Critical Viewing Quotes

I don't think I ever watched a movie without being totally immersed in the story. But at the same time, I had to keep some distance from it. I had to question what the narrative was trying to tell me or was injecting in my brain.

I went from silent films to watching French new wave cinema. I became entrapped by it all. That's when I knew I wanted to do film. The moment you start looking at film from a critique point of view - there's a difference between watching a film as an audience and with a critical point of view.

Ive said its a little bit like a magician performing for a convention of magicians... all the magicians in the audience watching this illusion-Do they see the illusion, or do they see the device that made the illusion? Probably they see a little of both.

Just as the unmusical ear is not competent to judge music, so it is likewise with pictures, whether they are paintings, drawings or photos. Only a sensitive and trained eye gives us the right to judge.

It's interesting: I went 25 years without watching a single television show. I was one of those people, because I was so inside how a television show was made, if I would turn on somebody else's show, I would sit there and analyze it, like, 'Oh, so they had four hours in this location and had to get out and the number of set-ups, etc.'

I am a bit fussy when it comes to films.

For me as an actor because I've been at it so long, it becomes much harder to watch movies because you really see the seams of everything.

You get to be analytical about the process and now I can watch the movie and see all the different connection things and see all the things that are underneath the surface.

If you watch a news channel, you wouldn't then say that that person who's watching the news channel thinks everything that the news channel puts out. You wouldn't think that.

I think you can't be passive in making this film - or in watching it.

It's very hard to watch comedy for me, when I'm doing a comedy show, because I either watch a show and I love it, and I'm jealous, or I watch a show and I see all the problems with it, and I'm angry that I watched it.

You lose your sense of wonder the more you learn, right? When you go to film school and learn about moviemaking, you go to see movies and then only see where the lights are, where the cuts are, watching it from a technical basis, nodding your head, "Oh, that was good." The feeling of surprise, the feeling of being transported is further away.

All I mean is, I'm not the kind of audience comedy directors want at a test screening because I seldom laugh, and if I do, it's not very loud. That doesn't mean I don't like the movie.

People think I watch TV too much, but they are wrong. There is a huge difference between merely "watching" TV and learning to respond aggressively to it. The difference, for most people, is the difference between the living and dying of their own brains.

I'm very into details, so I watch movies just for the details.

I cannot watch my performance as an audience because whenever I watch anything that I am a part of, I watch critically.

Oh, my gosh, I've never seen a film unless, you know, if I have to go and do ADR, loop-loop. But I don't watch after. I'm too critical.

I don't have a problem with 'Idol' or 'X Factor,' I have a problem with when those things are not given the proper contextual hue.

Question the images. Take them by the hand and don't let the sweet distancing they offer you vanquish you; do away with the distance's comfort or the soft indifference you derive from concentrating on the quality of the framing, the use of light and shadows, the successful composition. Force these images to bring you to the Mexican Southeast, to history, to the struggle, to this taking sides, to choose a faction.

Don't get seduced by your own stuff. Don't get high on your own supply. The hardest thing as a filmmaker is when you're watching a film that you've worked on for several years. You know every frame so intimately that holding lots of the objectivity of a new viewer who has just seen it for the first time is the hardest thing. Every aesthetic decision you make - and you make thousands of them every day, have to - in theory, must be done from you being a blank slate. You almost have to run a program, like a mind wipe, every time you watch the movie.

For me, having played the game of football, I look at it through a much different lens. I don't look at it from a fan's perspective. I'm always trying to analyze and critique things when I'm watching sporting events. That's why I never have the sound on.

You don't want to watch classics with me 'cause I'm constantly writing notes.

Audiences are savvy. You can never go wrong assuming the best of them.

You're smarter than TV. So what?

If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.