Quotes about film
page 6

“…the eyes, black, were all East - houris, harems, beds scented with Biblical spices; nose and lips were pan-Mediterranean. Her body…was that of the Shulamite and Italian film stars. The décolletage, with its promise of round, brown, infinitely smooth, vertiginous sensual treasure, was a torment to the blood…. Many had promised marriage, but all had gone home, the promise unfulfilled…. quite considerable capacity for all kinds of sensuous pleasure.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

Marriage, Pleasure, Home, Star

“I've always thought that science fiction films set in our world have always rung false.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Interview about The Dark Crystal (1982)

World, Science, Falseness

“I treat all film roles one way: very seriously," exclaims Pleasence. "I never play anything tongue-in-cheek, though at times it might appear that way. I'm a professional actor who has no particular approach to acting. I get the part, I read the script. If I decide to do it, I learn the lines. People expecting a longwinded explanation on my approach will be disappointed. I have no theory about acting. There is no method, there is no way. I just do it.”

Donald Pleasence (1919–1995) British actor

INTERVIEW BY MARC SHAPIRO https://www.pleasence.com/articles/MADMAN.HTML (February 1989)

People, Disappointment, Way, Learning

“In the 1960s the works of Takis and Tinguely were experiments with different forces, both magnetic and kinetic. My work differed from theirs, for although my kinetic art works used machines, the works themselves moved in random organic ways and avoided the monotonous repetitive movements of most machines. My land art projects and all the rest of my cosmic propulsions were born out of the organic and my relation with the dynamics of nature. When I first exhibited with Liliane Lijn at the Indica Gallery in London in 1967 I called my artworks bio-kinetic sculptures. Some of my artworks in that show are featured in the film I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname by the English director Michael Winner.”

David Medalla (1942) Filipino artist

Source: Adam Nankervis, " A Stitch in time http://moussemagazine.it/articolo.mm?id=707," in: Mousse Magazine.it, Issue 29, 2015

Art, Way, Nature, Forgetting

“I'm on a journey to discover the beauty of the fairy tale and I want to stay on that path, trying to find better ways to capture it on film. And I have only one wish — to delight the eyes and heart of every child.”

Karel Zeman (1910–1989) Czech film director, artist and animator

Jsem na cestě objevování krásy pohádek, a tak na ní chci zůstat a hledat stále dokonalejší způsob jejich filmového vyprávění. Mám jedinou touhu — potěšit dětské oči a dětská srdce. Quoted on the website of the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague (in English http://www.muzeumkarlazemana.cz/en/karel-zeman and Czech http://www.muzeumkarlazemana.cz/cz/karel-zeman).

Beauty, Way, Heart

“Boat Trip arrives preceded by publicity saying many homosexuals have been outraged by the film. Now that it's in theaters, everybody else has a chance to join them. Not that the film is outrageous. That would be asking too much. It is dim-witted, unfunny, too shallow to be offensive, and way too conventional to use all of those people standing around in the background wearing leather and chains and waiting hopefully for their cues. This is a movie made for nobody, about nothing.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/boat-trip-2003 of Boat Trip (21 March 2003) Reviews, Half-star reviews

People, Way, Chance, Waiting

“I’ve always maintained that it’s easy to make a film on Adolf Hitler. What is difficult is to find out why he struck a chord with the German people; what is the nature of fear, aspiration and identity that he evoked in them that it became Hitler’s Germany.”

Saeed Akhtar Mirza (1943) Indian film director

‘Once again, I feel I have something to say’ Interview, Page 2 http://www.indianexpress.com/news/once-again-i-feel-i-have-something-to-say/471304/2 Indian Express, Jun 07, 2009.

People, Fear, Nature

“I don't know much about the score for GODZILLA 1985. However, my impression of GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE is a negative one, both in terms of the direction and the music. For example, the music that is heard while the scenes that take place in Saradia are shown is just ridiculous. The composer used European music instead of some modern Arabic music. By the way, during the production of GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE, Toho asked for permission to use some of my music in the film. I said that I would allow its use as long as it was not turned into popular music. Toho agreed to that, but just before GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE was completed, a Toho representative came to me and said, "Well, your music was turned into popular music." By that time, it was too late to do anything about the situation. After GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE was released, my daughter came to me and said, "No matter how much you try to escape from Godzilla movies, Toho always uses your name and your melodies, so why don't you just score the next Godzilla film yourself?"”

Akira Ifukube (1914–2006) Japanese composer

That is why I agreed to work on GODZILLA VS. GHIDRAH. As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview I" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1992)

Music, Way, Time, Daughters

“Treasure maps; Czarist bonds; a case of stuffed dodos; Scarlett O'Hara's birth certificate; two flattened and deformed silver bullet heads in an old matchbox; Baedeker's guide to Atlantis (seventeenth edition, 1902); the autograph score of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, with Das Ende written neatly at the foot of the last page; three boxes of moon rocks; a dumpy, heavy statuette of a bird covered in dull black paint, which reminded him of something but he couldn't remember what; a Norwich Union life policy in the name of Vlad Dracul; a cigar box full of oddly shaped teeth, with CAUTION: DO NOT DROP painted on the lid in hysterical capitals; five or six doll's-house-sized books with titles like Lilliput On $2 A Day; a small slab of green crystal that glowed when he opened the envelope; a thick bundle of love letters bound in blue ribbon, all signed Margaret Roberts; a left-luggage token from North Central railway terminus, Ruritania; Bartholomew's Road Atlas of Oz (one page, with a yellow line smack down the middle); a brown paper bag of solid gold jelly babies; several contracts for the sale and purchase of souls; a fat brown envelope inscribed To Be Opened On My Death: E. A. Presley, unopened; Oxford and Cambridge Board O-level papers in Elvish language and literature, 1969-85; a very old drum in a worm-eaten sea-chest marked F. Drake, Plymouth, in with a load of minute-books and annual accounts of the Winchester Round Table; half a dozen incredibly ugly portraits of major Hollywood film stars; Unicorn-Calling, For Pleasure & Profit by J. R. Hartley; a huge collection of betting slips, on races to be held in the year 2019; all water, as far as Paul was concerned, off a duck's {back]”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

