Elvis Mitchell Quotes

Ice Cube went straight outta Compton to hearing, 'Are we there yet?' Eddie Murphy blew up striding across the stage in a red leather ensemble that would have made Elvis Presley chuckle, yet is probably best known to anyone born in the 21st century as the overly chatty donkey from 'Shrek.'

- Elvis Mitchell

What makes 'Pootie Tang' the motion picture enjoyable is its no-brow ambitions; it's a joke action film. It slides through enough African-American pop culture signifiers to raise laughs out of those who will appreciate the references; it revels in more cheese per square inch than a soul food diner.

- Elvis Mitchell

Whom do you feel sorrier for: the cast of 'Boat Trip' or their children? Remember, kids can be very cruel - and this latest 'get Cuba Gooding Jr. career counseling fast' project is a misfire from beginning to end.

- Elvis Mitchell

Tina Fey, a performer and head writer for 'Saturday Night Live,' has deftly adapted Rosalind Wiseman's nonfiction dissection of teenage girl societal interaction, 'Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence.'

- Elvis Mitchell

Given how unflinching his productions have been, the 44-year-old McQueen is remarkably gentle and thoughtful - so much so that he will request a moment to consider a question, and turn it around in his head to get the shape and weight of it, before answering, occasionally with an excited rush of words in response.

- Elvis Mitchell

One of the funniest things about Mr. Kaufman is that all of his filmed scripts - 'Being John Malkovich,' 'Human Nature,' 'Adaptation' and now 'Sunshine' - sound like titles from REM's 'Reckoning.'

- Elvis Mitchell

'Old School' is so breezy it could be a late-night talk show, especially when Craig Kilborn, of 'The Late Late Show,' sidles into camera range as a particularly loathsome competitor to Mitch.

- Elvis Mitchell

The idea of Seth Rogen as the Green Hornet so inflaming the fanboy community is amusing, since that group's 20/50 vision also had it tsking its disapproval about Michael Keaton as Batman and Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.

- Elvis Mitchell

Often, when Jim Carrey plays it straight, all of the vitality is drained from his face; he looks like a root-canal patient trying out a pleasant expression for his oral surgeon.

- Elvis Mitchell

I saw Berry in concert a couple of times in the late '70s - and like almost every North American male of a certain age, I went because a friend was hired by Berry that very day to be part of the legend's backup band.

- Elvis Mitchell

Can you sue yourself for plagiarism? If so, then 'Old School' has presented Ivan Reitman with a case.

- Elvis Mitchell

There's a great deal of echoing going on in 'Old School.' Mr. Piven, who played the upstart outsider in the 1994 campus comedy 'PCU,' has crossed over into playing the stiff martinet.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Pootie Tang' may be raw and slovenly - hey, it often is raw and slovenly - but it succeeds as a laugh getter because of the spot-on satirical notes. You might say that the movie walks it like it talks it; I'm not sure what Pootie would say.

- Elvis Mitchell

Since most of 'Mean Girls' consists of the outsider Cady observing the tribal rites of her new setting and laying it all out in narration, this movie is just like home for the meticulous and ruthless deadpan that Ms. Fey has perfected for the satirical 'S.N.L.' newscast in which she and Jimmy Fallon are the anchors.

- Elvis Mitchell

The action comedy 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl' raises one of the most overlooked and important cinematic questions of our time: Can a movie maintain the dramatic integrity of a theme park ride?

- Elvis Mitchell

If a movie requires the lead actor to spend a good chunk of his onscreen time talking to himself, and Popeye is unavailable because of contractual disputes, it's hard to do better than Johnny Depp.

- Elvis Mitchell

The influence of John Hughes is fully felt in the melodrama 'Donnie Darko.' This first film written and directed by Richard Kelly is a wobbly cannonball of a movie that tries to go Mr. Hughes one better; it's like a Hughes version of a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

- Elvis Mitchell

In 'Training Day,' Mr. Washington's dry-ice grandeur - the predator's reflexes contrasting with a pensive mouth - deserves regard, and his powerhouse virtuosity will almost guarantee him an Oscar nomination.

- Elvis Mitchell

The director Sofia Coppola's new comic melodrama, 'Lost in Translation,' thoroughly and touchingly connects the dots between three standards of yearning in movies: David Lean's 'Brief Encounter,' Richard Linklater's 'Before Sunrise' and Wong Kar-wai's 'In the Mood for Love.'

