"Many films diminish us. They cheapen us, masturbate our senses, hammer us with shabby thrills, diminish the value of life. Some few films evoke the wonderment of life's experience, and those I consider a form of prayer. Not prayer 'to' anyone or anything, but prayer 'about' everyone and everything. I believe prayer that makes requests is pointless. What will be, will be. But I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine."— Roger Ebert, reviewing Terrence Malicks' The Tree of Life
"Malick is a brilliant man who's studied the world's religions and philosophies with what I'd say was genuine attention and perception, and while a lot of the natural-world stuff in his last film, the controversial historical saga 'The New World,' looked haphazardly edited and a bit complacent, every image in 'The Tree of Life' counts for something, and some of them come at you as a shock."
— Glenn Kenny also on The Tree of Life
"Floating tangentially in whatever direction it sees fit, and revisiting key images, phrases, and designs (in the church, a coiling stained-glass ceiling; in the desert, a rocky terrain split between black and white), The Tree of Life proves an exhilarating sensory feast of sights and sounds, one devoid of all but the most spartan dialogue and, splintered into snapshots tethered by an unstable and circular chronology, divorced from a linear narrative."
-- Slant's Nick Schager
Meanwhile, on another movie altogether:
"There's nothing more terrifying, to me at least, than looking at one's food, and seeing on it larval insects. I gagged. I gagged again. I threw out the food in the dumpster immediately, and took out the bag and dumped it in the skip outside my building. Then I made myself vomit for an hour. This, my friends, was one of the worst experiences of my life. Well, Rob Marshall's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was worse."
— Slant's Ali Arikan on PotC 4
Movie Night at Bowery Mission homeless shelter
Wil Wheaton: On the delivery of technobabble
Woody Allen Movies, In Order Of The Likelihood That Their Titles Will Be Used As Titles For Wu-Tang Clan Songs
The Hidden Message in Pixar's Films
Arnold Schwarzenegger decides maybe right now isn't the best time to stage his acting comeback
Science Fiction Trivia Challenge: John Hodgman vs Patton Oswalt, WFMU radio's "epic nerd-off" (audio)
Oh my God, they killed Rory! (a Doctor Who heh)
Greatest movie sandwiches
The pivotal egg salad sandwich from Mystery Men should be in there too, but hey.