The Portable Door (2003)

Love, Life, Death, Pleasure

“I know in Italy there is a producer, producing a film on Nazi concentration camps. I will suggest you for the role of kapo. You would be perfect for that role.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

Statement to German MEP Martin Schulz, European Parliament (2 July 2003), as quoted in "In quotes: Berlusconi in his own words" at BBC News (2 May 2006) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3041288.stm, "Did I say This? in The Observer (20 April 2008) http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/20/italy, and in Italian at "Silvio Berlusconi vs MEP Martin Schulz; relive the moment" at YouTube (16 April 2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bPqaqGJ5Js 2003

Perfection

“This despicable remake of the despicable 1978 film I Spit on Your Grave adds yet another offense: a phony moral equivalency. In the original, a woman foolishly thought to go on holiday by herself at a secluded cabin. She attracted the attention of depraved local men, who raped her, one after the other. Then the film ended with her fatal revenge. In this film, less time is devoted to the revenge, and more time to verbal, psychological and physical violence against her. Thus it works even better as vicarious cruelty against women.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-spit-on-your-grave-2010 of I Spit on Your Grave (6 October 2010) Reviews, Zero star reviews

Women, Men, Revenge, Time

“In the early days of my carer as an actor, I shared what was then the prevailing attitude of Negro performers — that the content and form of a play or a film scenario was of little importance to us. What mattered was was the opportunity, which came so seldom to our folks … Later I came to understand that the Negro artist could not view the matter simply in terms of of his individual interests, and that he had a responsibility to his people who rightfully resented the traditional stereotyped portrayals of Negros on stage and screen.”

Paul Robeson book Here I Stand

Paul Robeson : Here I Stand (1958), p. 124

People, Understanding

“Pride in one’s work carries with it a determination to accept the demands imposed by that work: in the case of philosophy to follow the argument where it leads, in the case of history to discover what actually happened, in the case of literature to explore to its depths a particular theme. In consequence, this sort of pride demands freedom: it has to be laid low in any authoritarian State. The historian, in such a system, has to conform to official interpretations of the past, the philosopher to dogmas, the writer to stereotypes of human action, the craftsman to “production-schedules.” More subtly, attempts are made to lay pride low in a consumer’s society: the film-director, the novelist, the craftsman are called upon to produce “what will sell” at whatever cost to their pride in workmanship.”

John Passmore (1914–2004) Australian philosopher

Source: The Perfectibility of Man (1971), p. 290.

History, Literature, Freedom, Past

“When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it. My technique, which differs from film to film, is wholly instinctive and never based on a priori considerations.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

Thinking

“In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and 'get' everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don't understand each atom of the potato!”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

from The Christian Science Monitor - August 3, 1994. David Sterritt

Way, Understanding, Thinking, Training

“I got the idea [for Earthlings] because I was filming some public service announcements. It was mostly domestic animals, dogs and cats, and when they were killed on the street or euthanized in the shelters, they were put into this room that resembles a large refrigerator. But when I saw them piled up in there, it suddenly made me think of meat in a refrigerator. Even though they looked nothing like meat, there was this parallel – dead animals kept in a fridge – and that made me think of cows and chickens and pigs and eggs and milk, and so on. That was the beginning of Earthlings really, the first spark of inspiration.”

Shaun Monson American filmmaker

“Exclusive: Earthlings' Shaun Monson On New Iberia Research Center And More”, interview with Ecorazzi (25 March 2009) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2009/03/25/exclusive-earthlings-shaun-monson-on-new-iberia-research-center-and-more/.

Dogs, Cats, Idea, Thinking

“I want a poetry that can learn as much from popular culture as from serious culture. A poetry that seeks the pleasure and emotionality of the popular arts without losing the precision, concentration, and depth that characterize high art. I want a literature that addresses a diverse audience distinguished for its intelligence, curiosity, and imagination rather than its professional credentials. I want a poetry that risks speaking to the fullness of our humanity, to our emotions as well as to our intellect, to our senses as well as our imagination and intuition. Finally I hope for a more sensual and physical art — closer to music, film, and painting than to philosophy or literary theory. Contemporary American literary culture has privileged the mind over the body. The soul has become embarrassed by the senses. Responding to poetry has become an exercise mainly in interpretation and analysis. Although poetry contains some of the most complex and sophisticated perceptions ever written down, it remains an essentially physical art tied to our senses of sound and sight. Yet, contemporary literary criticism consistently ignores the sheer sensuality of poetry and devotes its considerable energy to abstracting it into pure intellectualization. Intelligence is an irreplaceable element of poetry, but it needs to be vividly embodied in the physicality of language. We must — as artists, critics, and teachers — reclaim the essential sensuality of poetry. The art does not belong to apes or angels, but to us. We deserve art that speaks to us as complete human beings. Why settle for anything less?”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Paradigms Lost," interview with Gloria Brame, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (Spring 1995)
Interviews

Pleasure, Hope, Art, Music

“Perhaps a better title for The Da Vinci Code might be Much Ado About Nothing. When you boil away the hype and hysteria, all that remains is a pedestrian murder mystery that isn't sufficiently challenging or scandalous to raise anyone's hackles. It's preposterous, overlong, and saddled with a sloppy denouement that defines the term "anti-climax." The film's two big "surprises" are telegraphed early, and the ease with which they can be guessed (using the "conservation of characters" process) leeches the movie of a large measure of its suspense. Individual scenes are entertaining in their own right, but the production as a whole is a lumbering mess.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1014 of The Da Vinci Code (2006). Two-and-a-half star reviews

“Here's a movie that stretches out every moment for more than it's worth, until even the moments of inspiration seem forced. Since the basic idea of the movie is a good one and there are talented people in the cast, what we have here is a film shot down by its own forced and mannered style.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/raising-arizona-1987 of Raising Arizona (20 March 1987) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

People, Idea

“In practically every film you experience, you can see the director following the text. Illustrating the words first, making the pictures after, and, alas, so often not making pictures at all, but holding up the camera to do its mimetic worst.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

"105 Years of Illustrated Text" in the Zoetrope All-Story, Vol. 5 No. 1.
105 Years of Illustrated Text

“Troy: Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such educational films as "Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun" and "Firecrackers: The Silent Killer."”

