One thing that brings me great, great joy is reading the reviews of ‘Civil War’ and seeing the much deserved credit that Chris Evans is getting for his performance as Captain America.
Recently I made the mistake of opening a bundle of reviews that someone had sent me of a production from years and years ago, and someone had written a really lovely review except that it made a remark about the way I spoke: ‘A lot of people find her voice terribly irritating.’ Do they? I had no idea.
When we talk about novels, we don’t often talk about imagination. Why not? Does it seem too first grade? In reviews, you read about limpid prose, about the faithful reproduction of consciousness, about moral heft, but rarely about the power of pure, unadulterated imagination.
Most high courts in other nations do not have discretion, such as we enjoy, in selecting the cases that the high court reviews. Our court is virtually alone in the amount of discretion it has.
I’ve been arrested several times. I’ve been known to dress in ludicrous fashions. I’ve also built a career out of negative reviews.
When I wrote ‘Southern Baptist Sissies,’ that was the first time that I really ventured out into pure drama with themes where there was not one laugh sometimes. But I’ve always gravitated organically to blending tones and usually get good reviews about that. That’s what life is about.
At Knopf, we look at each book on a case-by-case basis… in some cases, we think a writer might get a boost from an endorsement by a fellow writer, but in other cases, a new book will be better served by other means, such as publicity and reviews.
I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.
There’s no artist in this world that doesn’t enjoy the dream that if they have bad reviews now, the story of Keats can redeem them, in their fantasy or imagination, in the future. I think Keats’ poem ‘Endymion’ is a really difficult poem, and I’m not surprised that a lot of people pulled it apart in a way.
We got some devastating reviews on Animal House at the start.
I hate bad reviews, so yeah, every now and then I think, ‘Boy I hope everybody really likes this and thinks this theme is good.’ You can’t help but do that. I think we all are, or at least I am, reduced to a schoolboy seeking approval.
Yelp is – I mean, Yelp’s not even good for looking up the restaurant’s phone number because, you know, on the site, they just want you to read their reviews and look at their ads. They don’t even actually want to give you the information about the restaurant or the menu.
Somehow, the whole idea of me writing art reviews was just too much of a complicated thought, but I liked art, and later on I just realized that it would be perhaps a pleasure, and so I decided to do it for ‘Art in America’ – a lot.
I’m still spending my working life trying to mine people’s souls and now they’re complimenting me in reviews on the amount of time I spend in the gym. On the definition of my triceps.
I give tremendous weight to my positive reviews and none whatsoever to my negative ones.
I’ve never had a movie that got great reviews. I’ve had movies that got different levels of good and bad reviews, but you can more or less count on plenty of bad reviews.
Every weekend from, like, 1974 to 1978, I’d trudge over to the Greenwich library, which gathered up almost every major newspaper in the country. I would sit there all day long and read and read and read the reviews. I remember being twelve or thirteen and writing to Judith Crist, Pauline Kael, and Roger Ebert.
I’ve read quite a few readers’ reviews of my book on Amazon, saying, ‘Ah, he criticises the free market, he advocates central planning.’ I don’t do that for a minute! But this is our black and white, dichotomous way of thinking – which has really been harmful.
I’ve had countless reviews sort that have made me cry. It’s funny, it doesn’t ever get better either; you can’t turn your ears off.
I’m shy, and I can hide behind my acting and discover the truth about myself because it’s cathartic in that way. But I tend not to read reviews.
Since I got into the movies, ‘Running Scared,’ that did $40 million. ‘Princess Bride,’ I got good reviews for the character Miracle Max. ‘Memories of Me’ didn’t do well. ‘Throw Mama from the Train’ did $70 million. ‘Harry and Sally’ did 95 or 96. ‘City Slickers’ did $120 million.
The idea of going into the property business and collecting rent four times a year and waiting for five-year rent reviews has limited appeal.
I like reading reviews. If they’re clearly hating on you, I try not to read that deeply. But if they really are trying to understand, it’s interesting.
I don’t do shows. I don’t have reviews. I’m not putting the clothes on every celebrity so that by the time they reach the store the customers are sick of seeing them.
I have turned off Google Alerts and don’t Google my name or my pen names. I don’t go on message boards. I don’t read my book reviews.
In my memoir, I admit that I’ve been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when ‘Passages’ was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out.
If you have too good a time writing hostile reviews, you’ll injure not only your sensibility but your soul.
I know that a ridiculous number of classic serials have been commissioned, and that reviews show a reaction against them. The critics seem fed up.
Some filmmakers make films to please themselves and a handful of critics, so they get 5-star reviews but their films don’t run at the box office. I make films for the masses.
Joshua Kirk, the YouTube kid with the glasses who looks directly into the camera – I really love his album reviews. He’s been doing it for years.
In the 1970s, a lot of critics didn’t understand video. I got a lot of bad reviews. But film-makers didn’t understand what we were doing, either. There were actual fistfights between film-makers and video-makers. I was witness to one.
It’s always good to get good reviews. I read my reviews. There are a lot of writers who don’t read their reviews at all. I read them; then I put them away because it’s not good to engage with them too much.
I do this for the sake of myself. It’s a selfish process. I don’t really have any expectations from anyone for your comments or your reviews or your previews.
I don’t read reviews or interviews or anything, just because I’m afraid; If I believed the good, then I’d believe the bad, and there will be bad.
I let the other reviewers eat the bad meals, so that I didn’t have to, and my wife and I went out only for the good stuff. And I wrote mostly positive reviews. Not only. But mostly. And, ooooh, it felt an awful lot better.
I’ve got beautiful reviews for all my books, and I’m very well thought of in the tiny circles that know me, but I’m really starving.
People always say that you shouldn’t read reviews at all, or if you do then believe both the good and the bad ones. I just choose to believe the ones that think I’m brilliant. The ones that don’t, well, I just don’t bother with them.
I never really think about what people are going to think of the movie afterwards. Or what people are going to call me. I just want to make a great project, and my focus is really all on that. And then I really don’t read reviews. Like, you know, go on comment boards or anything.
I don’t really make movies because I want to see my face on a billboard or because I want to get good reviews or have a big box office. That doesn’t really matter to me at all.
Musical theatre history is littered with bad reviews for now classic pieces.
I want the Times to give tough reviews. That’s partially why I read the Times.
The critics gave me bad reviews on every movie I made.
For instance, ‘The Sixth Sense’ had mediocre to bad reviews. Slowly, the audience pushed it and it received critical attention.
The market for religious apps is fiercely competitive; searching for ‘bible’ in the Apple App Store returns 5,185 results. But among all the choices, YouVersion’s Bible, funded by LifeChurch.tv of Edmond, Oklahoma, seems to be the chosen one, ranking at the top of the list and boasting more than 641,000 reviews.
I don’t read reviews, good or bad, just for my own sanity.
I do take things away from reading reviews. I think they keep you honest.
The fact is that you’re never gonna believe any of the reviews, because the movie is to you what it is to you. No one’s ever gonna sway you from what you feel about it.
I feel reviewers are tougher on comedies in general. They don’t take them seriously, and the ones that get great reviews are not necessarily the ones that I like.
I love my job, and I love books. I read anything, including cereal boxes. I care deeply about what people think of my books, and I memorize my reviews. I love to hear from my readers.
I’m not reading reviews and critics. I don’t care. I guess I’m still a little on my own planet.
I get the ‘Guardian’ delivered every day and read it very quickly. I like it for both the TV and theatre reviews and because it’s very accessible. At the weekend, I get the ‘Observer’ because I love the food supplement, Observer Food Monthly, and the style section. And I can’t resist the News of the World.
