scanners

"What it really is, is first you see something, and you like it, and then it's a mystery, and you go into the mystery -- and that's what's interesting. And the test of criticism is: can you make a case for it." -- Andrew Sarris

"There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear." -- Daniel Dennett

"Real argument takes time and practice. Marshalling our reasons, proportioning our conclusions to the actual evidence, considering objections, and all the rest -- these are acquired skills. We have to grow up a little. We have to put aside our desires and opinions for a while and actually think." -- Anthony Weston, "A Rulebook for Arguments" (2008)

"Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions." -- Earl Gray Stevens

"One can summarize a plot in one sentence, whereas it’s fairly difficult to summarize one frame." -- Raymond Durgnat

"Young man, let me explain something to you: Every shot in a picture is the most important shot in a picture." -- Ernst Lubitsch

"I don't think you go to a play to forget, or to a movie to be distracted. I think life generally is a distraction and that going to a movie is a way to get back, not go away." -- Tom Noonan

"Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out." -- Martin Scorsese

“An idea does not exist apart from the words that express it. Style is not an envelope enclosing a message; the envelope is the message.” -- Dwight Macdonald