Phil Hartman (1948–1998) Canadian American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and graphic artist

On the Simpsons, Troy McClure

Education

“At the movies, we are gradually being conditioned to accept violence as a sensual pleasure. The directors used to say they were showing us its real face and how ugly it was in order to sensitize us to its horrors. You don't have to be very keen to see that they are now in fact desensitizing us. They are saying that everyone is brutal, and the heroes must be as brutal as the villains or they turn into fools. There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counterbalance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films — the freedom to analyze their implications. If we don't use this critical freedom, we are implicitly saying that no brutality is too much for us — that only squares and people who believe in censorship are concerned with brutality. Actually, those who believe in censorship are primarily concerned with sex, and they generally worry about violence only when it's eroticized. This means that practically no one raises the issue of the possible cumulative effects of movie brutality. Yet surely, when night after night atrocities are served up to us as entertainment, it's worth some anxiety. We become clockwork oranges if we accept all this pop culture without asking what's in it. How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience?”

Pauline Kael book Deeper into Movies

"Stanley Strangelove" (January 1972) http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0051.html, review of A Clockwork Orange Deeper into Movies (1973)

People, Pleasure, Fools, Sex

“The mingling of object and image in collage, of given fact and conscious artifice, corresponds to the illusion-producing processes of contemporary civilization. In advertisements, news stories, films, and political campaigns, lumps of unassailable data are implanted in preconceived formats in order to make the entire fabrication credible. Documents waved at hearings by Joseph McCarthy to substantiate his fictive accusations were a version of collage, as is the corpse of Lenin, inserted by Stalin into the Moscow mausoleum to authenticate his own contrived ideology. Twentieth-century fictions are rarely made up of the whole cloth, perhaps because the public has been trained to have faith in "information."”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Collage is the primary formula of the aesthetics of mystification developed in our time.
Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 178, "Collage: Philosophy of Put-Togethers"

Faith, Time, Training, Clothes

“I think the film is so interesting because I have never had an outpouring like this in my entire life as an actor. We shift stories in our own lives to be able to survive them, about our own family and whatever traumas we have walked through, to make them somehow palatable. And somehow, in adulthood, it's like we have to relive those stories in order to find healing in them.”

Laura Dern (1967) American actress, director, producer

On the message of the 2018 drama film "The Tale".
New Zealand Herald interview (June 2018)

Life, Family, Thinking, Adulthood

“My father once told me that the art of receiving a compliment is, of all things, the sign of a civilized man. He died soon afterwards, leaving my education in this important matter sadly incomplete; I'm only glad that, on this, the occasion of the rarest compliment he ever could have dreamed of, that he isn't here to see his son so publicly at a loss. In receiving a compliment, or in trying to, the words are all worn out by now. They're polluted by ham and corn. And, when you try to scratch around for some new ones, it's just an exercise in empty cleverness. What I feel this evening, is not very clever. it's the very opposite of emptiness. The corny old phrase is the only one I know to say it: my heart is full; with a full heart, with all of it, I thank you. This is Samuel Johnson, on the subject of what he calls contrarieties: "there are goods, so opposed that we cannot seize both, and, in trying, fail to seize either. Flatter not yourself, he says, with contrarieties. Of the blessings set before you, make your choice. No man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source, and from the mouth of the nile." For this business of contrarieties has to do with us. With you, who are paying me this compliment, and for me, who has strayed so far from this hometown of ours. Not that I am alone in this, or unique, I am never that; but there are a few of us left in this conglomerated world of us who still trudge stubbornly along this lonely rocky road; and this is in fact our contrariety. We don't move nearly as fast as our cousins on the freeway; we don't even get as much accomplished just as the family sized farm can't possibly raise as many crops or get as much profit as the agricultural factory of today. What we do come up with has no special right to call itself better it's just.. different. No if there's any excuse for us it all, it's that we're simply following the old American tradition of the maverick, and we are a vanishing breed. This honor I can only accept in the name of all the mavericks. And also, as a tribute to the generosity of all the rest of you; to the givers, to the ones with fixed addresses. A maverick may go his own way but he doesn't think that it's the only way, or ever claim that it's the best one, except maybe for himself. And don't imagine that this raggle-taggle gypsy-o is claiming to be free. It's just that some of the necessities to which I am a slave are different from yours. As a director, for instance, I pay myself out of my acting jobs. I use my own work to subsidize my work (in other words I'm crazy). But not crazy enough to pretend to be free. But it's a fact that many of the films you've seen tonight could never have been made otherwise. Or, if otherwise, well, they might have been better, but certainly they wouldn't have been mine. The truth is I don't believe that this great evening would ever have brightened my life if it wasn't for this: my own, particular, contrariety. Let us raise our cups, then, standing as some of us do on opposite ends of the river, to what really matters to us all: to our crazy, beloved profession, to the movies — to good movies, to every possible kind.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Speech given upon his acceptance of the AFI Lifetime Achievement award. Viewable http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXJnxClGamA&list=HL1349840607&feature=mh_lolz

Life, Truth, World, Education

“Jerry Goldsmith is an artist who meets all the demands upon the composer in films. He communicates, integrates, subordinates, supports, and designs with discipline.”

Jerry Goldsmith (1929–2004) film composer

Franklin Schaffner
About

Communication, Support

“I come from the stage so being involved with such a gigantic film was just a new thing for me which I really loved. And for sure I would love to do something like this again. There's lots of things that have opened up for me. I'll just make sure I'll make the wisest decisions because this is a very delicate moment. And someday I will go back to the stage because that's where I feel at home.”

