Art is the closest we can come to understanding how a stranger re... by Roger Ebert

Art is the closest we can come to understanding how a stranger really feels.

Roger Ebert

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Categorized in : Art Understanding Stranger

[Alan Berg's] memory haunts many people, even those who never heard him on the radio, because his death could be read as a message: Be cautious, be prudent, be bland, never push anybody, never say what you really think, offer yourself as a hostage to the weirdos even before they make the first move. These days, a lot of people are opposed to the newfound popularity of 'trash television,' and no doubt they are right, and the hosts of these shows are shameless controversy-mongers. But at least they are not intimidated. Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?

memories moving thinking

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.

target film-critics today

The movie "Ed Wood," about the worst director of all time, was ma... by Roger Ebert

The movie "Ed Wood," about the worst director of all time, was made to prepare us for "Stargate."

woods made directors

Dogs notice, they share, they draw conclusions, they like it when they're able to be of service and are touchingly grateful when they're praised.

grateful able dog

Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie... by Roger Ebert

Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.

confused emotional lying

I begin to feel like most Americans don't understand the First Amendment, don't understand the idea of freedom of speech, and don't understand that it's the responsibility of the citizen to speak out.

speaks-out responsibility ideas

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.

empathy character laughing

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

ridiculous stars average

The purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize with other people... For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy.

empathy civilization people

By going to the movies, and because of other things, too, going to college, making a wide variety of friends, moving around traveling, I became a lot more open-minded than the heritage I was born into might have suggested.

movie college moving

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.

crush teenage girl

Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people.

powerful people art

Jane Austen wrote six of the most beloved novels in the English language, we are informed at the end of Becoming Jane, and so she did. The key word is beloved. Her admirers do not analyze her books so much as they just plain love them to pieces.

pieces keys book

In Blue Crush , we meet three Hawaiian surfers who work as hotel maids, live in a grotty rental, and are raising the kid sister of one of them. Despite this near-poverty, they look great; there is nothing like a tan and a bikini to overcome class distinctions.

crush blue kids

The children of Birmingham did not really die in the State of Alabama, however, because Alabama is a state of mind, and in the minds of the [white] men who rule Alabama, those children had never lived [...] their blood is on so many hands, that history will weep in the telling...and it is not new blood. It is old, so very old.

white-man men children

We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls. They allow us to enter other minds, not simply in the sense of identifying with the characters, although that is an important part of it, but by seeing the world as another person sees it.

wall space character

You can have a movie with hardly any cuts, or very few cuts, that is fascinating, you can't take your eyes away from it... Look at some of the long takes in Citizen Kane.

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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.

objective-truth reactions should

It is more erotic to wonder if you're about to be kissed than it... by Roger Ebert

It is more erotic to wonder if you're about to be kissed than it is to be kissed.

erotic ifs wonder

I'll tell you, I think that the Internet has provided an enormous boost to film criticism by giving people an opportunity to self publish or to find sites that are friendly.

self opportunity thinking