- Elvis Mitchell

We do want to be diverted and be interested and be provoked by popular culture - by art, if we're lucky. And it's amazing how often people have lost sight of this.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Ali' offers stunning re-creations of bouts Ali fought. In the second Liston fight, the auditorium is underlighted and clouded with fetid cigar smoke, which was why the famous picture of a snarling Ali standing over Liston was so dramatic; indoor arenas are now bright enough to be spotted from Alpha Centauri.

- Elvis Mitchell

The documentary 'Certifiably Jonathan' has engrossing moments in it. How can it not? It's got a great subject - the extraordinarily voluble comedian Jonathan Winters, whose constant rush of words can be like a blizzard: beautiful, maddening, exhausting, and finally beautiful again. But it's not a great film.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Certifiably Jonathan' contrives crises for its subject - a bid to get his paintings into MOMA, among others.

- Elvis Mitchell

'The Third Man,' directed by Carol Reed and written by Graham Greene, is, quite simply, one of the finest movies ever made.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Infernal Affairs' uses a vibrating terseness usually found in the writer and director Michael Mann's work. Thematically, this film deploys the techniques Mr. Mann brought to bear on 'Heat,' right down to using a similar cold-blooded electronic score.

- Elvis Mitchell

Inarritu's films focus on the repercussions of a single act that draws people together and simultaneously throws their lives into chaos.

- Elvis Mitchell

When a director shifts gears as often as does Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the man behind the emotionally rich debut film 'Amores Perros,' you may wonder if he knows what he wants.

- Elvis Mitchell

Theron says that she was intrigued by the psychological demands of the material in playing the complicated 'Queen Ravenna', and Stewart's performance as 'Snow White', the fairest of them all, in her first action-heroine role, kept her literally in constant motion.

- Elvis Mitchell

I'm honored to be asked by Stephanie Allain - whom I've long admired - to add to the scope of my programming purview at Film Independent. I salute David Ansen for his work with the festival and look forward to continuing to follow his example.

- Elvis Mitchell

It would be hard to make a movie worse than the first 'Ocean's Eleven,' the 1960 Lewis Milestone film.

- Elvis Mitchell

Music is a big part of the director's life; Ms. Coppola's previous feature, a screen adaptation of 'The Virgin Suicides,' was informed more substantially by the score by the group Air than by the narrative.

- Elvis Mitchell

The title 'Spirited Away' could refer to what Disney has done on a corporate level to the revered Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki's epic and marvelous new anime fantasy.

- Elvis Mitchell

It's an oddity that will be avoided by millions of people, this new 'Pinocchio.' Osama bin Laden could attend a showing in Times Square and be confident of remaining hidden.

- Elvis Mitchell

Natalie Portman's approach to acting demands that she wears her heart on her sleeve so explicitly, the heart becomes the whole garment - a crimson chemise with streaks of blue veins running across it.

- Elvis Mitchell

Miramax seems to be showing the same faith in Roberto Benigni's 'Pinocchio' that the Republican Party showed in Trent Lott; the live-action version of Carlo Collodi's fairy tale about the wooden puppet whose only ambition was to be a real live boy was sneaked into theaters Christmas Day.

- Elvis Mitchell

For those not so taken by the star power, this new 'Ocean's Eleven' is the equivalent of a domineering team you can't stand that enters the Super Bowl. Even if you don't like the players, the odds are so good that it's tough to bet against them.

- Elvis Mitchell

'8 Mile' could do without an unnecessary class swipe. In a final throwdown, Rabbit clowns a competitor by revealing that the guy went to suburban Detroit Cranbrook, one of the finest private schools in the country.

- Elvis Mitchell

Real-life conduct aside, LaBeouf, a Los Angeles native, has been working steadily as an actor since he was 12 years old.

- Elvis Mitchell

I've enjoyed living in New York for the last 10 years, where there's a real film culture, with the Film Forum and Lincoln Center.

- Elvis Mitchell

The pleasantly crude 'Hall Pass' reminds us of what's been missing from movies: Those squirm-inducing moments in comedy that produce enough discomfort that, at points, what we're watching is half a heartbeat away from a horror film.