Silvia Colloca (1977) Singer, actress, author and TV cooking personality

An Interview with Dracula and his Brides (2004)

Love, Feeling, Home, Decision

“Michael made his debut in John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic, Halloween, possibly the best scare movie to come along in the last twenty-five years. … [W]ith the release of the sixth (and hopefully final) movie to bear the Halloween moniker, we see how far the mighty have fallen. … In the final analysis, The Curse of Michael Myers is a horrific motion picture — just not in the way the film makers intended - Directed By Joe Chappelle.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=708 of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995). Zero star reviews

Way

“Laura is a free spirit. She's also a great student and a dedicated artist – and there aren't very many people I call artists. But the entire cast of this film, they're all true artists, dedicated to their own inner truth, and they have the courage to share that. You don't find that very often.”

Sandra Seacat (1936) American acting teacher and actress

As quoted in "Laura Dern: a Hollywood old-timer at 37" http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2004-08-23/features/0408230242_1_laura-dern-blue-velvet-citizen-ruth by John Anderson, in The Baltimore Sun (August 23, 2004)

People, Truth, Courage

“He's done two masterpieces, you don't have to bother with the rest. One is Blow-Up, which I've seen many times, and the other is La Notte, also a wonderful film, although that's mostly because of the young Jeanne Moreau. In my collection I have a copy of Il Grido, and damn what a boring movie it is. So devilishly sad, I mean. You know, Antonioni never really learned the trade… He concentrated on single images, never realising that film is a rhythmic flow of images, a movement. Sure, there are brilliant moments in his films. But I don't feel anything for L'Avventura, for example. Only indifference. I never understood why Antonioni was so incredibly applauded. And I thought his muse Monica Vitti was a terrible actress.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

On Michelangelo Antonioni
Variant translation: Antonioni has never properly learnt his craft. He's an aesthete. If, for example, he needs a certain kind of road for The Red Desert, then he gets the houses repainted on the damned street. That is the attitude of an aesthete. He took great care over a single shot, but didn't understand that a film is a rhythmic stream of images, a living, moving process; for him, on the contrary, it was such a shot, then another shot, then yet another. So, sure, there are some brilliant bits in his films... I can't understand why Antonioni is held in such high esteem.
Jan Aghed interview (2002)

Sadness, Feeling, Learning, Time

“I admire hard-bitten, wisecracking realism of Ida Lupino and the film noir heroines. I’m sick of simpering white girls with their princess fantasies.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), p. x

Girl, Princess

“I always felt that the telefilm directors made wonderful films, which are even better than the big screen movies, but never got enough opportunities to showcase their talents on the big screens.”

Arin Paul (1980) Indian film director

Interview on Calcuttatube http://calcuttatube.com/arin-paul-exclusive-interview/1608/ (2009)

“To call it weird would be a cowardly evasion. It is creepy, eccentric, eerie, flaky, freaky, funky, grotesque, inscrutable, kinky, kooky, magical, oddball, spooky, uncanny, uncouth and unearthly. Especially uncouth. What I did was, I typed the word 'weird' and when that wholly failed to evoke the feelings the film stirred in me, I turned to the thesaurus and it suggested the above substitutes - and none of them do the trick, either.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-triplets-of-belleville-2003 of The Triplets of Belleville (26 December 2003) Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Feeling

“With a few exceptions, Fellini's films have failure and despair running through them: Life continues, but I can't imagine 'Felliniesque' as an exclusively uplifting adjective. Fellini's best films are the ones that distill this essence -- the paradoxical quality of melancholic ecstasy, a surreal, bittersweet vitality -- to perfection.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On the adjective ‘Felliniesque’, in The Los Angeles Times (April 2003)]

Life, Imagination, Failure, Perfection

“There’s something about an American soldier you can’t explain. They’re so grateful for anything, even a film actress coming to see them.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer

citation needed

“Friends, last night I watched the Hollywood (Paramount) movie Noah. It is much, much worse than I thought it would be—much worse. The director of the movie, Darren Aronofsky, has been quoted in the media as saying that Noah is “the least biblical biblical film ever made,” and I agree wholeheartedly with him. I am disgusted. I am going to come right out and say it: this movie is disgusting and evil—paganism! Do you really want your family to see a pagan movie that portrays Noah as a psychopath who says that if his daughter-in-law’s baby is a girl then he will kill her as soon as she’s born? And when two girls are born, bloodstained Noah (the man the Bible calls “righteous” in Genesis 7:1) brings a knife down to the head of one of the babies to kill her—and at the last minute doesn’t do it. And then a bit later, Noah says he failed because he didn’t kill the babies. How can we recommend this movie and then speak against abortion? Psychopathic Noah sees humans as a blight on the planet and wants to rid the world of people. I feel dirty—as if I have to somehow wash the evil off myself. I cannot believe there are Christian leaders who have recommended that people see this movie.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"The Noah Movie is Disgusting and Evil: Paganism!" http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/03/28/the-noah-movie-is-disgusting-and-evil-paganism/, Around the World with Ken Ham (March 28, 2014) Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

People, World, Family, Law

“The principle behind the cinema, like that behind all the arts, rests on a choice. It is, in Camus' words, "the revolt of the artist against the real."
If one holds to this principle, what difference can it make by what means reality is revealed? Whether the author of a film seizes on the real in a novel, in a newspaper story or in his own imagination, what counts is the way he isolates it, stylizes it, makes it his own.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

Cahiers du Cinema (1960)

Art, Way, Imagination, Reality

“Object to the Hollywood film and you’re an intellectual snob, object to the avant-garde films and you’re a Philistine. But, while in Hollywood, one must often be a snob; in avant-garde circles one must often be a Philistine.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"Movies, the Desperate Art" (1956)

“Even in the greatest Westerns, the woman is imposed on the action, as a star, and is generally destined to be “had” by the male lead. But she does not exist as a woman. If you cut her out of the film, in a version which you can imagine, the film becomes much better. In the desert, the essential problem was to survive. Women were an obstacle to survival! Usually, the woman not only holds up the story, but she has no real character, no reality. She is a symbol. She is there without having any reason to be there, simply because one must have a woman, and because the hero must prove, in some way or another, that he has "sex-appeal."”

