evil In The World. People Say, Well, How Could God Let This Happen. Well, What God Did Was Set The Mechanism In Motion And Then Allow People To Do The Best They Can Under The Circumstances That They're Dealt In Order To Gain Grace And Get Into Heaven.

Going To A Movie So You Won't Be Offended Is Like Eating Potato Chips Made With Olestra; You Avoid The Dangers Of The Real Thing, But Your Insides Fill Up With Synthetic Runny Stuff.

To Make Others Less Happy Is A Crime. To Make Ourselves Unhappy Is Where All Crime Starts.

Most Of Us Do Not Consciously Look At Movies.

Pixar Is The First Studio That Is A Movie Star.

Not Everyone Needs To Be Slammed Into A Category And Locked There.

The Moment A Man Stops Dreaming Is The Moment He Petrifies Inside.

In Thinking About 'depressing Movies,' Many People Don't Realize That All Bad Movies Are Depressing, And No Good Movies Are.

I Believe Empathy Is The Most Essential Quality Of Civilization.

Your Intellect May Be Confused, But Your Emotions Will Never Lie To You.

I Was Born Inside The Movie Of My Life. The Visuals Were Before Me, The Audio Surrounded Me, The Plot Unfolded Inevitably But Not Necessarily. I Don't Remember How I Got Into The Movie, But It Continues To Entertain Me.

We Laugh, That We May Not Cry.

The Idea That A Book Can Advise A Woman How To Capture A Man Is Touchingly Naive. Books Advising Men How To Capture A Woman Are Far Less Common, Perhaps Because Few Men Are Willing To Admit To Such A Difficulty. For Both Sexes, I Recommend A Good Novel, Offering Scenarios You Might Learn From, If Only Because They Reflect A Lot Of Doubt.

It's Funny That There Was So Much Disturbance About Having A Catholic In The White House With Kennedy, And When We Finally Get A Religion In The White House That's Causing A Lot Of Conflicts, And Concerns, And Disturbances For A Lot Of People, It's In The Bush Administration.

It Is Universally Agreed That Jean Renoir Was One Of The Greatest Of All Directors, And He Was Also One Of The Warmest And Most Entertaining.

Artists Are Rarely Members Of The Popular Crowd.

The Right Really Dominates Radio, And It's Amazing How Much Energy The Right Spends Telling Us That The Press Is Slanted To The Left When It Really Isn't. They Want To Shut Other People Up. They Really Don't Understand The First Amendment.

Occasionally An Unsuspecting Innocent Will Stumble Into A Movie Like This And Send Me An Anguished Postcard, Asking How I Could Possibly Give A Favorable Review To Such Trash. My Stock Response Is Ebert's Law, Which Reads: A Movie Is Not About What It Is About. It Is About How It Is About It.

It's Easier To Identify With Loss Than Love, Because We Have Had So Much More Experience Of It.

Yes, I Was Fat, But I Dealt With It By Simply Never Thinking About It. It Is Useful, When You Are Fat, To Have A Lot Of Other Things To Think About.

Dr. Leonard Shlain, Chairman Of Laparoscopic Surgery At California Pacific Medical Center, Said They Took Some Four And Five Year-olds And Gave Them Video Games And Asked Them To Figure Out How To Play Them Without Instructions. Then They Watched Their Brain Activity With Real-time Monitors. At First, When They Were Figuring Out The Games, He Said, The Whole Brain Lit Up. But By The Time They Knew How To Play The Games, The Brain Went Dark, Except For One Little Point.

It Is Not Enough For A Movie To Be Righteous. It Must Also Be Watchable.

Anyone Who Reads Advice Books About Romance Has One Problem To Begin With: Bad Taste In Literature.

All I Require Of A Religion Is That It Be Tolerant Of Those Who Do Not Agree With It.

It's A Good Question, Because A Movie Isn't Good Or Bad Based On Its Politics. It's Usually Good Or Bad For Other Reasons, Though You Might Agree Or Disagree With Its Politics.

I Think Most People Are More Susceptible To Prejudice Than To Reason.

(guy) Pearce, As The Hero, Makes The Mistake Of Trying To Give A Good And Realistic Performance. (jeremy) Irons At Least Knows What Kind Of Movie He's In, And Hams It Up Accordingly.