- Elvis Mitchell

The road back from degradation begins with self-awareness - and sometimes, as in 'Phone Booth,' change can begin with a single phone call.

- Elvis Mitchell

Adapted from the novel by L. Ron Hubbard, who cranked out sci-fi pulp by the cubic ton, 'Battlefield Earth' has the musty feel of the days when the genre's highlight was Flash Gordon.

- Elvis Mitchell

Spending time with Mexican-born writer and director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, you'd never guess that he's the filmmaker behind a series of movies known as the 'Death Trilogy.' The way he dotes on his children and talks about his wife makes it clear that he has a crackling passion for life.

- Elvis Mitchell

For years, Ono's work - musical and otherwise - was, in large part, dismissed and derided; at best, it was often misunderstood.

- Elvis Mitchell

Establishing mood through pictorial means is the director Ridley Scott's most notable talent. There may be no working director more accomplished at wringing texture out of the color blue than the prodigious and now prolific Mr. Scott; you'd swear that with his dazzling washes of blues and sand tones, he was inventing additional hues on the spot.

- Elvis Mitchell

I dress well. I travel; I seem to be relatively glamorous for a film guy - which, to me, is like being the fastest midget in the circus.

- Elvis Mitchell

It is evident that the grip of 'The Return of the King' on Mr. Jackson is not unlike the grasp the One Ring exerts over Frodo: it's tough for him to let go, which is why the picture feels as if it has an excess of endings. But he can be forgiven. Why not allow him one last extra bow?

- Elvis Mitchell

You can't ignore the Asian and Hispanic populations in L.A. We can let audiences know independent film is not just about white men.

- Elvis Mitchell

The world may not be ready yet for the film equivalent of books on tape, but this peculiar phenomenon has arrived in the form of the film adaptation of J. K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.'

- Elvis Mitchell

Inarritu's own nomination for Best Director for 'Babel' was the first such honor for a Mexican director.

- Elvis Mitchell

In 'Requiem for a Dream,' the director Darren Aronofsky's adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s lower-depths novel, Jared Leto has lost so much weight, he looks like another person altogether.

- Elvis Mitchell

His work isn't all glower. Even though he hasn't smiled in a movie since the underrated 'Proof' in the early 1990s, Mr. Crowe is given to a hurt swallow when he's uncomfortable and to a look of suffering in his eyes.

- Elvis Mitchell

In 'Windtalkers,' the director John Woo is meticulous in melding his own intimate style into the cliches of a large-scale war movie, paying homage to all the tired conventions of the genre. But it's an honor that these cliches don't deserve.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Eight-Legged Freaks' runs out of gas scarily fast - its one-joke premise lends itself more to a short than a feature.

- Elvis Mitchell

When an actor commits himself to a role as fully as Russell Crowe does in the grandiose and silly 'Gladiator,' you may ask yourself why and at the same time thank him for his absorption in the part.

- Elvis Mitchell

The story of a proud Roman soldier who is sold into slavery and must fight his way back to freedom, 'Gladiator' suggests what would happen if someone made a movie of the imminent extreme-football league and shot it as if it were a Chanel commercial.

- Elvis Mitchell

The battle scenes in 'Gladiator' don't have the exultant lift of Hong Kong period-action pictures like the 'Once Upon a Time in China' series, where the fights have the eye-popping panache of dance sequences from a musical.

- Elvis Mitchell

A lot of the time, you see all this ambition from these black actors, and it's just pouring off the screen. Because they don't often get a chance to work, and when they do, they don't usually get a chance to work with other black people.

- Elvis Mitchell

One of a handful of films made in Detroit, '8 Mile' doesn't feature the Motown renaissance that Mayor Coleman A. Young dreamed of in the 1970s. Instead, it's the beaten-down city: 8 Mile refers to the line of demarcation between Detroit and suburban, mostly white Oakland County.

- Elvis Mitchell

People can be incredibly proprietary about Superman. They think that the character belongs to them.

- Elvis Mitchell

What we're most aware of in 'Eight-Legged Freaks' is how similar it is to other movies, a recombinant mutated species itself, the product of the crossbreeding of the suffering-from-gigantism movies of the 1950s and the 1990 B-picture classic 'Tremors.'