Sergio Leone (1929–1989) Italian film director, screenwriter and producer

Christopher Frayling, Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone (1981), p. 129. Quoted in The Worlding Project: Doing Cultural Studies in the Era of Globalization (2007), ed. R. Wilson, ‎C. L. Connery, Ch. 6: "'But I Did Not Shoot the Deputy': Dubbing the Yankee Frontier" by Louis Chude-Sokei, pp. 158–159, as well as in The A to Z of Westerns in Cinema (2009) by Paul Varner, p. 198, and in The Quick, the Dead and the Revived: The Many Lives of the Western Film (2016) by Joseph Maddrey, p. 104.

Women, Sex, Way, Imagination

“Calcutta, for me, was a particular idea of the modern city, and I found it in many forms, works, and genres. … by ‘modernity’ I have in mind something that was never new. True modernity was born with the aura of inherited decay and life. … if you look at paintings and photographs, and see old films of the city, you notice that these walls and buildings were never new – that Calcutta was born to look more or less as I saw it as a child. I’m not referring here to an air of timelessness; the patina that gave to Calcutta’s alleys, doorways, and houses their continuity and disposition is very different from the eternity that defines mausoleums and monuments. It’s this quality I’m trying to get at when I speak of modernity. … modernity in the nineteenth century is indistinguishable from nature; perhaps it is nature – in some ways, the culvert, which has emerged from the rock, seems more of its place than the mountain itself.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

citation needed
On Modernity

Life, Way, Mountain, Idea

“I can't think of any one film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 338

Thinking

“[Mi manca] il calore delle persone [italiane]: c’è una grande facilità nella comunicazione, mentre i francesi non sono così estroversi. D’altra parte, in Francia c’è una grande vivacità nel mondo del cinema: si producono almeno duecento film all’anno e le occasioni di lavoro sono moltissime. Purtroppo non c’è paragone col cinema italiano.”

Alessandra Martines (1963) Italian dancer and actor

Parting, Personality

“I always tell the younger film-makers and students: Do it like the painters used to…Study the old masters. Enrich your palette. Expand the canvas. There's always so much more to learn.”

Martin Scorsese (1942) American film director, screenwriter, producer and actor

Scorsese: A Personal Journey through American Movies.

Study, Learning

“I think that I’m at a stage where the onus and the responsibility of the leading man, and therefore the onus and responsibility of the success of the film, and its marketing and its sale etc, is really not on my shoulders. Therefore, let me do what is coming my way. Therefore to do something like a Nishabd or even a Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag…well, I enjoyed doing them. Okay, people didn’t like it and they trashed it. And that’s fine, we must respect that. But I didn’t mind doing those roles because they tested my creativity and I enjoyed doing them.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

People, Way, Thinking, Success

“Mandingo is racist trash, obscene in its manipulation of human beings and feelings, and excruciating to sit through in an audience made up largely of children, as I did last Saturday afternoon. The film has an "R" rating, which didn't keep many kids out, since most came with their parents… if [Chicago] believes Mandingo should be shown to children, then there are no possible standards left and the only thing to do is transfer the censors to the parks department, where they can supervise paper‑plate‑ throwing contests.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mandingo-1975 of Mandingo (25 July 1975) Reviews, Zero star reviews

Children, Feeling, Parent

“I shoot only on film and plate. I don’t touch digital. There are many reasons: mentally it’s very different to work with film. It’s expensive, it’s heavy, so you have to prepare. It’s precious and every photograph you have to say yes! It’s now! There's no fiddling about and fixing it later. I really believe the soul of photography is its relationship with the instant.”

Hélène Binet (1959) Swiss photographer

Source: Ten questions for photographer Hélène Binet http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/articles/2012/december/06/ten-questions-for-photographer-helene-binet/, Phaidon Press, 6 December 2012.

Soul

“Watching a Norwegian film: character screams "Satan" and the English subtitle reads "Christ". That's was I call subliminal messaging.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

lecture performance at CMU Pittsburgh, 2016.

Reading, Christ

“The Man in the Moon is like a great short story, one of those masterpieces of language and mood where not one word is wrong, or unnecessary. It flows so smoothly from start to finish that it hardly even seems like an ordinary film. Usually I am aware of the screenwriter putting in obligatory scenes. I can hear the machinery grinding. Not this time. Although, in retrospect, I can see how carefully the plot was put together, how meticulously each event was prepared for, as I watched the film I was only aware of life passing by.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-man-in-the-moon-1991 of The Man in the Moon (4 October 1991) Reviews, Four star reviews

Life, Mood, Time

“I never imagined that any of my films, especially Pather Panchali, would be seen throughout this country or in other countries. The fact that they have is an indication that, if you're able to portray universal feelings, universal relations, emotions, and characters, you can cross certain barriers and reach out to others, even non-Bengalis.”

Satyajit Ray (1921–1992) Indian author, poet, composer, lyricist, filmmaker

The Cineaste Interviews: On the Art and Politics of the Cinema, ed. Dan Georgakas and Lenny Rubenstein, Chicago: Lake View Press, 1982, Vol. 1, Ch. 34 ( eprint at satyajitray.org http://www.satyajitray.org/about_ray/ray_on_ray.htm)

Feeling, Imagination, Universe, Country

“The special effects are more sophisticated. The materials and techniques used to construct the monster costumes and miniature sets have improved, and we now use computer graphics. However, the earlier Godzilla films are much more profound. I think the reason for this is the fact that the people who worked on them experienced World War II firsthand. Shinichi Sekizawa served in the South Pacific, and Mr. Honda was a prisoner of war in China for quite some time. The earlier films also are more detailed. For example, there are more reaction shots in them. The expressions on people's faces are shown more often, and the effects of the monsters' actions are shown more often. On the other hand, the newer movies are more contemporary in that they address current issues such as bio-technology and environmental destruction. The earlier films didn't do that as much.”