The Very Fact Of Snow Is Such An Amazement.

I Will One Day Be Thin, But Vincent Gallo Will Always Be The Director Of The Brown Bunny.

Because Of The Rush Of Human Knowledge, Because Of The Digital Revolution, I Have A Voice, And I Do Not Need To Scream.

Digital Revolution

Clint, My Hero, Is Coming Across As Sad And Pathetic. He Didn't Need To Do This To Himself. It's Unworthy Of Him.

It's Not Often A Thriller Keeps Me Wound Up As Well As 'headhunters' Did. I Knew I Was Being Manipulated And Didn't Care. It Was A Pleasure To See How Well It Was Being Done.

When I Write A Political Column For The Chicago Sun-times, When Liberals Disagree With Me, They Send In Long, Logical E-mails Explaining All My Errors. I Hardly Ever Get Well-reasoned Articles From The Right. People Just Tell Me To Shut Up. That's The Message: "shut Up. Don't Write Anymore About This. Who Do You Think You Are?"

I Stopped Taking Notes On My Palm Pilot And Started Playing The Little Chess Game.

A Movie Is Not About What It Is About. It Is About How It Is About It.

And I Think Both The Left And The Right Should Celebrate People Who Have Different Opinions, And Disagree With Them, And Argue With Them, And Differ With Them, But Don't Just Try To Shut Them Up.

A Movie Isn't Good Or Bad Based On Its Politics. It's Usually Good Or Bad For Other Reasons, Though You Might Agree Or Disagree With Its Politics.

When A Girl Says She Likes You As A Friend, What She Means Is: "rather Than Have Sex With You, I Would Prefer To Lose You As A Friend."

[marlon] Brando Was The Only Guy Who Could Step Out Of That Shadow At The End Of That Movie And Be Worth The Wait.

I Think We Have To Get Beyond The Idea That We Have To Categorize People.

Life's Missed Opportunities, At The End, May Seem More Poignant To Us Than Those We Embraced — Because In Our Imagination They Have A Perfection That Reality Can Never Rival.

Only Enormously Talented People Could Have Made Death To Smoochy . Those With Lesser Gifts Would Have Lacked The Nerve To Make A Film So Bad, So Miscalculated, So Lacking Any Connection With Any Possible Audience.

My Books Are A Subject Of Much Discussion. They Pour From Shelves Onto Tables, Chairs And The Floor, And Chaz Observes That I Haven't Read Many Of Them And I Never Will. You Just Never Know. One Day I May - Need Is The Word I Use - To Read Finnegans Wake, The Icelandic Sagas, Churchill's History Of The Second World War, The Complete Tintin In French, 47 Novels By Simenon, And By Love Possessed.

Socrates Told Us, "the Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living." I Think He's Calling For Curiosity, More Than Knowledge. In Every Human Society At All Times And At All Levels, The Curious Are At The Leading Edge.

Parents And Schools Should Place Great Emphasis On The Idea That It Is All Right To Be Different. Racism And All The Other 'isms' Grow From Primitive Tribalism, The Instinctive Hostility Against Those Of Another Tribe, Race, Religion, Nationality, Class Or Whatever. You Are A Lucky Child If Your Parents Taught You To Accept Diversity.

Wes Anderson's Mind Must Be An Exciting Place For A Story Idea To Be Born. It Immediately Becomes More Than A Series Of Events And Is Transformed Into A World With Its Own Rules, In Which Everything Is Driven By Emotions And Desires As Convincing As They Are Magical.

We Are Born Into A Box Of Time And Space. We Use Words And Communication To Break Out Of It And To Reach Out To Others.

Why Do Alcoholics Begin Down The Same Hazardous Road Day After Day? They Are In Search Of That Elusive Window Of Well-being That Opens When You Drink Your Way Out Of A Hangover And Aren't Yet Drunk All Over Again. The Alcoholic's Day Consists Of Trying To Keep That Window Open.

I Am Proudly A Liberal. I Am Also Patriotic, Reasonable, Pro-american, And Stand For Family Values.