- Elvis Mitchell

The stoic drama 'A Somewhat Gentle Man' is photographed in a palate of steel gray tones that match Stellan Skarsgard's complexion. It's a low-blood-pressure version of the kind of thing James M. Cain used to do in his sleep, and its filmmaking accomplishment is as minimalist as its narrative ambition is minimal.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Va Savoir' is a lovable comedy about love that looks upon life as drama and uses the world of the theater as a staging device.

- Elvis Mitchell

When Bruce Lee gets his cameo in 'The Green Hornet' - as one of the drawings in Kato's notebook - it clarifies what the film is: an unrealized sketch. A sketch can afford to allude to a point of view. Moviemakers need to show their point of view, something this shrug of a movie never gets around to doing.

- Elvis Mitchell

One of the best things Gwyneth Paltrow has done in years was her mesmerized, good-sport cameo in a 'Pootie' sketch, when she was melted over him like butter on an English muffin.

- Elvis Mitchell

I thought that, as a black audience member, I would like to see something that reflected an experience that's not normally exhibited in documentaries, or is so much about black people as victims in this country, and black people not taking control of their own lives and their own destinies.

- Elvis Mitchell

Given the knee-jerk patriotism of recent war movies, it's discouraging to see 'Windtalkers' evade pertinent facts that could have recast the doubled-edged issues of racism and loyalty and made them relevant to contemporary times.

- Elvis Mitchell

Muhammad Ali inside the ring and Muhammad Ali outside the ring were totally different men; his abrasive, magnetic daring and infectious self-love outside the ring galvanized the world and distracted many from his sniper's precision. He was a heavyweight with the fluttering gracefulness of a middleweight.

- Elvis Mitchell

Though narrative cohesion isn't the strength of 'Mean Girls,' which works better from scene to scene than as a whole, the intelligence shines in its understanding of contradictions, keeping a comic distance from the emotional investment of teenagers that defined 'Ridgemont High' and later the adolescent angst movies of John Hughes.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Boat Trip' is more tiresome and dumb than actually bad.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Never Die Alone' is primarily a riveting genre film that neatly exhibits the director's growing assurance - Donald Goines would be proud.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Ali' is a breakthrough for its director, Michael Mann. The film, based on the life of Muhammad Ali, is Mr. Mann's first movie with feeling; his overwhelming love of its subject will turn audiences into exuberant, thrilled fight crowds.

- Elvis Mitchell

The Comedy of Emasculation that Judd Apatow and his disciples have made into a separate economy was invented by the Farrelly brothers, 'Kingpin' being the strongest version of that.

- Elvis Mitchell

It's true that as Mr. Chan makes more American movies - and gets older - we will never again see the kind of fistfight choreography that the star would devote four months to shoot.

- Elvis Mitchell

In 2013, when it turned out that the plot of LaBeouf's short film 'HowardCantour.com' (2012) had been purloined from graphic novelist Daniel Clowes's 2007 comic 'Justin M. Damiano', the actor-director responded with a series of tweet apologies that also appeared to be shoplifted.

- Elvis Mitchell

A stand-up comedian who's assaultive and decent and has managed a career that has spanned over five decades deserves a documentary.

- Elvis Mitchell

Before he became 'a working actor,' as he now proudly calls himself, Jamie Dornan initially caught the public's attention as a model - you may remember him from those greasy underwear ads with Eva Mendes, among many others.

- Elvis Mitchell

Some people bring their work home with them. You might suppose that Sid Mashburn is one of those guys - the man was born with a name so brand-ready he basically had to become an entrepreneur.

- Elvis Mitchell

Justin Lin, the writer and director of the teenage-wasteland drama 'Better Luck Tomorrow,' a shrewdly tense piece of storytelling, recognizes that sometimes it's good for a filmmaker to stir up trouble.

- Elvis Mitchell

We want to see ourselves - but differently. We want to see these dream versions of ourselves. We want to be surprised; we want to be entertained. I think primarily, especially in this country, we ask that movies entertain us, which seems to be something they're less and less likely to do on a continual basis.

- Elvis Mitchell

It's so funny: whenever there's a new technology introduced, there's always this fear it's going to end entertainment as we know it. When records came around, they were going to be the end of live music. Nobody would ever want to go see live music again.

