Quotes About Films

To the question of writing at all we have sometimes been counselled to forget it, or rather the writing of books. What is required, we are told, is plays and films. Books are out of date! The book is dead, long live television! One question which is not even raised let alone considered is: Who will write the drama and film scripts when the generation that can read and write has been used up?

It seems like the studios are either making giant blockbusters, or really super-small indies. And the mid-level films I grew up on, like 'Back to the Future' and all those John Hughes movies, the studios aren't doing. It's hard to get them on their feet.

Well, in our industry it's that the movies cost so much money to make they have to appeal to a broad audience. And I think that's part of what will loosen up in the future, as technology makes it cheaper, you'll be able to make films for a more selective audience. I think people will be able to make more personal movies.

From the beginning, Fassbinder's films showed that with the help of art it is possible to defend oneself against the destructive forces of the present, and that in the artistic process there is some kind of labour of resistance and a possibility of survival. It gradually also became a fundamental theme of his films.

Indeed, the raid has been mythologized, inspiring several films, most notably in 1926 The General, in which, interestingly, Buster Keaton portrays the conductor, Fuller, as the hero, whereas the Unionists are depicted as ruthless train wreckers, demonstrating the enduring tacit sympathy to the Confederate cause.

It's a great opportunity for him, though I suspect he's in for a shock about how much people in L.A. would rather talk about films than make them.

But they do," he said. "That is the distressing part. They do. The quality--the intellectual or artistic quality--of the films is almost irrelevant. The crucial thing is only the degree to which they can identify, the degree to which they can project and see themselves as they would like to be. If they can do those things they can believe the picture, and if they can believe in it, then it is a good picture.

I think politics and films are a great combination. Still, I have the urge in me to do really good roles. But I feel isolated at times when politicians treat me like a film star and the industry treats me like a politician.

I want to make a series of films of contemporary America that feel urgent and deal with sometimes-topical matters, but hopefully in a universal way.

For behaviorist films, that's been much more useful - the change of technology - but for my kind of films, doing them on film is much better, because it's more beautiful.

Some of the scripts I hear are completely useless. Sometimes, they're copies of very bad Hollywood films.

Because of the way tech is changing, and becoming cheaper and user-friendly, it's becoming easier to make films cheaply, maintaining quality.

A few words of Hindi appear here or there, but it's all Urdu. I feel that if the popular culture, which is what Hindi films are, uses Urdu, it's not going to diminish.

I believe in 3D for certain kinds of films. I certainly believe in using 3D for all things in animation because animation has such clarity and so much depth of focus. It worked great with 'Avatar' because 70 percent of that film is animated.

When you're making under-million-dollar films, it becomes so much about actors' availability. When you're using big actors for small films, you're in second or third position to the big monoliths.

Some of the corporate houses are using films as a means to market their brands. They are not concerned with the storyline. When it comes to big-budget films, simple storylines told with conviction are still the safest best.

I like 'The Usual Suspects'. Great film. I also like 'Scarface', films like that. Lots of gangster films. I really like watching all kinds of films, dramas, romance. I'll watch comedies. I like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Denzel Washington, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle. I'd like to meet them.

The usual key to getting films made seems to be a producer's terrier-like determination not to let it go. Unfortunately, such producers often seem prone to sinking their claws into mediocre projects.

The Greeks already understood that there was more interest in portraying an unusual character than a usual character - that is the purpose of films and theatre.

I love, and I've always loved, contained sci-fi films that utilize practical effects. I feel like the human eye can tell when something is actually in the frame and when it was inserted digitally later.

The allegations against Harvey Weinstein are clearly deplorable. No matter how many great films he's bullied into production, or his guilt-induced contributions to left-minded ideals, this kind of intimidation and abuse of power is perverse and utterly unforgivable. Period.

My family took a vacation to Universal Studios when I was really young. Me and my brother Richard - who's also an actor - were both really intrigued by seeing the behind-the-scenes stuff of how films are made. We kind of begged our parents to get into acting.

I was very young, and I was on vacation with my family, and there was a retrospective of old films, and one of them was 'The Phantom of the Opera' with Claude Rains that was in color. It was something very important for my career because I began to follow these stories that were morbid.

The '60s in London obviously brought about the explosion of music, the 'Beatles' especially, and then the 'Rolling Stones' and other forms of music, and then fashion and photography and films - kitchen-sink dramas we called them at that time, which was our 'nouvelle vague' in Britain, films that talk about real life.