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The words Kiss Kiss Bang Bang which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies

Pauline Kael

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Pauline Kael
Age: 82 †
Born: 1919
Born: June 19
Died: 2001
Died: September 3
Film Critic
Journalist
Writer
Petaluma
California
Words
Kiss
Posters
Basic
Bang
Kissing
Bangs
Saws
Appeal
Perhaps
Statement
Movies
Italian
Briefest
Movie
Appeals
Imaginable
Actors
Statements
Poster

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In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.
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tasteful and colossal are - in movies, at least - basically antipathetic.
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For a while in the twenties and thirties, art was talked about as a substitute for religion now B movies are a substitute for religion.
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The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.
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Reality, like God and History, tends to direct people to wherever they want to go.
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Since I have an aversion to movies in which people say grace at the dinner table (not to the practice but to how movies use it to establish the moral strength of a household), the opening night montage of Sunday-night supper in one home after another in Waxahachie, Texas in 1935 - a whole community saying grace made me expect the worst.
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The worst thing about movie-making is that it's like life: nobody can go back to correct the mistakes.
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I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.
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a steady diet of mass culture is a form of deprivation.
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McLuhanism and the media have broken the back of the book business they've freed people from the shame of not reading. They've rationalized becoming stupid and watching television.
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