Masterpiece Film Quotes

Patience is the essence of clicking great Photographs!!

The film is an iconic pop-culture creation and touches a bazillion filmgoers to their very core. It can also be very useful. Useful? What the hell am I talking about? Glad you asked. What I mean is the way that George Lucas's masterpiece contains lessons that can and should be applied to real life. The one that jumps out at me is the message of The Force and how if you stay pure and good and mentally sharp you can, in fact, conquer the Dark Side.

I’ve never hated anybody: not J.J. Not the Film Appreciation 101 professor who nearly failed me for saying that Twilight is an unrecognized masterpiece.

but was this funny? was this funny? was this funny? why was this funny? why was Sugar Kane funny? why were men dressed as women funny? why were men made up as women funny? why were men staggering in high heels funny? why was Sugar Kane funny, was Sugar Kane the supreme female impersonator? was this funny? why was this funny? why is female funny? why were people going to laugh at Sugar Kane & fall in love with Sugar Kane? why, another time? why would Sugar Kane Kovalchick girl ukulelist be such a box office success in America? why dazzling-blond girl ukulelist alcoholic Sugar Kane Kovalchick a success? why Some Like It Hot a masterpiece? why Monroe's masterpiece? why Monroe's most commercial movie? why did they love her? why when her life was in shreds like clawed silk? why when her life was in pieces like smashed glass? why when her insides had bled out? why when her insides had been scooped out? why when she carried poison in her womb? why when her head was ringing with pain? her mouth stinging with red ants? why when everybody on the set of the film hated her? resented her? feared her? why when she was drowning before their eyes? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do! why was Sugar Kane Kovalchick of Sweet Sue's Society Syncopaters so seductive? I wanna be kissed by nobody else but you I wanna! I wanna! I wanna be loved by you alone but why? why was Marilyn so funny? why did the world adore Marilyn? who despised herself? was that why? why did the world love Marilyn? why when Marilyn had killed her baby? why when Marilyn had killed her babies? why did the world want to fuck Marilyn? why did the world want to fuck fuck fuck Marilyn? why did the world want to jam itself to the bloody hilt like a great tumescent sword in Marilyn? was it a riddle? was it a warning? was it just another joke? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do nobody else but you nobody else but you nobody else

For any director with a little lucidity, masterpieces are films that come to you by accident.

I mean, the soundtrack to Remember the Titans? Stone-cold ridiculous. The curator had managed a masterpiece that left the songs forever changed for every person who’d seen the film.

And he saw the studio he was about to abandon for his bed as it might have appeared in a documentary film about himself that would reveal to a curious world how a masterpiece was born.

Kubrick told his visitors that, in his view, there were three factors to consider in every film: Was it interesting? Was it believable? And, was it beautiful or aesthetically superior? At least two of the three had to be in every shot of the film. He

Guts,” never much of a word outside the hunting season, was a favorite noun in literary prose. People were said to have or to lack them, to perceive beauty and make moral distinctions in no other place. “Gut-busting” and “gut-wrenching” were accolades. “Nerve-shattering,” “eye-popping,” “bone-crunching”—the responsive critic was a crushed, impaled, electrocuted man. “Searing” was lukewarm. Anything merely spraining or tooth-extracting would have been only a minor masterpiece. “Literally,” in every single case, meant figuratively; that is, not literally. This film will literally grab you by the throat. This book will literally knock you out of your chair… Sometimes the assault mode took the form of peremptory orders. See it. Read it. Go at once…Many sentences carried with them their own congratulations, Suffice it to say…or, The only word for it is…Whether it really sufficed to say, or whether there was, in fact, another word, the sentence, bowing and applauding to itself, ignored…There existed also an economical device, the inverted-comma sneer—the “plot,” or his “work,” or even “brave.” A word in quotation marks carried a somehow unarguable derision, like “so-called” or “alleged…” “He has suffered enough” meant if we investigate this matter any further, it will turn out our friends are in it, too… Murders, generally, were called brutal and senseless slayings, to distinguish them from all other murders; nouns thus became glued to adjectives, in series, which gave an appearance of shoring them up… Intelligent people, caught at anything, denied it. Faced with evidence of having denied it falsely, people said they had not done it and had not lied about it, and didn’t remember it, but if they had done it or lied about it, they would have done it and misspoken themselves about it in an interest so much higher as to alter the nature of doing and lying altogether. It was in the interest of absolutely nobody to get to the bottom of anything whatever. People were no longer “caught” in the old sense on which most people could agree. Induction, detection, the very thrillers everyone was reading were obsolete. The jig was never up. In every city, at the same time, therapists earned their living by saying, “You’re being too hard on yourself.

