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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.

-Roger Ebert

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The Genius Is Not

Roger Ebert

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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.

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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.

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Straightforward

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Cannes Film Festival

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Cannes Film Festival

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I'm Told We Movie Critics Praise Movies That Are Long And Boring.

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Vegetarian Diet

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Kindness’ Covers All Of My Political Beliefs.

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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.

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

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.

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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.

Dogs Remember Every Favor You Ever Do For Them And Store Those Events In A Memory Bank Titled Why My Human Is A God.

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Movies Are Not About Moving, But About Whether To Move.

If You Want To Save Yourself The Ticket Price, Go Into The Kitchen, Cue Up A Male Choir Singing The Music Of Hell, And Get A Kid To Start Banging Pots And Pans Together. Then Close Your Eyes And Use Your Imagination.

'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.

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.

The Very Fact Of Snow Is Such An Amazement.

We Must Try To Contribute Joy To The World.

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

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

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.

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.

Ridley Scott's 'prometheus' Is A Magnificent Science-fiction Film, All The More Intriguing Because It Raises Questions About The Origin Of Human Life And Doesn't Have The Answers.

Raises Questions

We Must Try To Contribute Joy To The World... I Didn't Always Know This And Am Happy I Lived Long Enough To Find It Out.

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

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Are Vampires Kinky? I Didn't Know.

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Falling In Love

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.

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Breathing Space

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

Live In The Present

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.

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

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.

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

Class Is Often Invisible In America In The Movies, And Usually Not The Subject Of The Film.

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 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.

Life Is Made Up Of Challenges That Cannot Be Solved But Only Accepted.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Resentment Is Just A Way Of Letting Someone Else Use Your Mind Rent-free.

Some Of These People Make My Skin Crawl.

Jacques Tati Is The Great Philosophical Tinkerer Of Comedy, Taking Meticulous Care To Arrange His Films So That They Unfold In A Series Of Revelations And Effortless Delights.

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.

I'd Rather Be Called A N*gger Than A Slave.

Pixar Is The First Studio That Is A Movie Star.

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.

I Just Assume I'm Right. Partially Out Of Conviction And Partially As A Pose.

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.

Sarah Palin Lacked The Preparation Or Temperament To Be One Heartbeat Away From The Presidency, But What She Possessed In Abundance Was The Ability To Inflame Political Passions And Energize The John Mccain Campaign With Star Quality.

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.

Movies Are Like A Machine That Generates Empathy.

Life Always Has An Unhappy Ending, But You Can Have A Lot Of Fun Along The Way, And Everything Doesn't Have To Be Dripping In Deep Significance.

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

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

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.

Crowds Can Be Frightening. They Have A Way Of Impressing The Low, Base Taste Upon Their Members. Watching The Way Thousands Of People In His Audience Could Not Think For Themselves, Could Not Find The Courage To Allow Their Ordinary Feelings Of Decency And Taste To Prevail, I Understood Better How Demagogues Are Possible.

They're Not Trying To Prevent Hollywood From Making Movies. They're Asking That The Most Powerful Image-building Machinery In The World Stop Grinding Out Killer Dykes And Twisted Homo Sex Fiends As If Sexual Orientation Had Anything To Do With Criminal Behavior.

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.

Some Movies Run Off The Rails. This One Is Like The Train Crash In The Fugitive. I Watched It In Mounting Gloom, Realizing I Was Witnessing Something Historic, A Film That For Decades To Come Will Be The Punch Line Of Jokes About Bad Movies.

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

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.

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.

Valentines Day Is Being Marketed As A Date Movie. I Think Its More Of A First-date Movie. If Your Date Likes It, Do Not Date That Person Again. And If You Like It, There May Not Be A Second Date.

Many People Believe The Names Of In 'n Out And Steak 'n Shake Perfectly Describe The Contrast In Bedroom Techniques Between The Coast And The Heartland.

A Lot Of First Novels Are Written Long Before They're Actually Put Down On Paper.

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

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