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Film — Live-Action
Now you could study Shakespeare and be quite elite
And you can charm the critics and have nuthin' to eat
Just slip on a banana peel, the world's at your feet
And you can charm the critics and have nuthin' to eat
Just slip on a banana peel, the world's at your feet
— "Make 'Em Laugh", Singin' in the Rain
Literature
How many dramas have you in France, sir?" said Candide to the Abbé.
"Five or six thousand."
"What a number!" said Candide. "How many good?"
"15 or 16" replied the other [critic].
"What a number!" said Martin.
"Five or six thousand."
"What a number!" said Candide. "How many good?"
"15 or 16" replied the other [critic].
"What a number!" said Martin.
"This much is known: For every rational line or forthright statement there are leagues of senseless cacophony, verbal nonsense, and incoherency."
"Honestly? The average cop is pretty darn good. But average is average. You think about what average usually gets you, and then you figure that half the people out there are below that average. That’s anywhere. Even here. And you can be better than average, while still having a trend that isn’t so good."
— Behaim, Pact
"It is almost impossible to mention books in bulk without grossly over-praising the great majority of them. Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are. In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be 'This book is worthless', while the truth about the reviewer’s own reaction would probably be 'This book does not interest me in any way, and I would not write about it unless I were paid to.'"
— George Orwell, "Confessions of a Book Reviewer"
Live-action TV
"I think it may be the best thing I've written in years. It could also be utter and complete shit. But when I can't tell the difference, that's a good sign."
— Tom Yates, House of Cards (US)
Music
Well now home entertainment was my baby's wish
So I hopped into town for a satellite dish
I tied it to the top of my Japanese car
I came home and I pointed it out into the stars
A message came back from the great beyond:
There's fifty-seven channels and nothin' on
So I hopped into town for a satellite dish
I tied it to the top of my Japanese car
I came home and I pointed it out into the stars
A message came back from the great beyond:
There's fifty-seven channels and nothin' on
— Bruce Springsteen, "57 Channels (And Nothin' On")
Welcome to the internet, have a look around
Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found
We've got mountains of content - some better, some worse
If none of it's of interest to you, you'd be the first.
Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found
We've got mountains of content - some better, some worse
If none of it's of interest to you, you'd be the first.
— Bo Burnham, "Welcome to the Internet"
Newspapers
Jesse James is played by Colin Farrell, who turned on instant star quality in The Vietnam War picture Tigerland (2001) and turns it off here. That this movie got a theatrical push and Tigerland didn't is proof that American distribution resembles a crapshoot.
—Roger Ebert on American Outlaws (2001)
Podcasts
Jay: So, not only did they not want to make a James Cameron/Ridley Scott/Sigourney Weaver Alien movie, they wanted to make a PG-13 Alien Vs. Predator kiddie movie.
Rich: That's so missing the point. At least as far as the Predator movie goes.
Jay: You know what? Whichever movie executive made that decision? From a financial point, it worked out, 'cause this was the most financially-successful movie in the series of movies.
Rich: Are you kidding?
Jay: I'm not kidding.
Rich: Oh, now I'm sad. Everything about this movie is depressing.
Rich: That's so missing the point. At least as far as the Predator movie goes.
Jay: You know what? Whichever movie executive made that decision? From a financial point, it worked out, 'cause this was the most financially-successful movie in the series of movies.
Rich: Are you kidding?
Jay: I'm not kidding.
Rich: Oh, now I'm sad. Everything about this movie is depressing.
— Half in the Bag, AVP: Alien vs. Predator rifftrack
Stand-Up Comedy
"We live in a world where John Lennon was murdered, yet Barry Manilow continues to put out fucking albums. Goddammit! If you're gonna kill somebody, have some fucking taste. I'll drive you to Kenny Rogers' house."
— Bill Hicks, Dangerous
"'You ever go into the bathroom and everything is WET? The floor is wet! The counters are wet! Everything's wet!' Uh... could it be because people piss on the floor and wash their hands aggressively?"