Kenpachiro Satsuma (1947) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Kenpachiro Satsuma Interview III" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/satsum3.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1995)

War, People, World, Thinking

“According to director Lindsay Anderson, one day while filming The Whales of August he said to Lillian Gish, "Miss Gish, you have just given me a perfect close-up." Bette Davis remarked: "She should. She invented 'em."”

Lillian Gish (1893–1993) American actress

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094315/trivia About

Perfection

“In India, the early documentary scene was dominated by government propaganda made by the Films Division of India, which produced newsreels and documentaries that were compulsorily shown before every commercial film. People either arrived deliberately late or walked out for a smoke during these films, and the tag of "boring" became inescapably attached to the documentary. It has taken several decades of sustained independent work to break this tag.”

Anand Patwardhan (1950) Indian film director

Anand Patwardhan, the Michael Moore of India -Interview UC Berkeley News http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/10/13_patwardhan.shtml (October 13, 2004)

People

“In a way, … growing up like this with Harry makes it easier to act in each of the films, because I've been through all the stuff that he's going through, like the hormones, relatively recently. So it's quite fresh in my mind. And then I suppose it's been made easier by the fact I've been playing Harry Potter since I was 12. You get to know the character so well that it makes it easier to act in the long run.”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

On character Harry Potter

Way

“Fundamentally, the camera is nothing more than a light-tight box, having an arrangement for holding a light-sensitive substance (plate or film) and a device (lens or pinhole) for projecting on this sensitive substance an image of objects external to the camera.”

Paul Lewis Anderson (1880–1956) American photographer and writer

Source: Pictorial Photography - It's Principles and Practice (1917), Chapter I - The Camera, p. 1

Light, Box

“I had almost no education. I hardly went to school. I’d be away for weeks doing films, then I’d come back and have no idea what they were talking about. Of course the other kids loved it: ‘You may be a well-known star but you don’t know how to do algebra.’ It was a nightmare.”

Petula Clark (1932) British actress and singer

Calgary Herald, 14 Feb 2013

Love, Education, School, Star

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

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

Life, Idea, Sense

“I once saw a film where the main character didn't speak for the first half hour.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

“I love working on genre films.”

François-Eudes Chanfrault (1974–2016) Composer and musician

CinemaFantastique.net interview (October 2, 2008)

Love

“Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

As quoted in The Super 8 Book (1975) by Lenny Lipton (ed. Chet Roaman); also in Aesthetic Aspects of Recent Experimental Film (1980) by Barry Walter Moore, Garth S. Jowett, p. 6

Art

“Sangam had many firsts. The first technicolour film, the first film to have two intervals — in a way I was a part of history.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

Why Vyjayanthimala has 'nothing to say' about today's heroines

Way, History, Parting

“More and more American pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control because of their personal moral objections. Hey, you know what would really teach us a lesson? If you took off your pretend doctor jacket and got another job. … Now, of course, I know the other side is saying, yes, but this is a moral issue. Yeah, but the problem is, not everyone gets their morals from the same book. You go by the book that says slavery is okay but sex is wrong until after marriage, at which point it becomes a blessed sacrament between a husband and the wife who is withholding it.
In conclusion, let me say to all the activist pharmacists out there, the ones who think sex is bad probably because sex with them always is. Fellas, a pharmacist is not a law-giver, not even a doctor. In the medical pecking order, you rank somewhere in between a chiropractor and a tree surgeon.
You don't answer to a law above the laws of men. You work for Sav-On. The doctors are the ones who make medical decisions because they went to medical school, whereas you were transferred from the counter where people drop off film.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

New Rules (2005)

Men, Marriage, People, Books

“It seems to me that dominant cinema seems to require an empathy or a sympathy between the film and the audience which is basically to do with the manipulation of the emotions and it seems to me again -- and this is a very subjective position -- that most cinema seems to trivialise the emotions, sentimentalising or romanticising them.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From an interview in Art and Design, no. 49
Interviews

“One of my biggest heroes in music has been David Bowie. He's said, `I'm going to be a painter now, or I'm going to do some films,' and his audience is very forgiving, because they understand him as an artist. Whether you agree or like the result, you respect that he's expressing his artistic feelings.”

Maynard James Keenan (1964) musician

The Record staff (March 22, 2000) "Music News & Notes", The Record, p. Y4.

Music, Feeling, Forgiveness, Understanding

“My entry into the world of the documentary began as a means of political, social intervention and thirty odd years later this is still a primary motive. If I am not satisfied with the results, it is not because of a failure of the medium, but because of the limits that our system puts on the distribution of such films. All my films are badly under-utilized and hence did not have the impact on the real world that they could have had.”

Anand Patwardhan (1950) Indian film director

Tehelka Interview - November 2009 http://www.tehelka.com/story_main34.asp?filename=Ws1361007All_the.asp

World, Motivation, Failure

“I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end, the comic’s best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he’s doing is easy is an occupational hazard. Cary Grant never won an Oscar, primarily, I suspect, because he made everything look so effortless. Why reward someone for having fun, for being charming? In "serious" fiction (as in "serious" film) you can feel the weight of the material. You expect to see the effort and the strain of all that heavy lifting, and we reward the effort as much as the success. Comedy is often just as serious, and to ignore that seriousness is misguided, of course, but most writers with comic world views have accustomed themselves to being sold at a discount. Most of us wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Richard Russo (1949) American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter

Interview with Richard Russo, Failbetter.com, Volume II, Issue III, Summer/Fall 2001, September 24, 2009 http://www.failbetter.com/04/Russo.htm,

People, World, Way, Feeling

“I've done more films than these people. Why aren't I getting those scripts?' Because my films never get released. So OK, I do Sorted, because it's going to get released, and hate every minute of it. You know, I am ambitious, in the sense of, I will eat as much cardboard as I have to swallow, in order to get to a place where I can make a great script.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

FILM: Beauty and the Beasts Article http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20040312/ai_n12769890/pg_1. The London Independent. March 12, 2004.

