Mark Kermode > Quotes

“Some people say that I talk too fast, but I think it's just that they listen too slowly.”
― Mark Kermode

“Far from being a pack of baying butchers,critics sometimes have a perverse habit of tending to the sick and wounded on the cinematic field of battle, rushing in where angels fear to tread, even when the patient is clearly without a pulse.”
― Mark Kermode, Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics

“we were alive, together, and conscious, aware of our own mortality, but thrilled by the fact of our own ridiculous existence.”
― Mark Kermode, It's Only a Movie: Real Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive

“Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television’.”
― Mark Kermode, It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive

“Sex and the City 2, a movie which goes some way toward justifying the global resentment against America and the English-speaking world.”
― Mark Kermode, The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex: What's Wrong with Modern Movies?

“The audience cheered. I died a little inside. The rest is history.”
― Mark Kermode, Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics

“(Incidentally, Allen reportedly delivered one of the most damning verdicts on Batman & Robin when Schumacher, who had worked with Woody on great films like Love and Death, called him to bemoan the awful reviews. ‘They’re saying I’ve made the worst film ever,’ cried Joel, to which Allen sympathetically responded, ‘Making the worst film ever would actually be an achievement – you haven’t even done that.’ Who says critics are mean?)”
― Mark Kermode, Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics

“Then she gave me a signed photograph of herself, in a swimming pool, in an affectionate embrace with a dolphin. She looked really happy in the picture – presumably dolphins don’t care about the bloody Exorcist.”
― Mark Kermode, It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive

“I like bonkers!”
― Mark Kermode

“I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder.”
― Mark Kermode, It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive

“my admittedly peculiar life.”
― Mark Kermode, Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics

“I think that perfectly sums up Williams’ screen work – creating music that, at its best, can lift the soul and make it soar. As well as soundtracking the childhoods and filmgoing memories of millions of people around the world, Williams’ lasting legacy will doubtless be his respect for, and love of, the orchestra. By championing big, symphonic orchestras, Williams has inspired generations of performers and film fans.”
― Mark Kermode, Mark Kermode's Surround Sound: The Stories of Movie Music

“The truth, which should be apparent to anyone with a vaguely cynical soul, is that 3-D will always be the past, and is only being rammed down our throats as something excitingly ‘new’ right now because it is much harder to pirate 3-D films than good old flat ones. Big Hollywood studios want you to believe in 3-D because they want to carry on believing in their own bank accounts. It has nothing to do with ‘the future’ of cinema, merely the future of film finance.”
― Mark Kermode, It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive

“HERE ARE THREE absolute truths: 1. The world is round. 2. We are all going to die. 3. No one enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.”
― Mark Kermode, The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex: What's Wrong with Modern Movies?

“Crucially, the key to Williams’ success, and perhaps his greatest field of influence, is in creating music that gets straight to the heart of the film. He has an uncanny ability to translate emotion into melody, and with that he has given us a wealth of instantly recognizable tunes and memories.”
― Mark Kermode, Mark Kermode's Surround Sound: The Stories of Movie Music

“Was he joking? Would he really have shot Kinski? ‘I said it very quietly so he understood that it was not a joke. But the story then took on a life of its own, until today you can read that I directed him only at gunpoint from behind the camera! That’s baloney. It never happened like that. When I talked to him, I did not have a gun in my hands. However, I did have a gun …”
― Mark Kermode, It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive

“The attendant looked at me with the expression of one who has just voided his diarrhetic soul into the pre-distressed pants which he had somehow failed to raise above the level of his thighs.”
― Mark Kermode, The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex: What's Wrong with Modern Movies?