“I do not demand that all movies have a story to pull us from beginning to end, and indeed one of the charms of The Big Lebowski, the Coens' previous film, is how its stoned hero loses track of the thread of his own life. But with O Brother, Where Are Thou? I had the sense of invention set adrift; of a series of bright ideas wondering why they had all been invited to the same film.”

—  Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/o-brother-where-art-thou-2000 of O Brother, Where Art Thou? (29 December 2000)
Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I do not demand that all movies have a story to pull us from beginning to end, and indeed one of the charms of The Big …" by Roger Ebert?
Roger Ebert photo
Roger Ebert 264
American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter 1942–2013

Related quotes

Terry Gilliam photo

“I like the Coen brothers. Their films are smart and disturbing.”

Terry Gilliam (1940) American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe

Terry Gilliam's flying circus (2006)
Context: I like the Coen brothers. Their films are smart and disturbing. I am very impressed by what George Clooney is doing now. He is very political. I like the fact that he did Oceans Eleven and Oceans Twelve, made all that money and then leveraged the money and his success into interesting projects. Johnny Depp has also set up a production company and is showing an interest in risky projects that will not be easy.
I am sorry that it is hard for the average person, and even for an above-average person, to see a film that is not a Hollywood production. You see those films only in the festivals. There are few people there. That is worrying. People don't think. My goal in work is to make them think. The media do the opposite.

Michael Moore photo

“I just decided to make a movie. I had no training, no film school, but I had been to a lot of movies.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

As quoted in "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" (23 June 2007)
2009

“This was a wonderful role. I played a Sicilian baron. They had incredible locations, for instance this majestic castle, I couldn't believe how beautiful it was! We also shot a scene in Hadrian's Villa, in a place called Sanctuario di Ercole. I had a great costume - the costume designers also worked on Visconti's GATTOPARDO. It's a mystery to me why they wouldn't let the film out. It's terrible for an actor: You think you have a big break, then the film just rots on the shelf! Also, the director was a very likeable person, very calm on the set. A wonderful movie.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Haruki Murakami photo

“I watched an old American submarine movie on television. The creaking plot had the captain and first officer constantly at each other’s throat. The submarine was a fossil, and one guy had claustrophobia. But all that didn’t stop everything from working out well in the end. It was an everything-works-out-in-the-end-so-maybe-war’s-not-so-bad-after-all sort of film. One of these days they’ll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)

“The recent trend of the Bengali film industry is to remake South Indian films. My film had a mockery about that since I don’t believe in remakes. I won’t make a film which is a copy of something. I am very firm in my beliefs, even if that causes me to lose a few producers. There are many people who are making loads of remakes. But at the same time, there are many newcomers who have original ideas, working on new things, and getting producers. It is obviously a bright side of the shoel thing.”

Arin Paul (1980) Indian film director

Interview on Calcuttatube on Remakes http://calcuttatube.com/arin-paul-exclusive-interview/1608/

Francois Truffaut photo

“Today, I demand that a film express either theor the. I am not at all interested in anything in between; I am not interested in all those films that do not pulse.”

Francois Truffaut (1932–1984) film director

Source: The Films in My Life

Damian Pettigrew photo

“To my delight, Federico had seen Dans la ville blanche (1983) by Swiss director Alain Tanner. Enthusiastic about Bruno Ganz’s performance, he also was impressed by the film’s startling visual poetry of Lisbon achieved by transferring inferior film stock onto 35mm. It was exactly this kind of uncomplicated technical innovation that inspired Federico during the writing of Attore. Conceived in 1992, Attore focused on the craft and the psychology of actors. Having completed a film treatment with roles for Mastroianni, Giulietta Masina, and Paolo Villagio, Fellini was now wondering if he should provide Marcello with a home movie camera to be used in a loosely Shakespearian sense that all the world’s a film set. The 8mm footage of intimate memories of the theatre from his Rimini childhood would then be transferred to 35mm – a most intriguing idea that would have been a new departure for the Maestro had he lived to bring it to the screen.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On Fellini’s last film project, Attore
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)

Roger Ebert photo

“Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren't many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren't many of them telling the same story? Seeking perfection, we see what our dreams and hopes might look like. We realize they come as a gift through no power of our own, and if we lose them, isn't that almost worse than never having had them in the first place?There will be many who find "To the Wonder" elusive and too effervescent. They'll be dissatisfied by a film that would rather evoke than supply. I understand that, and I think Terrence Malick does, too. But here he has attempted to reach more deeply than that: to reach beneath the surface, and find the soul in need.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/to-the-wonder-2013 of To the Wonder (April 6, 2013)
NOTE: This was the last movie review Roger Ebert filed.
Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

“Spielberg had done his best with Schindler's List, but his best left some of us wondering just how useful a contribution it was, to make a movie about how some of the Jews had survived, when the real story was about all the Jews who hadn't.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Glamourising terror', on The Baader-Meinhof Complex.
Television and radio, Radio 4: A Point of View

Walter Dean Myers photo

“Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. MONSTER.”

Walter Dean Myers book Monster

Source: Monster

Related topics