Hate, People, Sense

“Well, dust off your thinking caps
Solar powered plastic plants
Pretty pictures of things we ate
We are only what we hate
But in the long run we have found
Silent films are full of sound
Inaudibly free
Slow down everyone
You're moving too fast
Frames can't catch you when
You're moving like that”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Inaudible Melodies.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

Hate, Thinking

“The original story that I sold [Morgan Creek] (and that I shot) ended with Kinderman blowing away Patient X. There was no exorcism. But it was a Mexican stand-off between me and the studio. I was entitled to one preview, then they could go and do what they wanted with the picture. They gave me a preview but it was the lowest end preview audience I have ever seen in my life. They dragged in zombies from Haiti to watch this film. It was unbelievable. But I decided, better I should do it than anyone else. I foolishly thought: I can do a good exorcism, I’ll turn this pig’s ear into a silk purse. So I did it”

William Peter Blatty book The Exorcist

The Exorcist: Out of the Shadows (Omnibus Press, 1999)

Life

“As absurd as it might sound, there's a strange synergy between very bad movies and very good ones. That's because films on either extreme of the quality scale have the ability to burrow deep into the subconscious, with unpredictable and occasionally remarkable results. Great works of art can cause euphoria, touch a deep emotional chord, or, in rare cases, affect fundamental changes in a person's outlook on life. Conversely, viewing unwatchable tripe can be damaging, possibly resulting in psychotic episodes, an appreciation of '70s fashion, or leaping to the defense of Pauly Shore. There's something almost profound about enduring a horrifically inept piece of cinema, and Coyote Ugly, living up to every letter in its name, offers the opportunity for such an experience.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1611 of Coyote Ugly (2000). One-star reviews

Life, Art, Fashion, Change

“We're still in a daze. We're still processing it. It's leapt beyond every expectation of ours so right now if you ask me, I feel surreal. It'll take another month or so for me to actually realize the scale at which the film has worked.”

S. S. Rajamouli (1973) Indian film director

EXCLUSIVE: What SS Rajamouli Thinks About Baahubali's 'Lion King' Connection & 'Casteist' Undertones http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2017/05/22/ss-rajamouli-on-baahubalis-lion-king-connection-its-casteist-u_a_22103159/?utm_hp_ref=in-ss-rajamouli (22 May 2017), HuffPost. Retrieved 8 September 2017.

Feeling

“I am a greedy actress. I still feel there is so much more I want to do as an actress. I won’t take up direction anytime soon because I alone would feel like essaying all the roles in my film!”

Mukta Barve (1979) Indian actress

There’s still so much I want to do as an actress: Mukta Barve http://www.sakaaltimes.com/NewsDetails.aspx?NewsId=5487432128260758691&SectionId=5558842172310824508&SectionName=Cinema&NewsDate=20131024&NewsTitle=There’s%20still%20so%20much%20I%20want%20to%20do%20as%20an%20actress:%20Mukta%20Barve

Feeling

“To describe this film [Fahrenheit 9/11] as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2004-06-21
Unfairenheit 9/11
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.html: On Michael Moore.
2000s, 2004

Exercises

“I don't believe in remakes. I think original films are classics and one can't make it or match up to it (original film) the same way. And even if they do there will be comparisons…it's not a good idea”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quote, Waheeda Rehman not in favour of biopics and remakes

Way, Idea, Thinking

“Goebbels…now made an applauded entrance. He was no man to improvise a word or two of greeting; he had typewritten sheets…. He spoke of the cinema as the popular voice of the state…those products, themselves a means of cleansing the world film market through their purity and excellence of the regrettable decadent ordures excreted by international Jewry….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Earthly Powers (1980)

World

“I've always had a reputation as the pretty girl. Pretty girls rarely get the good parts. We all have to do a film like The Burning Bed where we can really be degraded so that people think we can act.”

Michelle Phillips (1944) Singer, actress

The Chicago Tribune http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-07-05/entertainment/8602170918_1_michelle-phillips-mamas-papa-john (July 5, 1986)

People, Girl, Thinking, Parting

“In this book I am concerned with certain kinds of communication: communication between parents and children, between associates of the same status, between members of different societies and, through the mediation of various kinds of coding—tools, art, script, formulas, film—between cultures distant from each other in time and place. I shall be concerned to show that we must deal not only with evolutionary sequences, in which our ability to articulate and codify parts of the culture enormously increases our ability to intervene in the cultural process, but also with the coexistence at any period of history of earlier forms of communication side by side with later ones.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1960s, Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964), p. xxxi

Children, Books, Art, History

“A lot of people wouldn't believe me now if I told them I used to down pints of beer with friends, loitering on the banks of the Nainital Lake while at Sherwood College. Something I would be embarrassed to admit now, but that still was youthful joie de vivre. Later in the film industry it became a kind of social compulsion to be seen at parties holding a wine glass in one hand and a cigarette in another, looking all classy and affluent. There was a certain artificiality about it I couldn't fathom. Maybe that's what gradually led me to become a teetotaler.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

People, Youth, Beer, Wine

“Success anyhow, is the basic rule of our industry. It is no more an Indian film industry, it’s a global industry now. People from all over the world are coming to be a part of this industry or to create their identity in our industry. Nothing is easy here and nothing is impossible too. This is what I feel when I look at myself. Being a small town girl. I never thought that I could be a part of this dream world. And today I realize no matter whats ur height, skin colour, or if you are from any small town, no matter if you don’t have any Godfather. The only thing matters here is your talent, self confidence, & how you chase your dream. I did the same. Chasing my dream.”

Nikita Gokhale (1990) Indian Actress, Indian Model

gokhale’s true confession’" https://en.dailymail24.com/2017/10/29/nikita-gokhales-true/"‘Nikita.Dailymail24.com. October 29, 2017.

People, World, Dreams, Feeling

“I think I should be in a [Disney animated] film called ‘Space Shrews’. Where I go to space. With a load of shrews. And nothing really happens. We just get out and have a lolly and then come back. But it’ll be a musical […] the ship will be built out of my own hair.”