- Elvis Mitchell

Do you remember where you were when Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died?

- Elvis Mitchell

It is fun to see a comedy in which every single joke hasn't been packed into the trailer.

- Elvis Mitchell

With his compulsively slamming lyrics and king-of-the-world delivery, DMX intuitively echoes the existentialism of the projects of the novelist Donald Goines.

- Elvis Mitchell

Scene by scene, you can't help being impressed by 'Mean Girls;' it's like a group of sketches linked by a theme, with some playing much better than others.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Man is an endangered species,' announces one of the titles at the beginning of the sci-fi lump 'Battlefield Earth.' And after about 20 minutes of this amateurish picture, extinction doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

- Elvis Mitchell

I want to expand and not ignore the late 20th-century additions to filmed entertainment.

- Elvis Mitchell

Political perspective and the Cannes festival are linked almost as inextricably as fast-food consumption and detrimental effects on health.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Black Hawk Down' has such distinctive visual aplomb that its jingoism starts to feel like part of its atmosphere.

- Elvis Mitchell

Ali was the African-American who exulted in saying exactly what he was capable of, and the bouncing-boy braggadocio of hip-hop is impossible to imagine without him. So it makes sense that one of his spiritual children, the sunny-dispositioned rapper turned actor Will Smith, would play him.

- Elvis Mitchell

The funniest thing in the world to me is the idea of a white guy in his thirties going, 'Wait - I'm going to go into hip-hop.'

- Elvis Mitchell

Mr. Miyazaki's specialty is taking a primal wish of kids, transporting them to a fantasyland, and then marooning them there. No one else conjures the phantasmagoric and shifting morality of dreams - that fascinating and frightening aspect of having something that seems to represent good become evil - in the way this master Japanese animator does.

- Elvis Mitchell

There are storytelling traditions that come from Africa that are unique from anywhere else.

- Elvis Mitchell

The Wachowskis' use of space rivals that of musical directors like Gene Kelly and Mark Sandrich.

- Elvis Mitchell

The director Steve McQueen has found a way to constantly include the element of surprise in his work, both as an artist and as a filmmaker.

- Elvis Mitchell

It may be a bit early to make such judgments, but 'Battlefield Earth' may well turn out to be the worst movie of this century.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Plan Nine From Outer Space' for a new generation, 'Battlefield Earth' is set in the year 3000, after the beings from the planet Psychlo have conquered our planet in only nine minutes.

- Elvis Mitchell

Sean Penn has never become the lighter, laughing guy.

- Elvis Mitchell

If you start off as a fearsome figure in pop culture, it's almost axiomatic that at some point, years under the lights softens you into a cuddly family figure.

- Elvis Mitchell

It's true that a smile can take years off a person - not that such a thing matters in Yoko Ono's case.

- Elvis Mitchell

That's a part of success: figuring out what success means to you.

- Elvis Mitchell

The film's star, Eminem, doesn't appear to have a great deal of range, but he can play himself. Even though the protagonist is named Jimmy Smith, the thoughtful '8 Mile' is a raw version of the rapper's own story.

- Elvis Mitchell

Berry was a transitional and, to my mind, revolutionary black figure who had to find a place for the rage that the crucible of racism created.

- Elvis Mitchell

Each country has its own way of communicating a narrative and, through that, expressing family experiences in emotional stories.

- Elvis Mitchell

A little of the sketch character Pootie Tang went a long way on HBO's now late, probably soon to be lamented 'Chris Rock Show.' So it's surprising how much fun the character's film debut, 'Pootie Tang,' is.

- Elvis Mitchell

Just the idea of seeing a type of narrative we've not seen before is a chance to be surprised.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Ravenna' is, in many ways, the ultimate example of how a woman's perception of herself can lead to this horrible road being taken.

- Elvis Mitchell

The kind of filmmaking excitement that director Peter Weir brings to movies is bone deep.

- Elvis Mitchell

No actor has made a career of exerting determination to the extent that Matt Damon has. In the 'Bourne' movies, he burned himself down to a central nervous system - his focus fried away unnecessary calories.

- Elvis Mitchell

My parents are from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and I feel like it's an old Southern thing where people say that, as a kid, you can be an astronaut or a ballerina or a singer, but as a grown person, you need to go and get a job.