— Andy Kindler on Dane Cook
Video Games
"*sigh* Novels nowadays are all basically copies of each other. Don't modern authors have any pride? Or are they naught but soulless mercenary hacks?"
— NPC Satomi, Tokyo Xanadu
Web Animation
"Since the Internet is almost diametrically opposed to the notion of quality control, in recent years it's been a lot easier to just assume everything's shit until it can prove itself otherwise. I like to call it the "Guantanamo Bay" approach to reviewing."
— Zero Punctuation, Mailbag Showdown
Web Original
After all, this is a business and you have to sell, sell, sell. And it most certainly worked. Rise of Arsenal outsold quality books like Secret Six, The Unwritten, Daytripper, Sweet Tooth, and Power Girl. It proves that we haven’t set the bar terribly high for ourselves as fans, and we probably won’t be collectively challenging the industry to make our books any better, either.
— David Wolkin on The Rise of Arsenal, "The 5 Worst Comics of 2010"
Coach was on for NINE SEASONS. NINE. Really? I think I saw it once and was like, oh, the theme is guys are funny cuz' they're stupid *eye-roll* and wow, Shelly Fabrares has some big, red hair. She was like the proto-Merida.''
— J. Harvey, "Are There That Many Coach Fans Out There Who Needed A Sequel?"
, "Are There That Many Coach Fans Out There Who Needed A Sequel?"The Gallagher of our generation. Dane Cook is a "comedian" that everyone seems to love despite his extreme mediocrity. His amazing lack of jokes combined with his ability to run around the stage like a five-year-old without his meds appeals to anyone without a soul or any knowledge of comedy. His trite and obvious observations contain no punchlines and often appeal to people with short attention spans.
"All those hours I could have been relaxing, or reading all these great books, or getting into shape, or working on side projects that I'm really excited about," Richman said. "But instead I've been listening to overrated albums recommended to me by my asshole friends."
Many words have been spilled to attempt to explain what the hell happened. And it's genuinely difficult to explain...But setting aside the 'why' — a topic that there's never going to be a clear cut answer for anyway — the fact remains that in 1980, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was immediately and directly more popular than Doctor Who. This fact, it must be noted, is downright depressing. Because Buck Rogers in the 25th Century is not even remotely a good show.
Numerous cruises get canceled each year because there's not enough interest, including a horror cruise that would have included Alice Cooper, Candyman, Kane "Jason" Hodder, and director of John Dies at the End Don Coscarelli. That cruise didn't sell enough tickets, but Paula Deen is booked through 2014. What a sick world we live in.
Bad books become bestsellers all the time. And even more great books sell four copies and die a quick death. No one knows why...Anyone trying to figure out why is just a media fartsniffer trying to sell you on their supposedly brilliant ability to psychoanalyze 350 million Americans en masse.
— Drew Magary, "Why You'll Probably Never Write Anything as Successful as Fifty Shades of Grey"
, "Why You'll Probably Never Write Anything as Successful as Fifty Shades of Grey""It's a bitter pill for some to swallow, but there really is a whole other America out there that they know nothing about, made up of people who watch Duck Dynasty and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Teen Mom, who think of Fox News as a legitimate source of news, and who love Jay Leno."
The symbolism hurt just as bad as the financial loss: Not only did the bold, risky project get crushed at the American box office, it got crushed by The Expendables, a cynical, pandering cash-grab that couldn't be a more generic-safe-bet-cookie-cutter-assembly-line blockbuster. After an experience like that, is it any wonder that any studio would suddenly reconsider betting on risky, "big idea" projects?"''
There's a good reason history has forgotten so many of these songs: NOW is a Whitman's Sampler of crap.
Go to Lionhead's The Movies site and blow a heart-sinking half-hour browsing some of its thousands of two-minute mediocrities. You'll confront the perennial problem with user-generated content: Most creators stink.