Then the problems of film making began to fade into the background, and you found yourself belittling the importance of the camera. After all, it was merely an instrument. The important thing was the truth. Get at it and you had your great masterpieces. But how wrong we were! The moment you are on the set, this three-legged instrument took charge. Problems came thick and fast. Where to place the camera? High or low, near or far, on the dolly or on the ground? Was the thirty-five okay? Would you rather move back and use the fifty? Get too close to the action and the emotion of the scene spilled out -- get it too far back and the thing became cold and remote. To each problem you had to find a quick answer. If you delayed, the sun shifted and made nonsense of your uncertainty.

My point is that bias is not advertised by a glowing sign worn around jurors’ necks; we are all guilty of it, because the brain is wired for us to see what we believe, and it usually happens outside of everyone’s awareness. Affective realism decimates the ideal of the impartial juror. Want to increase the likelihood of a conviction in a murder trial? Show the jury some gruesome photographic evidence. Tip their body budgets out of balance and chances are they’ll attribute their unpleasant affect to the defendant: “I feel bad, therefore you must have done something bad. You are a bad person.” Or permit family members of the deceased to describe how the crime has hurt them, a practice known as a victim impact statement, and the jury will tend to recommend more severe punishments. Crank up the emotional impact of a victim impact statement by recording it professionally on video and adding music and narration like a dramatic film, and you’ve got the makings of a jury-swaying masterpiece.45 Affective realism intertwines with the law outside the courtroom as well. Imagine that you are enjoying a quiet evening at home when suddenly you hear loud banging outside. You look out the window and see an African American man attempting to force open the door of a nearby house. Being a dutiful citizen, you call 911, and the police arrive and arrest the perpetrator. Congratulations, you have just brought about the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., as it happened on July 16, 2009. Gates was trying to force open the front door of his own home, which had become stuck while he was traveling. Affective realism strikes again. The real-life eyewitness in this incident had an affective feeling, presumably based on her concepts about crime and skin color, and made a mental inference that the man outside the window had intent to commit a crime.

So what’s your favorite horror movie?” she asked. “Easy,” Gael said. “The Birds.” Not even its recent association with Anika could quell his love for the masterpiece. “Umm, The Birds totally doesn’t count as horror.” “Of course it does!” Gael ventured a sip of his hot chocolate, but it was still too hot. “What are you talking about?” “No one even dies,” Sammy protested. “You can’t have a horror movie without at least one death.” “The schoolteacher dies,” Gael said. Sammy rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine. Favorite slasher film, then. You know, where there’s a killer, and the killer is not, like, a pigeon.” It was actually mainly crows and seagulls in The Birds, but Gael let that one slide. 

Of filmmakers then active, Kubrick valued Ingmar Bergman above all—so much so that he wrote the Swedish director a fan letter in 1960, praising his “unearthly and brilliant contribution,” and stating, “Your vision of life has moved me deeply, more deeply than I have ever been moved by any films.

For a time, the press lord William Randolph Hearst did everything in his vast powers to keep the film “Citizen Kane” from finding an audience. He intimidated theater owners, refused to let ads run in his newspapers, and even pressured studio sycophants to destroy the negative. At first, the titan of San Simeon had his way: the film faded from view after a splashy initial release. But over the years, “Citizen Kane” came to be recognized for the masterpiece it is, and now regularly tops lists as the greatest film ever made.

You said something I have always thought,” Bill said to me when I arrived on the set of Pocket Rockets, somewhere in the endless suburb that is greater Atlanta. “Sure, some movies don’t work. Some fail in their intent. But anyone who says they hated a movie is treating a voluntarily shared human experience like a bad Red-Eye out of LAX. The departure is delayed for hours, there’s turbulence that scares even the flight attendants, the guy across from you vomits, they can’t serve any food and the booze runs out, you’re seated next to twin babies with the colic, and you land too late for your meeting in the city. You can hate that. But hating a movie misses the damn point. Would you say you hated the seventh birthday party of your girlfriend’s niece or a ball game that went eleven innings and ended 1–0? You hate cake and extra baseball for your money? Hate should be saved for fascism and steamed broccoli that’s gone cold. The worst anyone—especially we who take Fountainfn1—should ever say about someone else’s movie is Well, it was not for me, but, actually, I found it quite good. Damn a film with faint praise, but never, ever say you hate a movie. Anyone who uses the h-word around me is done. Gone. Of course, I wrote and directed Albatross. I may be a bit sensitive.

