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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.

-Roger Ebert

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The Idea That A

Roger Ebert

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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.

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I Know Aliens From Other Worlds Are Required To Arrive In New Mexico, But Why Stay There?

There Is A Movie Called “fargo” Playing Right Now. It Is A Masterpiece. Go See It. If You, Under Any Circumstances, See “little Indian, Big City,” I Will Never Let You Read One Of My Reviews Again.

A Remarkable Documentary That's Also One Of The Most Beautiful Nature Films I've Seen.

We Exist To Have Our Wealth Moved Up The Economic Chain Out Of Our Reach.

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.

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.

Praise Without Merit Is More Harmful Than Unearned Criticism.

A Depressing Number Of People Seem To Process Everything Literally. They Are To Wit As A Blind Man Is To A Forest, Able To Find Every Tree, But Each One Coming As A Surprise.

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

(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.

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

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.

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

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 Layout Was Griping, The Glide Is Awesome. Two Ten-inch Fins Up, Way Up.

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.

'marley' Does What Is Probably The Best Possible Job Of Documenting An Important Life.

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

Reese Witherspoon Is As Cute As A Button On Raggedy Ann's Overalls, But Irresistible Raw Sex Appeal Is Not One Of Her Qualities.

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

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.

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

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

If You Can Act As If Something Is True, In A Sense That Makes It True.

Show Me A Sexual Practice That Involves Ice Cubes And Hot Sauce, And I Will Show You A Sexual Practice That Would Be Improved Without Them.

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.

Sometimes, It's All About The Casting.

A Young Girl Is Possessed By A Devil, And Constantine Shouts, 'i Need A Mirror! Now! At Least Three Feet High!' He Can Capture The Demon In The Mirror And Throw It Out The Window, See, Although You Wonder Why Supernatural Beings Would Have Such Low-tech Security Holes.

Supernatural Beings

I've Never Found Kicks To The Groin Particularly Funny, Although Recent Work In The Genre Of The Buddy Movie Suggests Audience Research Must Prove Me Wrong.

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.

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.

All Good Art Is About Something Deeper Than It Admits.

One Difference Between Film Noir And More Straightforward Crime Pictures Is That Noir Is More Open To Human Flaws And Likes To Embed Them In Twisty Plot Lines.

Friends Don't Let Jackasses Drink And Drive.

Drink And Drive

I Believe Empathy Is The Most Essential Quality Of Civilization.

Pixar Is The First Studio That Is A Movie Star.

Film Theory Has Nothing To Do With Film.

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

One Sign Of A Great Actor Is When He Can Be Alone By Himself On The Screen, Doing Almost Nothing, And Producing One Of A Film's Defining Moments.

Defining Moments

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

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.

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.

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I Know As A Critic I'm Required To Have A Well-armored Heart. I Must Be A Cynical Wise Guy To Show My Great Sophistication. No Pushover, Me.

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The Problem With Being Sure That God Is On Your Side Is That You Can't Change Your Mind, Because God Sure Isn't Going To Change His.

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

Are Vampires Kinky? I Didn't Know.

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.

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Why Are Some People Bullied? Because They Are Different. How? It Doesn't Matter.

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I Begin To Feel Like I Was In The Last Generation Of Americans Who Took A Civics Class. I Begin To Feel Like Most Americans Don't Understand The First Amendment, Don't Understand The Idea Of Freedom Of Speech, And Don't Understand That It's The Responsibility Of The Citizen To Speak Out.

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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.

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

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Vegetarian Diet

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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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

There Are No Guarantees. But There Is Also Nothing To Fear. We Come From Oblivion When We Are Born. We Return To Oblivion When We Die. The Astonishing Thing Is This Period Of In-between.

We Live In A Box Of Space And Time. Movies Are Windows In Its Walls. They Allow Us To Enter Other Minds, Not Simply In The Sense Of Identifying With The Characters, Although That Is An Important Part Of It, But By Seeing The World As Another Person Sees It.

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.

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.

A Few Actresses Have All But Set Up Shop As Women Of A Certain Age Who Attract Younger Lovers. I Think Of Susan Sarandon, Cameron Diaz And Isabelle Huppert.

It's Hard To Explain The Fun To Be Found In Seeing The Right Kind Of Bad Movie.

Artists Are Rarely Members Of The Popular Crowd.

In The World Of Acting, Many Are Thin But Few Are Talented.

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

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.

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

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.

We Are The Playthings Of The Gods.

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.

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.

Samurai Films, Like Westerns, Need Not Be Familiar Genre Stories. They Can Expand To Contain Stories Of Ethical Challenges And Human Tragedy.

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?"

There Are Few Lonelier Sights Than A Good Comedian Being Funny In A Movie That Doesn't Know What Funny Is.

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

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Straightforward

Start. Don’t Look Back. If At The End It Doesn’t Meet Your Hopes, Start Again. Now You Know More About Your Hopes.

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!

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. I Hope To Be Spared As Much Pain As Possible On The Approach Path. I Was Perfectly Content Before I Was Born, And I Think Of Death As The Same State.

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3-d Is A Waste Of A Perfectly Good Dimension. Hollywood's Current Crazy Stampede Toward It Is Suicidal. It Adds Nothing Essential To The Moviegoing Experience. For Some, It Is An Annoying Distraction. For Others, It Creates Nausea And Headaches.

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

There Must Be A Better Reason To Have A Baby Than To Provide A Plot Point In A Rom-com. Don't You Think?

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

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

Of All The Purposes Of Education, I Think The Most Useful Is This: It Prepares You To Keep Yourself Entertained. It Gives You A Better Chance Of An Interesting Job.

To Die Is One Thing. How Much Worse To Know That All The Life That Ever Existed On This Planet, And All It Ever Achieved, Was To Be Obliterated?

When We Go To The Movies, We Identify With The Characters We See. That's Why We Go To The Movies; We Have A Voyeuristic Experience; We Have An Out Of The Body Experience. The Screen Is More Real Than Our Thoughts Are At The Moment We Are Looking At The Film And We Place Ourselves In The Place Of The People On The Screen, And When They Behave Nobly, It Makes Us Feel Noble, When They Are Sad And When They Have Lost Love, We Feel Sad; We Can Identify With That.

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

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.

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.

I Begin To Feel Like Most Americans Don't Understand The First Amendment, Don't Understand The Idea Of Freedom Of Speech, And Don't Understand That It's The Responsibility Of The Citizen To Speak Out.

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.

Growing Up, I Missed The Whole 'three Stooges' Thing. Either They Weren't On The Station In My Hometown, Or We Hadn't Bought A Tv Set Yet, Or They Came To Town Too Late For Me. I'm Pretty Sure That At The Right Age, I Would Have Loved Them.

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

Never Marry Anyone You Could Not Sit Next To During A Three-day Bus Trip.

The Movie Cheerfully Offends All Civilized Notions Of Taste, Decorum, Manners And Hygiene... The Movie Is Vulgar? Vulgarity Is When We Don't Laugh. When We Laugh, It's Merely Human Nature.

Families And Their Problems Go On And On, And They Aren't Solved, They're Dealt With.

There's Something Depressing About A Young Couple Helplessly In Love. Their State Is So Perfect, It Must Be Doomed. They Project Such Qualities On Their Lover That Only Disappointment Can Follow.

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.

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