Quotes About Film

Leslie Howard.' 'Howard – yes, I remember him in The Scarlet Pimpernel. He was very good.

Story Climax is the fourth of the five-part structure. This crowning Major Reversal is not necessarily full of noise and violence. Rather, it must be full of meaning. If I could send a telegram to the film producers of the world, it would be these three words: "Meaning Produces Emotion." Not money; not sex; not special effects; not movie stars; not lush photography.

A revered Hollywood axiom warns: "Movies are about their last twenty minutes." In other words, for a film to have a chance in the world, the last act and its climax must be the most satisfying experience of all. For no matter what the first ninety minutes have achieved, if the final movement fails, the film will die over its opening weekend.

Ninety percent of all verbal expression has no filmic equivalent. "He's been sitting there for a long time" can't be photographed.

yeah," said Helen. "The second angioroom is going to be out all day today while they install a new film loader.

Gene Siskel used to describe old-age makeup as making young actors look like turtles.

So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I'll see you at the movies.

Pauline Kael] had no theory, no rules, no guidelines, no objective standards. You couldn't apply her 'approach' to a film. With her it was all personal.

The story is recycled out of a 1983 French film named Les Comperes, as part of a trend in which Hollywood buys French comedies and experiments on them to see if they can be made in English with all of the humor taken out.

Siskel's classic question, "Is this movie better than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?

He was an editor for seven years before directing his first film, and his career stands as an argument for the theory that editors make better directors than cine-matographers do; the cinematographer is seduced by the look of a film, while the editor is faced with the task of making it work as a story.

Listening to Bailey, it occurred to me that the best commentary tracks are often by experts who did not work on the film but love it and have given it a lot of thought. They're more useful than those rambling tracks where directors (notoriously shy about explaining their techniques or purposes) reminisce about the weather on the set that day.

Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's basilica.

The dancers march about and twirl their scarves as if Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will had been gotten pregnant by Busby Berkeley.

Finding success in a Michael bay film is like finding the Virgin on a slice of toast, but less rewarding.

Technology provides the potential, by use of well-produced books, film, television, and interactive computer-controlled systems of various kinds. These, and other developments, provide many opportunities for expanding our minds-or else for deadening them. The human mind is capable of vastly more than it is often given the chance to achieve. Sadly, these opportunities are all to frequently squandered, and the minds of neither young nor old are provided the openings that they undoubtedly deserve.

video. Eight-millimetre home movies deader than the deadest thing that ever died.

film contains over two miles of celluloid so is quite heavy, properly so since it contains the labor of hundreds of people over many months to produce your two hour vacation.

Watching a scene from a film in slow motion is possible, but there's an unreal air to it; reading a passage from a book slowly does nothing to rob the words of their power. A film presents images; a book creates images inside the reader, with the reader's active participation. Books are good for your brain.

The technology of the book is much more flexible than film, more user friendly. The reader can dip into the book at will, without electricity, and is always aware of where she is in the book, halfway through, a third of the way, mere pages from the end, her fingers helping to measure the excitement of coming to the conclusion.

That's . . . because I am pathetic. In life as in film, find your niche and work it.

For writers, a beat works in a script much as a beat works in a piece of music. In a song, single beats are grouped to make up a measure. By adding more beats (thus more measures) you create a phrase, and eventually an entire melody. In the same way, single dramatic beats or moments, placed together, create a scene. And the beats in a scene, together, create the beats of an act, and the beats of an act, together, create an entire film.

Until the catalyst kicks off the story, the only information the audience has is where and when the film takes place. But once an event happens, the story suddenly has focus and direction

From my films, you can at least learn about Iran, you can get a sense of the history and the society. But no such films have been made about Afghanistan, so you really can't know much about it.