Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies: March 2011

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"I suppose I think of film criticism the way I've heard Hebrew scholars describe their approach to the Torah: It's not about discovering dogma, it's about learning to ask meaningful questions, even if you can never fully answer them."

-- Jim Emerson

"Style is supposed to express content, dammit--not disguise a lack of it! The meaning of a film is in what these images on the screen (and don't forget the sounds!) do to you while you experience them. (As you so eloquently put it: a film is about what happens to you when you're watching it.) If you ask me, we should stop seeing style and content as separate entities. In a good film, they're a natural unity."

-- Peet Gelderblom

"Clearly, this does not mean that Friday the 13th is more "valuable" than Jeanne Dielman [...] But, given the great many people who have seen Friday the 13th, where is the intellectual dignity in saying, "it's crap", and being done with it? Anything that has become an iconic part of popular culture is therefore inherently worthy of exploration if not automatic respect[...] If we simply throw it out with the bathwater, on the grounds that it isn't "artistic", we also throw out the possibility of ever finding out."

-- Tim Brayton

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