I Was Perfectly Content Before I Was Born, And I Think Of Death As The Same State. What I Am Grateful For Is The Gift Of Intelligence, And For Life, Love, Wonder, And Laughter. You Can't Say It Wasn't Interesting. My Lifetime's Memories Are What I Have Brought Home From The Trip.

A Film Like Hoop Dreams Is What The Movies Are For. It Takes Us, Shakes Us, And Makes Us Think In New Ways About The World Around Us. It Gives Us The Impression Of Having Touched Life Itself.

I Like Smart Movies About Smart People, And Enjoy It When Most Of The Facts Are On The Table And We Can Contemplate Them Together.

It's Strange: We Leave The Movie Having Enjoyed Its Conclusion So Much That We Almost Forgot Our Earlier Reservations. But They Were There, And They Were Real.

I Am, Beneath Everything Else, A Fan. I Was Fixed In This Mode As A Young Boy And Am Awed By People Who Take The Risks Of Performance.

Because I Don't Give The Studios Advanced Quotes Or An Advanced Look At My Reviews. I Think The Readers Deserve To Read My Reviews Before The Studios Do.

To Call "a Lot Like Love" Dead In The Water Is An Insult To Water.

Grave Of The Fireflies Is An Emotional Experience So Powerful That It Forces A Rethinking Of Animation... It Belongs On Any List Of The Greatest War Films Ever Made.

All But A Very Few Of Us Are In Debt. We Exist As Entities Who Borrow Money And Spend The Rest Of Our Lives Making Interest Payments On A Debt Tally That Never Seems To Budge. Whatever Wealth We Have, In Labor, Property Or Cash, Is Suctioned To The Top.

We Are Poor Mortals, But It Dreams To Us That We Can Fly.

Open-heart Surgery Is Now Part Of A Typical Life Experience For Many People. Folks Talk Casually About 'having A Stent Put In,' As If They Had Their Tires Rotated.

It Considers Not Only How We Relate To Others, But How We Relate To Our Ideas Of Others So That A Completely Phony, Non-human Replica Of A Dead Wife Can Inspire The Same Feelings That The Wife Herself Once Did. That Is A Peculiarity Of Humans: We Feel The Same Emotions For Our Ideas As We Do For The Real World, Which Is Why We Can Cry While Reading A Book, Or Fall In Love With Movie Stars. Our Idea Of Humanity Bewitches Us, While Humanity Itself Stays Safely Sealed Away Into Its Billions Of Separate Containers, Or "people.

Falling In Love

Rollerball Is An Incoherent Mess, A Jumble Of Footage In Search Of Plot, Meaning, Rhythm And Sense. There Are Bright Colors And Quick Movement On The Screen, Which We Can Watch As A Visual Pattern That, In Entertainment Value, Falls Somewhere Between A Kaleidoscope And A Lava Lamp.

In The World Of Bad Movies, 'death To Smoochy' Is A Towering Achievement.

Gene [siskel] Often Mentioned Something François Truffaut Once Told Him: The Most Beautiful Sight In A Movie Theater Is To Walk Down To The Front, Turn Around, And Look At The Light From The Screen Reflected On The Upturned Faces Of The Members Of The Audience.

If There Is Such A Thing As A Lock On An Oscar Nomination, ... Hoffman Has One.

We Are Put On This Planet Only Once, And To Limit Ourselves To The Familiar Is A Crime Against Our Minds.

I Don't Require Movies To Be About Good People, And I Don't Reject Screen Violence.

I Find That When I Am Actually Writing, I Enter A Zone Of Concentration Too Small To Admit My Troubles.

If A Movie Isn't A Hit Right Out Of The Gate, They Drop It. Which Means That The Whole Mainstream Hollywood Product Has Been Skewed Toward Violence And Vulgar Teen Comedy.

The Fact Is, Most People Are Not Going To Be Rich Someday. And We've Had A Concerted Policy Of Taking Money Away From The Poor And Giving It To The Rich Wholesale, And At The Same Time, We Have The Runaway Corporations, And The Greed.