Noel Fielding (1973) British comedian and actor

HermAphroditeZine, Autumn 1999

Music, Thinking, Animals

“The public has yet to see TV as TV. Broadcasters have no awareness of its potential. The movie people are just beginning to get a grasp on film.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

quoted in "Marshall McLuhan, Author, Dies; Declared 'Medium Is the Message'" by Alden Whitman, The New York Times, January 1, 1981
1980s

People

“No one component of a film can have any meaning in isolation: it is the film that is the work of art. And we can only talk about its components rather arbitrarily, dividing it up artificially or the sake of theoretical discussion.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 114

Art

“Catholic priests know where the shoe pinches. But their day is done, and they know it. They are far too intelligent not to see that, and to enter upon a hopeless battle. But if they do, I shall certainly not make martyrs of them. We shall brand them as ordinary criminals. I shall tear the mask of honesty from their faces. And if that is not enough, I shall make them appear ridiculous and contemptible. I shall order films to be made about them. We shall show the history of the monks on the cinema. Let the whole mass of nonsense, selfishness, repression and deceit be revealed: how they drained the money out of the country, how they haggled with the Jews for the world, how they committed incest.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Voice of Destruction (1940), pp. 52-53

Money, World, Shoe, History

“We made films at Ealing that were good, bad and indifferent, but that were indisputably British. They were rooted in the soil of the country.”

Michael Balcon (1896–1977) English Film producer

Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies (2001 ed): Art. Michael Balcon p. 28

Country, Indifference

“The shelf-life of a heroine is very limited. But I feel that a true artiste should never retire. Even now, I can't say no to a role that excites me. But I don't see films as my career any longer. I do it for the fun and satisfaction.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quoted in Guru Dutt was my mentor: Waheeda, 23 June 2009, 15 December 2013, The Hindu http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-06-23/news-interviews/28202984_1_guru-dutt-rojulu-maraayi-waheeda-rehman, Quote

Life, Feeling

“I suppose my mega heroes are the films of Michael Powell and Sam Peckinpah. I would have loved to have looked over their shoulder. I’m a bit of a cinephile. I love cinema. It’s an amazing medium. I can go and watch anything from very, very arty films to huge Hollywood spectaculars and everything in between.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[IndieLondon, Donkey Punch - Olly Blackburn interview, http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Film-Review/donkey-punch-olly-blackburn-interview, www.indielondon.co.uk, 23 February 2012, 2008]

Love

“When they started bumping me off in every film, it became difficult for me to die in different styles. But now I have to start thinking of different ways of getting drunk.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Way, Thinking

“I made those films for 20 years, and after 10 years they ran out of good scripts.”

Herbert Lom (1917–2012) Czech-born film and television actor

“It seems a mad business to confront these dictators without weapons or military force, and at the same time try to tame and cow the spirit of our people with peace films, anti-recruiting propaganda and resistance to defence measures. Unless the free and law-respecting nations are prepared to organise, arm and combine, they are going to be smashed up. This is going to happen quite soon. But I believe we still have a year to combine and marshal superior forces in defence of the League and its Covenant.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Robert Cecil (9 April 1936), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 722
The 1930s

People, Peace, Law, Business

“I would watch Wizard of Oz, like every day, when I was two. I had a hard time understanding that I couldn't go into the film, because it felt so real to me.”

Zooey Deschanel (1980) American actress, musician, and singer-songwriter

Statement in These Amazing Shadows (2011).

Understanding, Time

“The film resonated deeply with 13-year-old boys. It seemed to give expression to all their insecurities and fears. It is about a teenage boy who’s lost his dad, his mom and his older brother, and I think the whole story is his coping with this great loss by fantasizing about death and this ominous figure who strides through your life quite unpredictably and more than decimates it. It dealt in a very entertaining way with a subject that haunts all of us at the back of our minds.”

Angus Scrimm (1926–2016) American actor

Happy birthday, Tall Man! ‘Phantasm’ turns 30 https://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncategorized/phantasm/ (October 16, 2009)

Life, Death, Fear, Way

“Katsumi Tezuka and I both tried on the Godzilla costume during the first day of shooting. The costume was very stiff and heavy. I could walk about thirty feet in it, but Mr. Tezuka could only walk about ten feet in it. There were three cables coming out of the back of the costume. Two were for the operation of the eyes, and one was for the operation of the mouth. Eizo Kaimai was responsible for the movement of the eyes and the mouth. The ASA speed of the film that was used at the time was very slow, so the set had to be very brightly lit. Another actor complained that the lights made it too hot inside the costume, but I never complained. Batteries were installed in the Godzilla costume that was made for the second Godzilla movie. They were for the operation of the eyes and the mouth. The batteries made the costume even heavier than the one that had been constructed for the first Godzilla film.”

Haruo Nakajima (1929–2017) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Haruo Nakajima Interview" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/nakajima.htm, Kaiju Conversations (March 1995)

Light, Time, Speed

“This film Phantom takes everything that's wrong with Broadway and puts it on the big screen in a gaudy splat.”

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2004/12/22/phantom/index.html of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

“[About the end of the The L Word] Everything has its cycle. I think it’s appropriate for us to be ending now. But the beauty of storytelling, and the beauty of film and television is that it continues on.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

The L Word Finale Special (8 March 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiG70AuomH0&feature=fvwrel.

Beauty, Thinking

“I hope that we some day will have a big budget and a lot of time in which to do our work. It is my dream to have an American staff and a Japanese staff work together to create a Godzilla film.”

Kenpachiro Satsuma (1947) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Kenpachiro Satsuma Interview I" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/satsum.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1993)

Dreams, Hope, Time

“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)

Beauty, Thinking, Personality

“But I would dance with my daughter if I could. And if I can dance with Shilpa Shetty, then I will do that- (On being asked in an interview whether it was suitable for a man his age to dance in a song in the film Lal Badshah with Shilpa Shetty, who was young enough to be his daughter).”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Age, Dance, Daughters