[Michael Hastings] has composed a dirge to incompatibility, which, because it raises expectations only to defeat them, leaves a taste of exhumed ashes.

Mausoleum air and anguished pauses: If this production were a poem, it would be mostly white space.

Years from now, when cinephiles are asked to name the movies' golden age, they'll say it was when Cate Blanchett was in them.

Today is a time of turbulence and stagnation, of threat and promise from a competitor: the magic, omnivorous videocassette recorder (VCR). In other words, it is business as usual.

Nothing ages so quickly as yesterday's vision of the future.

Every artist undresses his subject, whether human or still life. It is his business to find essences in surfaces, and what more attractive and challenging surface than the skin around a soul?

Hollywood was born schizophrenic. For 75 years it has been both a town and a state of mind, an industry and an art form.