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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.

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
Talked
Twenties
Movies
Religion
Art
Thirties
Substitute
Substitutes

More quotes by Pauline Kael

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Allowing for exceptions, there is still one basic difference between the traditional arts and the mass-media arts: in the traditional arts, the artist grows in a mass medium, the artist decays profitably.
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It's sometimes discouraging to see all of a director's movies, because there's so much repetition. The auteurists took this to be a sign of a director's artistry, that you could recognize his movies. But it can also be a sign that he's a hack.
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What's disgusting about the Dirty Harry movies is that Eastwood plays this angry tension as righteous indignation.
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Art doesn't come in measured quantities: it's got to be too much or it's not enough.
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Television as we have it isn't an art form - it's a piece of furniture that is good for a few things.
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It seems likely that many of the young who don't wait for others to call them artists, but simply announce that they are, don't have the patience to make art.
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If I never saw another fistfight or car chase or Doberman attack, I wouldn't have any feeling of loss. And that goes for Rottweilers, too.
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It is a depressing fact that Americans tend to confuse morality and art (to the detriment of both) and that, among the educated, morality tends to mean social consciousness.
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In a foreign country people don't expect you to be just like them, but in Los Angeles, which is infiltrating the world, they don't consider that you might be different because they don't recognize any values except their own. And soon there may not be any others.
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The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.
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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
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I’m frequently asked why I don’t write my memoirs. I think I have.
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I am mystified. I know only one person who voted for Nixon.
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Reality, like God and History, tends to direct people to wherever they want to go.
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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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The critical task is necessarily comparative, and younger people do not truly know what is new
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Trash has given us an appetite for art.
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An avidity for more is built into the love of movies. Something else is built in: you have to be open to the idea of getting drunk on movies. (Being able to talk about movies with someone -- to share the giddy high excitement you feel -- is enough for a friendship.
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Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art it is the part the schools cannot recognize.
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Her only flair is in her nostrils.
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