I’ve been a fan of horror movies and scary stories my whole life. I’ve read every Tananarive Due novel, seen every Jordan Peele film. I love horror movies even when everybody else thinks they’re garbage. I will gladly debate anybody who got something to say about the masterpiece that is Crimson Peak.

Many novelists—including Izumi Kyōka (1873–1939), Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965), Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892–1927), Ishikawa Jun (1899–1987), Enchi Fumiko (1905–1986), and Mishima Yukio (1925–1970)—were avid readers of the collection. Two of the tales inspired Mizoguchi Kenji’s cinematic masterpiece Ugetsu monogatari (1953; known to Western viewers as Ugetsu), which is widely regarded as “one of the greatest of all films.

I don’t hate any films. Movies are too hard to make to warrant hatred, even when they are turkeys. If a movie is not great, I just wait it out in my seat. It will be over soon enough. Walking out of a movie is a sin.

Kubrick told his visitors that, in his view, there were three factors to consider in every film: Was it interesting? Was it believable? And, was it beautiful or aesthetically superior? At least two of the three had to be in every shot of the film.

He was twenty-one years old and had effectively been appointed producer-director of aeronautical second-unit film production by one of the hottest directors in the world.

When you do a science fiction film, it’s very difficult to discipline yourself to stay within reason. There are no limits, and you can go berserk.

Only three science fiction feature films were released in 1950, but by the middle of the decade, the genre was averaging around twenty-five per year, and by its end over 150 had been released—an unprecedentedly fast expansion for a new genre, even if most of the productions were schlocky B-grade material.

If you can describe it, I can film it.” Though I managed to disprove this dictum, I must also admit that Stanley later filmed things I couldn’t possibly describe.

Forbes asked what kind of project he was thinking of doing next. Kubrick responded that he was looking into the possibility of doing a science fiction film. “Oh, Stanley, for God’s sake!” Forbes exclaimed, turning. “Science fiction?

Standing in front of a mirror, it dawned on him that what had been an enjoyable discussion had become an audition in front of one of the world’s great film directors.

Hide the ideas,” he wrote, “but so that people find them. The most important will be the most hidden.”2 To accomplish this required great focus and economy of means on the part of the director, a rigorous and austere quest for purity of expression. “Everything should not be shown, or there is no art; art lies in suggestion. . . . Mystery should be preserved; since we live in mystery, mystery should be on the screen.”3 He proposes several ways to achieve this end.

I would any day go on deciding to make good, bad and ugly films rather than sit in a coffee shop, having endless cups of coffee, tearing down others’ films and planning a masterpiece in the future, which might never go on the floors.

When we saw the ascension scene—where I rise with the Creature on an elevated platform and cry, “LIFE, DO YOU HEAR ME? GIVE MY CREATION LIFE!,” my heart sank. I thought this was going to be one of the highlights of the film, and instead it was a boring blob. I put my head down. Mel didn’t vomit. Instead, he got up and started banging his head against the wall. He hit it three times, hard. Then turned his face to the rest of us and said, “Let’s not get excited! You have just witnessed a 14-minute disaster. In one week you’re going to see a 12-minute fairly rotten scene. In two weeks you’re going to see a 10-minute fairly good scene. And in three weeks, you are going to see an 8-minute masterpiece.

After nearly collapsing under the pressures of poverty, loneliness, and an addiction to Dexedrine, Spark sought help for her drug use and began to work seriously on a first novel, The Comforters (1957), partly with the financial and emotional support of the novelist Graham Greene. Though a late fiction writer, Spark began producing novels and stories at a rapid pace. In 1961 she wrote The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, widely considered her masterpiece. The novel follows a teacher at a girls’ school who carefully and manipulatively cultivates the minds and morals of a select handful of promising pupils. In 1969, it was adapted into an Academy Award–winning film starring Maggie Smith and was a Royal Command Performance.

Why’ve you got so many about surrealism, Dadaism?” “Well, one of the problems I’ve got on this film is to come up with convincing extraterrestrial landscapes,” said Kubrick, sitting down.