Film Theory Has Nothing To Do With Film. Students Presumably Hope To Find Out Something About Film, And All They Will Find Out Is An Occult And Arcane Language Designed Only For The Purpose Of Excluding Those Who Have Not Mastered It And Giving Academic Rewards To Those Who Have. No One With Any Literacy, Taste Or Intelligence Would Want To Teach These Courses, So The Bona Fide Definition Of People Teaching Them Are People Who Are Incapable Of Teaching Anything Else.

It's The Worst Kind Of Bad Film: The Kind That Gets You All Worked Up And Then Lets You Down, Instead Of Just Being Lousy From The First Shot.

I Have No Fear Of Death. We All Die. I Consider My Remaining Days To Be Like Money In The Bank. When It Is All Gone, I Will Be Repossessed.

'abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' Is Without A Doubt The Best Film We Are Ever Likely To See On The Subject - Unless There Is A Sequel, Which Is Unlikely, Because At The End, The Lincolns Are On Their Way To The Theater.

We Feel The Same Emotions For Our Ideas As We Do For The Real World, Which Is Why We Can Cry While Reading A Book, Or Fall In Love With Movie Stars.

Falling In Love

James Cameron's Films Have Always Been Distinguished By Ground-breaking Technical Excellence.

I'll Tell You, I Think That The Internet Has Provided An Enormous Boost To Film Criticism By Giving People An Opportunity To Self Publish Or To Find Sites That Are Friendly.

It Is Reckless To Make Broad Generalizations About Any Group Of People.

"dirty Love" Wasn't Written And Directed, It Was Committed. Here Is A Film So Pitiful, It Doesn't Rise To The Level Of Badness. It Is Hopelessly Incompetent... I Am Not Certain That Anyone Involved Has Ever Seen A Movie, Or Knows What One Is.

You Can't Just Tell Actors, Especially Young Ones, To 'act Happy' And Expect Them To Do It. They Must In Some Essential Way Be Happy.

Political Correctness Is The Fascism Of The 90's, It Is This Rigid Feeling That You Have To Keep Your Ideas And Your Way Of Looking At Things Within Very Narrow Boundaries Or Else You'll Offend Someone. Certainly One Of The Purposes Of Journalism Is To Challenge Just That Way Of Thinking, And Certainly One Of The Purposes Of Criticism Is To Break Boundaries, That's Also One Of The Purposes Of Art.

Teenagers Used To Go To The Movies To See Adults Having Sex. Today Adults Go To The Movies To See Teenagers Having Sex.

It Amazes Me That Filmmakers Will Still Film, And Audiences Will Still Watch, Relationships So Bankrupt Of Human Feeling That The Characters Could Be Reading Dialogue Written By A Computer.

I Was Indeed A Snob, If You Agree With This Definition: 'a Person Who Believes That Their Tastes In A Particular Area Are Superior To Those Of Other People.' I Do Believe That. Not Superior To All Other People, But To Some, Most Probably Including Those Who Think Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen Is A Great Film. That Is Not Simply Ego On My Part. It Is A Faith That After Writing And Teaching About Films For More Than 40 Years, My Tastes Are More Evolved Than Those Of A Fanboy.

Film Theory Has Nothing To Do With Film.

It Is Hard Enough To Be Good At All, But To Be Good In Comedy Speaks For Your Character.

It's Rare To Find A Film That Goes For Broke And Says, 'to Hell With The Consequences.'

Nothing Could Be More Boring Than An Absolutely Accurate Movie About The Law.

A Corner Is Important. It Provides Privacy And An Anchor And Lets You Exist Independently Of The Room.

Nobody Looks Perfect. We Have To Find Peace With The Way We Look And Get On With Life.

I Believe That If, At The End, According To Our Abilities, We Have Done Something To Make Others A Little Happier, And Something To Make Ourselves A Little Happier, That Is About The Best We Can Do.

I Do Not Fear Death. I Know It Is Coming, And I Do Not Fear It, Because I Believe There Is Nothing On The Other Side Of Death To Fear.

What In The World Is A Leave Of Presence? It Means I Am Not Going Away.

I Believe That Young People Wearing Hoods, Unless They Are Very Young, Can Be Frightening. What Are They Hiding? Why Don't They Want To Come Out Into The Light With The Rest Of Us? They May Be Perfectly Nice, But The Hoods Send An Uncertain Statement.

