Quotes About Cinema

I like action movies, even though I think action movies are kind of derided now. But there is something extraordinary about action movies, which is absolutely linked to the invention of cinema and what cinema is and why we love it.

American films are the best films. This is a fact. Cinema is - along with Jazz - the great American art form. And cinema in a very real sense created the American identity that has been exported around the world.

Cinema d'auteur, cinema about people, about emotions. About la difficulté d'être, the difficulty of being, existential problems. That's what the nouvelle vague is. The early '60s was all about that.

I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas.

Never seek financial independence in independent cinema since independent cinema doesn't make money.

Let us start with the title of War and Cinema. The important part of the title is not War and Cinema.

I don't know what to say to people. It's become so big. It's become part of the cultural environment. For the first and second Twiglight, I knew exactly what to say to people. If you don't know what the story is by now, then you've probably never been to the cinema before. How about, "Why not go to the cinema for once?" I don't know.

Egypt is kind of like the Hollywood of the Middle East. I mean, we had cinema maybe decades before the other Arab countries ever got independence.

Independent means one thing to me: It means that regardless of the source of financing, the director's voice is extremely present. It's such a pretentious term, but it's auteurist cinema. Director-driven, personal, auteurist... Whatever word you want. It's where you feel the director, not a machine, at work. It doesn't matter where the money comes from. It matters how much freedom the director has to work with his or her team. That's how I personally define independent movies.

My life is existing. Cinema is certainly not my life

I ask of cinema what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs.

The saving grace of the cinema is that with patience, and a little love, we may arrive at that wonderfully complex creature which is called man.

I was inspired by Maya Deren because she was the first woman filmmaker whose films I saw. I also loved Fellini and Goddard because they were so different from Hollywood films. But when I saw the cinema verite films that were made by Drew Associates with Leacock and Pennebaker I found my passion.

I read reviews of critics I respect and feel I can learn something from. Right now there are a lot of bottom-feeder critics who just have access to a computer and don't necessarily have an academic or cinema background that I can detect, so I tend to ignore that and stay with the same top-tier critics that I've come to respect. I like reading a good review - it doesn't have to be favorable, but a well-thought-out one - because I very much appreciate the relationship of directors and critics.

Musicals and horror films can be very non-verbal and very pure cinema with movement. The camera is justified in being a character. It can really move and tell a story, and literally direct you to look here or there.

The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls.

I would tend to be drawn to independent cinema as a viewer, probably more than the big blockbuster.

I think most people, no matter their status now, have big screen TVs, because they're the standard TVs now. And so why would you go to the cinema?

I've seen films that have made as much as $100, $200 million, but they're not films. They're images. They're flashes. They're many beautiful images, lots of things to look at. They capture you. But it's not a film. It's not something that involves you in a story. They go to cinema now to be blown away by the effects.

I was utilized because I have a certain face that works well in cinema, and I'm used to making myself look as good as possible

I love being part of a group who tells stories, whether it be in the theater or in cinema, and I love creating imaginary worlds rather as children do, but I never had a burning desire to act, but it just sort of suited me.

Why would anything change that has not been changed since the existence of cinema? [James] Baldwin somehow wakes you up to reality. It takes you out of the dream - or out of the nightmare.

There will be a competition among critics for the best Paris Hilton insult. Here's my first: Her attention span is so short that she can't even maintain her concentration while running away from a psycho... Maybe the ultimate insult is that she makes her co-star Elisha Cuthbert seem, by comparison, the sexiest and most interesting actress in modern cinema.

The idea that cinema can be dangerous is a great idea.

My fascination is not for cinema; it's for human nature and human beings because I find it quite difficult being one at times.

Cinema is entertainment, and people go to the movies because they want to feel good and forget about everything.

For me, any kind of thing that has stood for 100 years tells me of the health of that thing. So, cinema completing a hundred years in India just says that it is very healthy.

Digital has really achieved a certain image quality for capture. There's also the way we view and exhibit films. It really touches all aspects of cinema.

If I'm in theatre, cinema doesn't even cross my mind. Similarly when I'm making a film, theatre doesn't cross my mind.

If you're not making epic, archetypal films on some level, I think you're wasting a great potential of cinema.

The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief - call it what you will - than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counterattractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.

Television and cinema were all very well, but these stories happened to other people. The stories I found in books happened inside my head. I was, in some way, there. It's the magic of fiction: you take the words and you build them into worlds.

The public has lost the habit of movie-going because the cinema no longer possesses the charm, the hypnotic charisma, the authority it once commanded. The image it once held for us all — that of a dream we dreamt with our eyes open — has disappeared. Is it still possible that one thousand people might group together in the dark and experience the dream that a single individual has directed?

[on the reason for his seven-year hiatus in direction] My son Aditya made Mohabbatein, which took a lot of time and energy. Then we started looking for a script for me to direct. Nothing seemed to excite us both. There's a complete bankruptcy of screenwriting in our cinema. I wanted a very earthy and Indian subject. I was tired of the promos on television. With semi-clad girls, they all looked the same. Of course Dhoom has them too. But I'd personally not make a film like that.

With cinema, one of the great lies dating back to its origin was "It's just entertainment! It doesn't make any impact" Like the great Samuel Goldwyn said, "If you've got a message, send a telegram."

I suppose I am gently cynical about notions of who we think we are, but I certainly don't hate my fellow man. I think my cinema, although it might often deal with death and decay, is highly celebratory.

One of the more problematic aspects of the current state of cinema in Japan is that the movies playing in the theaters are by and large made not by film studios but by broadcasting companies. They're either extensions of popular television dramas or adaptations of manga or anime. Younger Japanese are simply not being exposed to good films. That situation needs to change.

There are no rebels in the cinema business.

I have been a film buff all my life and believe that the finest cinema is fully the equal of the best novels.

What I expect of a movie reviewer is that he should love cinema as much as I do.

I think that there's a very lucid side in cinema: entering a theater and seeing the film.

Cinema is still a very young art form with extraordinary techniques and very impressive special effects. But sometimes it seems the soul has been taken out of things.

I'm interested in the cultural thing - music, then eventually cinema. I think it's part of my struggle as a cultural worker. I'm not into the armed thing. I cannot be violent.

I always think about visual comedy. I was raised watching silents, and I'm always thinking about how to make cinema, not good talking - although I want good talking. I'm much more interested in framing, composition, and orchestration of bodies in space, and so forth. My goal is always what Chuck Jones wanted his Warner Brothers cartoons to be, which was if you turn down the sound, you could still tell what's going on.

Music has a role, fashion has a role, cinema has a role, intellectuals have a role, parliamentarians, politicians, diplomats - all of it.

I work in between the cracks, where the voice starts dancing, where the body starts singing, where theater becomes cinema.

I can't help moving my face - reacting - when I watch a movie, because I'm really inhabiting a character. I know this is weird, but it demonstrates what I love about cinema: it allows you to live a different life, to have a different experience, to disappear for two hours. I think it's wonderful.

French cinema allows women to look... a certain way and be talented at the same time.