An artist is usually responsible only for the creation of a particular art. It’s up to the critics to label it.
If my film doesn’t make money, it means people didn’t go watch it. So it doesn’t matter then that the critics loved it.
The only thing that surprised me about ‘Lincoln’ is that most of the critics who reviewed the film seem not to have grasped what should have been apparent right from the start, which is that ‘Lincoln’ is at bottom a play with pictures, not a screenplay.
If critics find my songs monotonous, then I also find their opinion monotonous.
Just like I have my critics, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has critics, and I was one of the biggest ‘Hey man, you’re never here’ guys around, but not anymore. He’s completely committed to WWE.
I’m not worried about what the critics say, or how they feel I should go with my career.
I attempt to write a good novel. Whether it is literature or not is something that will be decided by the ages, not by me and not by a pack of critics around the globe.
After all, one knows one’s weak points so well, that it’s rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
Critics in particular treat CGI as a virus that’s infecting film.
Obviously we’re all our own biggest critics.
It’s not the journalists; it’s the critics that I can’t understand. I’ve never understood what kind of a person would want to criticize someone else’s work.
If the awards buzz is happening, and it’s coming from critics and people in the business and all of that, that’s only more good news.
Critics at their best are independent voices; people take seriously their responsibility to see as many things as they can see, put them in the widest possible perspective, educate their readers. I really do think of myself as a teacher.
Critics are critics: their job is to find things wrong with people.
You can’t expect critics to appreciate all kinds of cinema.
When I did my first Hindi film, ‘Sargam,’ I had to play a dumb girl. Critics went to town saying that since I was a south Indian and didn’t know how to speak Hindi, producers of the movie decided to make me play dumb.
There are many critics who think the megachurches thrive on people who enjoy dramatic Sunday services with fine music but don’t wish to become very ‘religious’ on a day-to-day basis – that the megachurch appeal is a mile wide and an inch deep.
A film cannot make it into the culture without the support of critics.
Critics matter to me a lot.
I may have got a little carried away and many critics found fault with some aspects of the film, but as a coming of age film of a character, ‘Vaaranam Ayiram’ worked with the audience.
You know, if I started worrying about what the critics think, I’d never make another comedy. You couldn’t pick a less funny group than critics – you couldn’t find a more bitter group of people!
Arizona’s law makes what is already a federal offense – being in the country illegally – a state offense. Some critics seem not to understand Arizona’s right to assert concurrent jurisdiction.
Critics matter to me.
During my military service, I performed a sketch in which I played a flea called Max. So when critics kept misspelling my name, I decided to change it and thought, ‘Ah! Max!’
When my time on earth is gone, and my activities here are passed, I want they bury me upside down, and my critics can kiss my ass!
Critics are entitled to have an opinion, but how can they judge how comfortable a building is? No critic is smart enough to judge how a building will perform over time.
There are always going to be critics. But I have got to go out there and do my job.
All the London critics, including Kenneth Tynan and Harold Hobson, came down to Bristol to see ‘The Crucible’.
Critics have a job to do. They do not criticise you without reason.
In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read.
The great mystery to me is how restaurant critics think they can get away with doing their job without anybody noticing who they are.
American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.
The Eagles and the critics were not the best of friends.
I can’t name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I’m told there are a few hidden away at universities, but they don’t print them in ‘The New York Times.’
Critics do their job, and I take their criticism seriously.
This is not Tolstoy. I don’t want to know what critics and professors think of what I’m writing. It might hurt my feelings.
Critics and criticism are part of the game and I’ve not been affected by it.
My friends, family and colleagues will be biased towards anything I do, like I would be towards them. But fans, especially on social media, are honest and are really good critics of my work, so I keep them close and listen as much as I can to get better and better.
The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics – the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.
Critics never rate any blockbuster well.
Say what you will about President Trump’s tone, tactics or tweeting, but even his most strident critics admit he’s at his best when on the offensive.
I have been in a lot of movies, but none of them are critics’ darlings, you might say.
These critics with the illusions they’ve created about artists – it’s like idol worship. They only like people when they’re on their way up… I cannot be on the way up again.
I don’t care about the critics.
Critics might contend that putting former private-sector CEOs in the president’s Cabinet places the fox in the henhouse. But it’s unlikely such executives would expose themselves to the headaches if they weren’t genuinely motivated by the call to service.
I don’t care about the critics. I took a lot of nonsense. I got stuck with silly labels like ‘White Hope.’ What about other guys like Tex Cobb – they never had those labels?
What’s better than being able to entertain people? When you receive love from the public, it doesn’t matter what the film circuit or critics say.
When ‘Destroyer’ was first released, we got a strong backlash from our hardcore fans. After six months, the album was dead in the water. The critics didn’t think much of it, either.
Of course, I also hear from critics who detest what I do, and while sometimes I feel rather proud of having made various the loathsome people or groups angry, at other times I wonder why I put up with such grief.
In fact, many rock critics look askance at explicitly political lyrics, which I think is pretty stupid, without denying that some political lyrics are also pretty stupid.
When I’m writing, I am lost in my book. Except family and close friends, I don’t care about what critics, publishers or readers might think.
Most students of Kissinger find it hard to say anything about Kissinger that isn’t about the man himself. He is such an outsize figure that he eclipses his own context, leading his many biographers, critics, and admirers to focus nearly exclusively on the quirks of his personality or his moral failings.
I don’t have it in for critics, and I never have.
Critics have their purposes, and they’re supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.
The critics didn’t like it at all. They felt it was crude and violent without meaning, and they dumped on it. ‘Point Blank’ marked a shift in movie-making, and they weren’t ready for it. However, I think those were the last negative words ever said about it.
I’m not looking for a legacy, and you’ll never shut up the critics. I’ve been around 50 years. When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies – and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.
I’m just blessed. To be recognized by critics – that’s been fun, that’s been nice them showing love.
So how critics will perceive your film or your work, or whether your movie is going to make $100 million at the box office, or whether you are going to be winning any awards – well, you have no control over that.
The critics – how come you never see any of them on TV?
What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.
When ‘Carmen’ premiered in 1875, it was panned by the critics. It survived 45 performances. It was called a musical and moral outrage. After Bizet died, at age 37, ‘Carmen’ became wildly popular. If you believe in your creation, and the rest of the world is laughing or yelling ‘Boo,’ don’t give up.
Claudia Rankine’s book-length poem ‘Citizen’ was nominated for National Book Critics Circle awards in the categories of poetry and criticism. It is one of the most devastating takes on American culture I have read in a long time, laying bare the stakes of being black in a country long ambivalent about our presence here.
I got to train with some of the best and have critics like Oscar de la Renta and Calvin Klein. As a student under Calvin Klein, my project was to make a coat, and then years later, I was hired at Calvin, by Calvin, to design coats for him. It came full circle!
I don’t write for publishers, certainly not for critics, and not for readers, But I am delighted that so many people have found my books enjoyable and want to continue to read them.
