1.

"Anyone who laments the death or decrepitude of movies just isn’t paying attention. Yes, there are great shows on cable, and dreary franchise action fare clogs the multiplexes in the warmer months. Animation, a bright spot in Hollywood over the past decade, has entered a creative slump as the studios discover that they can sell tickets and tie-in merchandising without taking the creative risks that generate masterpieces. But everywhere else, from the legacy studios and their indie-dependent subsidiaries to the hothouse cottage industries of micro-releasing and self-distribution, the art of cinema is thriving. Earlier this year, when Manohla Dargis and I set out to compile a roster of promising filmmakers 40 and younger, we had no trouble finding candidates, only in winnowing them to a list of 20. But we were troubled by the lack of recognition many of these directors have found, and the difficulties they encounter as they try to make good on their promise. The movie business has always been rough, of course, but at present there seems to be a growing disjunction — a chasm, really — between the quality of the work being produced and the intensity of its reception."

2.

"When Fred Armisen was a kid he wrote me a letter and he had the best line: How come you get to Cannes and I get sent to the school psychiatrist? I wrote, Don’t worry, you’ll get there! I got sent to the shrink too. Just keep doing what you’re doing. What a great career he’s had. I’m so proud. And, yes, I used to write to Russ Meyers and Herschel Gordon Lewis. But, you know, don’t ever let your children write a letter to Dear Santa. Who reads those letters? Some pervert! They just go in a box somewhere and some pervert at the post office has your child’s home address and knows what they want. Don’t do it!"

3.

4.

"While the term “blockbuster” could, and often is, applied to any sort of big-budget, mass-marketed film, those films that promise and deliver on spectacle wear the term best. It’s fitting, since the term was originally applied to bombs capable of blowing up city blocks, that it should stay linked to films that often turn their focus toward explosions. And that’s the other way big movies have never been bigger: Overseas box office now plays a major role in whether films succeed or fail financially, and that means that blockbusters increasingly speak in the international language of BOOM. Hence a film like Now You See Me, which features a cast with international appeal and magic tricks enhanced by CGI beyond the possibilities of logic and physics. If were made even a decade ago, it might have been a modestly budgeted heist film about magicians with a gift for sleight of hand, and it would almost certainly have been better for it. In its current form, it may not be good, but anyone who sees it will go home thinking they’ve seen something."