Top 147 Quotes & Sayings by Elvis Mitchell - Page 2

A stand-up comedian who's assaultive and decent and has managed a career that has spanned over five decades deserves a documentary.

The film's star, Eminem, doesn't appear to have a great deal of range, but he can play himself. Even though the protagonist is named Jimmy Smith, the thoughtful '8 Mile' is a raw version of the rapper's own story.

There are storytelling traditions that come from Africa that are unique from anywhere else.

The kind of filmmaking excitement that director Peter Weir brings to movies is bone deep.

It is evident that the grip of 'The Return of the King' on Mr. Jackson is not unlike the grasp the One Ring exerts over Frodo: it's tough for him to let go, which is why the picture feels as if it has an excess of endings. But he can be forgiven. Why not allow him one last extra bow?

Though narrative cohesion isn't the strength of 'Mean Girls,' which works better from scene to scene than as a whole, the intelligence shines in its understanding of contradictions, keeping a comic distance from the emotional investment of teenagers that defined 'Ridgemont High' and later the adolescent angst movies of John Hughes.

In period films, it always helps to have someone built to carry a sword, and Channing Tatum clearly hasn't missed a workout for the past two years, so he fits the bill in that regard.

Probably the worst thing that ever happened to the movies was the megahit.

I spend most of my life not wanting to be found, and actually, I'm pretty good at it.

In 'Training Day,' Mr. Washington's dry-ice grandeur - the predator's reflexes contrasting with a pensive mouth - deserves regard, and his powerhouse virtuosity will almost guarantee him an Oscar nomination.

The Comedy of Emasculation that Judd Apatow and his disciples have made into a separate economy was invented by the Farrelly brothers, 'Kingpin' being the strongest version of that.

We do want to be diverted and be interested and be provoked by popular culture - by art, if we're lucky. And it's amazing how often people have lost sight of this.

Duncan Jones has skills; he's an architect of emotional dislocation.

Sean Penn has never become the lighter, laughing guy.

Selling tickets at the Bing Theater at LACMA was my first job in L.A.

Miramax seems to be showing the same faith in Roberto Benigni's 'Pinocchio' that the Republican Party showed in Trent Lott; the live-action version of Carlo Collodi's fairy tale about the wooden puppet whose only ambition was to be a real live boy was sneaked into theaters Christmas Day.

Who would ever have thought that Robert Ludlum would have become the father of modern action cinema?

If a movie requires the lead actor to spend a good chunk of his onscreen time talking to himself, and Popeye is unavailable because of contractual disputes, it's hard to do better than Johnny Depp.

Before he became 'a working actor,' as he now proudly calls himself, Jamie Dornan initially caught the public's attention as a model - you may remember him from those greasy underwear ads with Eva Mendes, among many others.

Just the idea of seeing a type of narrative we've not seen before is a chance to be surprised.

The documentary 'Certifiably Jonathan' has engrossing moments in it. How can it not? It's got a great subject - the extraordinarily voluble comedian Jonathan Winters, whose constant rush of words can be like a blizzard: beautiful, maddening, exhausting, and finally beautiful again. But it's not a great film.

In the early '60s, it was still a fairly subversive thing, though, to say that you should take a painting, cut it, set it on fire, step on it, hammer nails into it.

We want to see ourselves - but differently. We want to see these dream versions of ourselves. We want to be surprised; we want to be entertained. I think primarily, especially in this country, we ask that movies entertain us, which seems to be something they're less and less likely to do on a continual basis.

'Never Die Alone' is primarily a riveting genre film that neatly exhibits the director's growing assurance - Donald Goines would be proud.

I thought that, as a black audience member, I would like to see something that reflected an experience that's not normally exhibited in documentaries, or is so much about black people as victims in this country, and black people not taking control of their own lives and their own destinies.

Since most of 'Mean Girls' consists of the outsider Cady observing the tribal rites of her new setting and laying it all out in narration, this movie is just like home for the meticulous and ruthless deadpan that Ms. Fey has perfected for the satirical 'S.N.L.' newscast in which she and Jimmy Fallon are the anchors.

'Certifiably Jonathan' contrives crises for its subject - a bid to get his paintings into MOMA, among others.

Mr. Miyazaki's specialty is taking a primal wish of kids, transporting them to a fantasyland, and then marooning them there. No one else conjures the phantasmagoric and shifting morality of dreams - that fascinating and frightening aspect of having something that seems to represent good become evil - in the way this master Japanese animator does.