Art is speech, and democratic society has long understood that respecting freedom of speech exposes us to reams of stupid speech. That is a very small price to pay for the freedom to share thought and learn and grow as individuals and cultures.
— This essay on artistic freedom
on artistic freedomFor most people, the big event of 1967 wasn't the 14-Hour Technicolor Dream, with its Pink Floyd performance and Yoko Ono art happening, but Steve and Elsie Tanner marrying in Coronation Street. The big hit singles of 1967 weren’t psychedelic freak-outs but Petula Clark and Englebert Humperdinck.
Why do I read fan fiction? The basic reason is exactly the same reason I read anything—some of it is of astounding quality. I think fan fiction is often saddled with the image of being written solely by beginners and being uniformly terrible. But it’s like any other kind of fiction. You have beginners, you have the competent, you have the talented and experienced.
"The true miracle of this movie is how accessible it is to people of all faiths. I've seen so many people say that they adore this movie, despite being atheist. And as a Christian who thinks 90% of Christian media is garbage, it's absolutely wonderful to see a movie tell a Biblical story with such respect, finesse, and faithfulness to the core of what made the original story so impactful."
Western Animation
"79 episodes, about 30 good ones."
"Don't feel bad, Homer. Nine out of ten religions fail in their first year."
Real Life
"Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense."
"Everyone has a book inside them and, in most cases, that's exactly where it should remain."
"The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn't get published. The average — or only slightly above average — detective story does."
— Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder
"They say that 90% of TV is junk. But 90% of everything is junk."
"Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar... If the public likes you, you're good."
Unlike most writers, my competitive instinct — though highly developed — was never personal. That is to say, I have never begrudged another writer his success, but I have sometimes deplored the taste of the moment that has made what I thought bad work successful. Happily, since injustice is the rule, one is quite as apt to be its beneficiary as its victim.
"At one stage I did set fire to a whole pile of disco records and declare that disco was dead. I think within a month there were three disco tracks in the top ten, so it wasn't a great gesture."
— Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil, Long Way to the Top: Stories of Australian Rock & Rollnote
The animes represent a wide body of entertainment which includes some good stuff, as well as an absolutely incomprehensible amount of shit. Like anything.
"Sometimes that Rhodes Scholarship is more of a weapon than an asset. I think he was just a little freaked out because Dumb and Dumber came out on the same weekend as Cobb, and Cobb was his big swing for the fences and that didn’t work out, and that freaked him out a bit."
— Jim Carrey on difficulties working with Tommy Lee Jones
"You can be less than mediocre and be a fucking movie star. I have respect for very few actors and actresses. Some of them get a lot of acclaim but just because their movie made $200 million at the box office; they still suck. I got no respect for them and I used to let them know it."
"I've made 30-plus films over 20 years. And in my opinion, five of them are good."
Ryan never mentions what his 5 'good' films are, but let's hop over to his IMDb page and see if we can't figure out what 5 movies he's talking about. Clearly MacGruber is #1.
— Michael K., in response to the above quote
, in response to the above quoteALF, with its sassy alien puppet that ate cats and cracked wise, for a time, was one of the biggest shows in the world, but you'll never find anyone who can quote a single line or recall a memorable scene. Among the series that did survive as much-loved squares of the nostalgia quilt that we snuggle beneath, is a seeming aberration that could well have been consigned to the same dumpster containing the rotting, racist corpse of Balki Bartokomous.
— Stuart Millard, So Excited, So Scared
The internet does, as you say, provide opportunities to obtain information and an extremely wide variety of viewpoints. That's a good in itself. But there is a downside. The downside is that you are so flooded with material that unless you have an understanding of the world that is sufficient to allow you to be selective, you can be drawn into completely crazed cocoons of wild interpretation.
— Noam Chomsky, 2007
When you see that many films, you realize that the odds are it doesn't favor with the Academy’s thoughts, it favors with the Razzies' thoughts. A lot more crud gets out there than quality work.
— John Wilson, giving one reason why he created the Golden Raspberry Award.
Golden Raspberry Award.