It Is Comforting To Think That We Can Love So Powerfully That Fate Itself Wheels And Turns At The Command Of Our Souls.

Movies That Encourage Empathy Are More Effective Than Those That Objectify Problems.

There's Nothing Like Impending Death To Rouse You From Existential Boredom.

Impending Death

Who Was The Real Hitchcock? I Interviewed Him Once And Haven't A Clue.

What A Terrible Thing It Would Be To Be The Pope! What Unthinkable Responsibilities To Fall On Your Shoulders At An Advanced Age! No Privacy. No Seclusion. No Sin.

What You See Is So Much Less Than What You Get.

Of All The Arts, Movies Are The Most Powerful Aid To Empathy, And Good Ones Make Us Into Better People.

Art Is The Closest We Can Come To Understanding How A Stranger Really Feels.

In These Days Of High-tech Video Games, It's Remarkable That Kids Once Got Incredibly Thrilled While Pushing Little Metal Racing Cars Around A Cardboard Track: The Toy Car Was Yours, And You Invested It With Importance And Enhanced It With Fantasy And Pitied It Because It Was Small, Like You Were. Such Games Were Weapons Against The Ennui Of Endless Saturdays.

Jane Austen Wrote Six Of The Most Beloved Novels In The English Language, We Are Informed At The End Of Becoming Jane, And So She Did. The Key Word Is Beloved. Her Admirers Do Not Analyze Her Books So Much As They Just Plain Love Them To Pieces.

You Slide Down In Your Seat And Make Yourself Comfortable. On The Screen In Front Of You, The Movie Image Appears—enormous And Overwhelming. If The Movie Is A Good One, You Allow Yourself To Be Absorbed In Its Fantasy, And Its Dreams Become Part Of Your Memories

And Yet, Even So, There Is A Way To Find Happiness. That Is To Be Curious About All Of The Interlocking Events That Add Up To Our Lives. To Notice Connections. To Be Amused Or Perhaps Frightened By The Ways Things Work Out. If The Universe Is Indifferent, What A Consolation That We Are Not.

Dogs Notice, They Share, They Draw Conclusions, They Like It When They're Able To Be Of Service And Are Touchingly Grateful When They're Praised.

What Every Human Being Should Do Is Eat A Vegetarian Diet Based On Whole Foods. Period. That's It. Animal Protein Is Bad For You. Dairy Is Bad For You. Forget The Ads: Milk And Eggs Are Bad For You.

Vegetarian Diet

All Good Art Is About Something Deeper Than It Admits.

Who Wants To Live In The Present? It's Such A Limiting Period Compared To The Past.

Live In The Present

It Is All Very Well And Good For Linda Lovelace, The Star Of The Movie, To Advocate Sexual Freedom; But The Energy She Brings To Her Role Is Less Awesome Than Discouraging. If You Have To Work This Hard At Sexual Freedom, Maybe It Isn't Worth The Effort.

Here It Is At Last, The First 150-minute Trailer. Armageddon Is Cut Together Like Its Own Highlights. Take Almost Any 30 Seconds At Random, And You'd Have A Tv Ad. The Movie Is An Assault On The Eyes, The Ears, The Brain, Common Sense, And The Human Desire To Be Entertained. No Matter What They're Charging To Get In, It's Worth More To Get Out.

Going To See Godzilla At The Palais Of The Cannes Film Festival Is Like Attending A Satanic Ritual In St. Peter's Basilica.

Cannes Film Festival

In Hollywood, 'under Development' Means 'all I Have Is The Title.'

I Am Grateful For The Gifts Of Intelligence, Love, Wonder And Laughter. You Can't Say It Wasn't Interesting.

We Must Try To Contribute Joy To The World.

The Last Airbender Is An Agonizing Experience In Every Category I Can Think Of And Others Still Waiting To Be Invented. The Laws Of Chance Suggest That Something Should Have Gone Right. Not Here. It Puts A Nail In The Coffin Of Low-rent 3d, But It Will Need A Lot More Coffins Than That.

Are Vampires Kinky? I Didn't Know.

Sometimes Two People Will Regard Each Other Over A Gulf Too Wide To Ever Be Bridged, And Know Immediately What Could Have Happened, And That It Never Will.

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