Roger Ebert Quotes - Page 5

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• To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore. And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backward out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets.

  Roger Ebert

  Dream, Spring, Secret

  Roger Ebert (2005). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2006”, p.734, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• You can't just tell actors, especially young ones, to 'act happy' and expect them to do it. They must in some essential way be happy.

  Roger Ebert

  Essentials, Actors, Way

  Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.300, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• This sucks on so many levels." Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought.

  Roger Ebert

  Character, Special, Jason

  Roger Ebert (2004). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005”, p.340, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• The Golden Thumb is not as good as the Oscar, but it is a lot of fun.

  Roger Ebert

  Fun, Thumbs, Oscars

  "A Film Critic's Windy City Home". Interview with Edward Lewine, www.nytimes.com. February 13, 2005.

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• Many thrillers follow such reliable formulas that you can look at what's happening and guess how much longer a film has to run.

  Roger Ebert

  Running, Looks, Film

  Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.240, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• In my reviews, I feel it's good to make it clear that I'm not proposing objective truth, but subjective reactions; a review should reflect the immediate experience.

  Roger Ebert

  Objective Truth, Reactions, Should

  Interview With Keith Phipps, film.avclub.com. October 4, 2011.

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• Because we can engineer genetics, because we can telecast real lives-of course we must, right? But are these good things to do? The irony is, the people who will finally answer that question will be the very ones produced by the process.

  Roger Ebert

  Real, Science, People

  Roger Ebert (2009). “Roger Ebert's Four Star Reviews--1967-2007”, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• The movie cheerfully offends all civilized notions of taste, decorum, manners and hygiene... The movie is vulgar? Vulgarity is when we don't laugh. When we laugh, it's merely human nature.

  Roger Ebert

  Vulgarity Is, Hygiene, Laughing

  Roger Ebert's review of "American Wedding", www.rogerebert.com. August 1, 2003.

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• From a dramatic viewpoint, there are few professions that grant their members entry into other lives, high among them cops, doctors, clergymen, journalists and prostitutes. Perhaps that explains why they figure in so much television and cinema. Their lives are lived in the midst of human drama.

  Roger Ebert

  Drama, Doctors, Cinema

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• It goes to show you how we in the press so often miss the big stories that are right under our noses. There is a famous journalistic legend about the time a young reporter covered the Johnstown flood of 1889. The kid wrote: God sat on a hillside overlooking Johnstown today and looked at the destruction He had wrought. His editor cabled back: Forget flood. Interview God.

  Roger Ebert

  Kids, Editors, Missing

  Roger Ebert (2013). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2007”, p.297, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• In the vast majority of movies, everything is done for the audience. We are cued to laugh or cry, be frightened or relieved; Hitchcock called the movies a machine for causing emotions in the audience. Bresson (and Ozu) take a different approach. They regard, and ask us to regard along with them, and to arrive at conclusions about their characters that are our own. This is the cinema of empathy.

  Roger Ebert

  Character, Laughing, Empathy

  Roger Ebert (2008). “The Great Movies II”, p.37, Crown Archetype

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• When I had been a film critic for ten minutes, I treated Doris Day as a target for cheap shots. I have learned enough to say today that the woman was remarkably gifted.

  Roger Ebert

  Film Critics, Target, Today

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• It is strange how the romances of the teenage years retain a poignancy all through life - how a girl who turns you down when you're 16 retains an aura in your memory even long after you, and she, have ceased to be who you were then. I attended my high school reunion a couple of weeks ago and discovered, in the souvenir booklet assembled by the reunion committee, that one of the girls in my class had a crush on me all those years ago. I would have given a great deal to have had that information at the time.

  Roger Ebert

  Crush, Girl, Teenage

  Roger Ebert (1997). “Roger Ebert's Video Companion”, Andrews McMeel Pub

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• Grave of the Fireflies is an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation... It belongs on any list of the greatest war films ever made.

  Roger Ebert

  Powerful, War, Firefly

  "Sentai Filmworks Bringing 'grave Of The Fireflies' Back To DVD" by Charles Webb, www.mtv.com. December 2, 2011.

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• We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.

  Roger Ebert

  Wisdom, Mind, Limits

  Roger Ebert (2005). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2006”, p.339, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live.

  Roger Ebert

  Needs, News, World

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• We are born into a box of time and space. We use words and communication to break out of it and to reach out to others.

  Roger Ebert

  Motivation, Communication, Inspiration

  "Computers let Roger Ebert be himself". TEDTalk Tuesdays, www.cnn.com. April 17, 2011.

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• Gene [Siskel] often mentioned something François Truffaut once told him: the most beautiful sight in a movie theater is to walk down to the front, turn around, and look at the light from the screen reflected on the upturned faces of the members of the audience.

  Roger Ebert

  Beautiful, Light, Sight

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• No movie has ever been able to provide a catharsis for the Holocaust, and I suspect none will ever be able to provide one for 9/11. Such subjects overwhelm art.

  Roger Ebert

  Art, Holocaust, Catharsis

  Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.160, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives.

  Roger Ebert

  Clouds, Sky, Sailing

  Roger Ebert's review of "Cloud Atlas", www.rogerebert.com. October 24, 2012.

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• Dear Bill (O'Reilly)...I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician? That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!

  Roger Ebert

  Powerful, Reality, Bridges

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• The very fact of snow is such an amazement.

  Roger Ebert

  Snow, Facts, Amazement

  Twitter post from Dec 4, 2010

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• Because of the rush of human knowledge, because of the digital revolution, I have a voice, and I do not need to scream.

  Roger Ebert

  Technology, Digital Revolution, Voice

  "Computers let Roger Ebert be himself", www.cnn.com. April 17, 2011.

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• Wes Anderson's mind must be an exciting place for a story idea to be born. It immediately becomes more than a series of events and is transformed into a world with its own rules, in which everything is driven by emotions and desires as convincing as they are magical.

  Roger Ebert

  Ideas, Mind, Desire

  Roger Ebert (2012). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.402, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• I do suspect my star ratings average too high. But, of course, star ratings are ridiculous. I'm stuck with them.

  Roger Ebert

  Stars, Average, Ridiculous

  Interview With Keith Phipps, film.avclub.com. October 4, 2011.

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