The picture is being promoted as Disney's 'Spirited Away,' although seeing just 10 minutes of this English version of a hugely popular Japanese film will quickly disabuse any discerning viewer of the notion that it is a Disney creation.

My parents are from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and I feel like it's an old Southern thing where people say that, as a kid, you can be an astronaut or a ballerina or a singer, but as a grown person, you need to go and get a job.

It's an oddity that will be avoided by millions of people, this new 'Pinocchio.' Osama bin Laden could attend a showing in Times Square and be confident of remaining hidden.

One of a handful of films made in Detroit, '8 Mile' doesn't feature the Motown renaissance that Mayor Coleman A. Young dreamed of in the 1970s. Instead, it's the beaten-down city: 8 Mile refers to the line of demarcation between Detroit and suburban, mostly white Oakland County.

When a director shifts gears as often as does Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the man behind the emotionally rich debut film 'Amores Perros,' you may wonder if he knows what he wants.

When Bruce Lee gets his cameo in 'The Green Hornet' - as one of the drawings in Kato's notebook - it clarifies what the film is: an unrealized sketch. A sketch can afford to allude to a point of view. Moviemakers need to show their point of view, something this shrug of a movie never gets around to doing.

'8 Mile' could do without an unnecessary class swipe. In a final throwdown, Rabbit clowns a competitor by revealing that the guy went to suburban Detroit Cranbrook, one of the finest private schools in the country.

Do you remember where you were when Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died?

The pleasantly crude 'Hall Pass' reminds us of what's been missing from movies: Those squirm-inducing moments in comedy that produce enough discomfort that, at points, what we're watching is half a heartbeat away from a horror film.

It is fun to see a comedy in which every single joke hasn't been packed into the trailer.

I dress well. I travel; I seem to be relatively glamorous for a film guy - which, to me, is like being the fastest midget in the circus.

In 'The Adjustment Bureau,' Damon shows movie-star concentration as David Norris, a politician whose world ambitions hit a pothole when his angry streak becomes public.

Inarritu's films focus on the repercussions of a single act that draws people together and simultaneously throws their lives into chaos.

I think there are some people who have this thing where, from the very beginning, some part of them rejects convention.

Inarritu's own nomination for Best Director for 'Babel' was the first such honor for a Mexican director.

Scene by scene, you can't help being impressed by 'Mean Girls;' it's like a group of sketches linked by a theme, with some playing much better than others.

With his compulsively slamming lyrics and king-of-the-world delivery, DMX intuitively echoes the existentialism of the projects of the novelist Donald Goines.

You can't ignore the Asian and Hispanic populations in L.A. We can let audiences know independent film is not just about white men.

The stoic drama 'A Somewhat Gentle Man' is photographed in a palate of steel gray tones that match Stellan Skarsgard's complexion. It's a low-blood-pressure version of the kind of thing James M. Cain used to do in his sleep, and its filmmaking accomplishment is as minimalist as its narrative ambition is minimal.

In his very first film, Mr. Gonzalez Inarritu makes the kind of journey some directors don't - or can't - travel in an entire career.

If somebody wants to attack my work, that's one thing - that, I'll respond to.

The title 'Spirited Away' could refer to what Disney has done on a corporate level to the revered Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki's epic and marvelous new anime fantasy.

Some people bring their work home with them. You might suppose that Sid Mashburn is one of those guys - the man was born with a name so brand-ready he basically had to become an entrepreneur.

Like his countryman, Kiefer Sutherland, Seth Rogen has a voice that's 10 years older than he is - a combination of world-weariness and exuberance, an instrument that he's mastered for specific comic shadings.

Natalie Portman's approach to acting demands that she wears her heart on her sleeve so explicitly, the heart becomes the whole garment - a crimson chemise with streaks of blue veins running across it.

The idea of Seth Rogen as the Green Hornet so inflaming the fanboy community is amusing, since that group's 20/50 vision also had it tsking its disapproval about Michael Keaton as Batman and Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.

My style icon has always been Sidney Poitier.

Tina Fey, a performer and head writer for 'Saturday Night Live,' has deftly adapted Rosalind Wiseman's nonfiction dissection of teenage girl societal interaction, 'Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence.'

Each country has its own way of communicating a narrative and, through that, expressing family experiences in emotional stories.

Real-life conduct aside, LaBeouf, a Los Angeles native, has been working steadily as an actor since he was 12 years old.

The action comedy 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl' raises one of the most overlooked and important cinematic questions of our time: Can a movie maintain the dramatic integrity of a theme park ride?

The Ebert thing just didn't work out. We just couldn't, like, come to an agreement. And 'Movieline', they obviously didn't want me, because they fired me.