What are you doing in there, for Christ’s sake?’ Jerry yelled. ‘What goes on?’ Perhaps he’s having a pee, he thought absurdly. Slowly the door opened. Craw’s gravity was awesome. ‘They haven’t come out,’ said Jerry. He had the feeling of not reaching Craw at all. He was going to repeat himself in fact, loudly. He was going to dance about and make a damn scene. So that Craw’s answer, when it finally came, came just in time. ‘To the contrary, my son.’ The old boy took a step forward and Jerry could see the films now, hanging behind him like black wet worms from Craw’s little clothes line, pink pegs holding them in place. ‘To the contrary, sir,’ he said, ‘every frame is a bold and disturbing masterpiece.

For anyone interested in seeing what Omat’s world might have looked like, watch Zacharias Kunuk, Norman Cohn, and Paul Apak Angilirq’s cinematic masterpiece, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. Its punching-game scene inspired Omat and Issuk’s confrontation in The Wolf in the Whale. Shot entirely in Nunavut, this impeccably researched film affords an invaluable window into Inuit life centuries ago.

My particular favorite was the David Bowie–led masterpiece Labyrinth. I can say that it is without a doubt one of the best children’s films to come out of the 1980s, which is saying something as that particular decade was full of really dark, really twisted films aimed at children, and I was obsessed with each and every one. Upon reflection, that probably speaks to my current personality more than any other possible pop culture influence I had growing up.

Did you ever hear of The Hero City? Of course. Great film, right? Marty made it over the course of the Siege. Just him, shooting on whatever medium he could get his hands on. What a masterpiece: the courage, the determination, the strength, dignity, kindness, and honor. It really makes you believe in the human race. It’s better than anything I’ve ever done. You should see it. I have. Which version? I’m sorry? Which version did you see? I wasn’t aware… That there were two? You need to do some homework, young man. Marty made both a wartime and postwar version of The Hero City. The version you saw, it was ninety minutes? I think. Did it show the dark side of the heroes in The Hero City? Did it show the violence and the betrayal, the cruelty, the depravity, the bottomless evil in some of those “heroes’” hearts? No, of course not. Why would it? That was our reality and it’s what drove so many people to get snuggled in bed, blow out their candles, and take their last breath. Marty chose, instead, to show the other side, the one that gets people out of bed the next morning, makes them scratch and scrape and fight for their lives because someone is telling them that they’re going to be okay. There’s a word for that kind of lie. Hope.

I call this the Fortress Fallacy, because it’s as if we imagine that we will build a giant fortress when we’ve never laid a single brick in our lives. We want to open a Michelin-star restaurant, but we still haven’t gone past microwave nachos. We want to write a novel, but we’ve never written anything longer than a quick email. We want to direct a feature film, but we’ve never tried anything beyond posting a video of our cat on Facebook. As a result, one of two things happens: Either we do nothing more than fantasize, and never start, or we do start, but we lead ourselves into burnout. When we fantasize about the fortress in our mind, we can actually get pleasure out of it. This becomes a source of procrastination. If we believe we’re going to make a grand masterpiece, we can justify not starting. Our egos will fool us into thinking that we need to do more research, or that we just need to carve out a few months of free time to rent a cabin in the woods. Meanwhile, we live inside the dangerous joy of our daydreams.

But film sometimes flinches at the expertise of actresses, and the sympathetic viewer may come to realize that there was a mute honesty in Novak: she did not conceal the fact that she had been drawn into a world capable of exploiting her. Filming seemed an ordeal for her; it was as if the camera hurt her. But while many hostile to the movies rose in defense of the devastation of Marilyn Monroe—whether or not she was a sentient victim—Novak was stoical, obdurate, or sullen. She allowed very few barriers between that raw self and the audience and now looks dignified, reflective, and responsive to feeling where Monroe appears haphazard and oblivious. Novak is the epitome of every small-town waitress or beauty contest winner who thought of being in the movies. Despite a thorough attempt by Columbia to glamorize her, she never lost the desperate attentiveness of someone out of her depth but refusing to give in. Her performances improve with time so that ordinary films come to center on her; even Vertigo, Hitchcock’s masterpiece, owes some of its power to Novak’s harrowing suspension between tranquility and anxiety.

Martin Scorcese, the film director, was once asked the secret to a good scene. “Put three people in a room,” he said.