ASSHOLE

Because Godard meant something years ago, because he had a towering presence and a considerable influence, we continue to see his films, for smaller and smaller rewards. I believe he has contempt for the mass of moviegoers. Truffaut once described the beautiful sight of walking to the front of a cinema and seeing all those eyes uplifted to the screen, sharing the director's dream. What are Godard's dreams? We cannot know, because he chooses not to share them.

-- Ebert on Godard

HOLLYWOOD HYBRIDISM

I think that there’s so much “Hollywood hybridism.” If you go in with a script, you have to say, “This movie is like Terminator meets this movie meets this movie.” You have to compare it to something that has already made money, that has already been validated, and I don’t think that that’s the healthiest attitude in creative art forms. That talk inevitably becomes very generalized and edges out anything that could be a new voice or color. My generation is so referential, and I think that this constant comparative rhetoric really inhibits our generation from finding its own iconography. What I’m interested in, creatively, is something that doesn’t yet exist.
-Alden Ehrenreich, of Tetro

BLASPHEMY

"I went through a psychic break myself, where I felt like formalism was a dead end. You could polish stuff into oblivion and strangle the life out of a movie. I realized Dogme's a gimmick, but I don't doubt the core of its sincerity."

-Soderbergh, on formalism in cinema

ART TRAFFIK

There are even many of our most popular artists who do not in the least conceal the fact, that they have no other ambition than to satisfy this shallow audience. They are wise in their generation; for when the prince leaves a heavy dinner, the banker a fatiguing financial operation, the working man a weary day of toil, and go to the theatre: they ask for rest, distraction, and amusement, and are in no mood for renewed effort and fresh expenditure of force. This argument is so convincing, that we can only reply by saying: it would be more decorous to employ for this purpose any other thing in the wide world, but not the body and soul of Art.
-Wagner

CATCH A FIRE

"My children, when they speak of their father, they will say he was a man who stood up for what was right. A man who said, 'I must do something now'. What will your children say about you?"

screenplay by Shawn Slovo

(IN)DISCRIMINATE INTOLERANCE

“I'm very glad Obama is reaching out to the Muslim world, and I know Muslims living in America and Europe want their way of life to be assimilated more. But, the Western world needs to make it clear some things about our culture are not negotiable. And can’t change. And one of them is freedom of speech. Separation of church and state is another, not negotiable. Women are allowed to work here and you can’t beat them, not negotiable. This is how we roll, and this is why our system is better, and if you don’t get that and you still want to kill someone over a stupid cartoon, please make it Garfield.”
 -Bill Maher, 4/30/10