movies

The most interesting of the classic movie genres to me are the indigenous ones: the Western, which was born on the Frontier, the Gangster Film, which originated in the East Coast cities, and the Musical, which was spawned by Broadway. They remind me of jazz: they allowed for endless, increasingly complex, sometimes perverse variations. When these variations were played by the masters, they reflected the changing times; they gave you fascinating insights into American culture and the American psyche.

No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.

On Friday evening Martin and Mona went to the United Artists Theatre to see a film already being mentioned for the Academy award. It had three stars, ran a hundred and ten minutes, and bored them both to petrifaction. (In brief, the award was in the bag.)The Case of the Seven of Calvary

That's the illusion of stillness. There is no secret. Only the implication of one by its possesor".

If California is a state of mind, Hollywood is where you take its temperature. There is a peculiar sense in which this city existing mainly on film and tape is our national capital, alas, and not just the capital of California. It's the place where our children learn how and what to dream and where everything happens just before, or just after, it happens to us.

Hollywood's Studio Era was part of a Golden Age because it didn't need profanity (unlike reality-television today)

people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.

In this business, until you're known as a monster, you're not a star

Hey, I got an idea, let__ go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let__ go and experience the art of the cinema. Let__ begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we are going to haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let__ go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let__ catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we__l feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let__ lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it__ going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let__ go see it four times in one year. And let__ see Woodstock three times in one year and let__ see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let__ see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let__ sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler__ List_ so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema.

Watching a movie for the first time is a flirt. Rewatching it, is a date.

[Cinema]_ obeys the laws of the mind rather than those of the outer world.

The sad thing is that when movies like this fail, executives think that proves there's no audience for unusual, original pictures - because they think they've made one.

An actor is just a part of a movie, but director - he is the movie.

It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.

I'm sure anyone who likes a good crime, provided it is not the victim.

R means under 18 accompanied by an adult. Therefore all corporately funded films in the US must be made with the concept that those under the age of 18 are able to view the film. This means all corporately funded films in the US are made for the eyes of children.

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out

Ever director has at least 10 bad films in them.