- Elvis Mitchell

Though finally overwhelmed by a preening lassitude, 'Hotel' is never less than fascinating, breaking into multiscreen scenarios like Mr. Figgis's 2000 experiment, 'Timecode.'

- Elvis Mitchell

Performance art is really more of a command than an invitation.

- Elvis Mitchell

In period films, it always helps to have someone built to carry a sword, and Channing Tatum clearly hasn't missed a workout for the past two years, so he fits the bill in that regard.

- Elvis Mitchell

The mission of '8 Mile' is essentially to garner sympathy for a white rapper involved in an old-school shootout - a rap contest. This may be the final frontier for pop, more unbelievable than the prospect of launching a member of 'N Sync into orbit.

- Elvis Mitchell

The picture is being promoted as Disney's 'Spirited Away,' although seeing just 10 minutes of this English version of a hugely popular Japanese film will quickly disabuse any discerning viewer of the notion that it is a Disney creation.

- Elvis Mitchell

My first paying job in Los Angeles was taking tickets at the Bing under Ron Haver.

- Elvis Mitchell

Selling tickets at the Bing Theater at LACMA was my first job in L.A.

- Elvis Mitchell

Tarantino thinks the Bing is a great room for comedy.

- Elvis Mitchell

It's more dangerous to be a friend or relative of Jackie Chan in the star's movies than it is to play the third yeoman on a 'Star Trek' episode.

- Elvis Mitchell

In 'The Adjustment Bureau,' Damon shows movie-star concentration as David Norris, a politician whose world ambitions hit a pothole when his angry streak becomes public.

- Elvis Mitchell

If Mr. Chan ever makes another movie like 'The Tuxedo,' it's American audiences that will see him in court. With 'Shanghai Knights,' he has come through with one of his best. This time, it's personable.

- Elvis Mitchell

One thing that I've noticed about big families is that they usually break down into two camps: the talkers and the watchers.

- Elvis Mitchell

If somebody wants to attack my work, that's one thing - that, I'll respond to.

- Elvis Mitchell

'Black Hawk Down' wants to be about something, and in the midst of the meticulously staged gunfire, the picture seems to choose futility arbitrarily.

- Elvis Mitchell

Who would ever have thought that Robert Ludlum would have become the father of modern action cinema?

- Elvis Mitchell

I love the Museum of the Moving Image, and I like the idea of bringing artifacts of the cinema into a museum.

- Elvis Mitchell

Like his countryman, Kiefer Sutherland, Seth Rogen has a voice that's 10 years older than he is - a combination of world-weariness and exuberance, an instrument that he's mastered for specific comic shadings.

- Elvis Mitchell

I think there are some people who have this thing where, from the very beginning, some part of them rejects convention.

- Elvis Mitchell

Duncan Jones has skills; he's an architect of emotional dislocation.

- Elvis Mitchell

Watching daring, high-tech criminals in action, I have the same thought that probably occurs to other moviegoers: if these guys just held on to some of the money they spend on equipment, they wouldn't have to turn to a life of crime.

- Elvis Mitchell

Mike Mignola's 'Hellboy' comics have a drizzly, musty gothic ambience - the same fetid air that H. P. Lovecraft circulated in his fiction.

- Elvis Mitchell

The Ebert thing just didn't work out. We just couldn't, like, come to an agreement. And 'Movieline', they obviously didn't want me, because they fired me.

- Elvis Mitchell

I spend most of my life not wanting to be found, and actually, I'm pretty good at it.

- Elvis Mitchell

I've been cheered by the reaction to what I've done with Film Independent at LACMA and the organizational support I've received in pursuing it.

- Elvis Mitchell

You know what? As a black person, you see so much racism. Films are no different than the government, politics - it's everywhere. It's not exclusively film. It's infuriating to see it in film. But my being in film changes things.

- Elvis Mitchell

Stewart's interest in serious acting gives her something in common with Theron - and, like Theron, some of her most provocative work has come through working with women.

- Elvis Mitchell

In the early '60s, it was still a fairly subversive thing, though, to say that you should take a painting, cut it, set it on fire, step on it, hammer nails into it.

- Elvis Mitchell

LACMA has the imprimatur of art, and that's a big leg up.

- Elvis Mitchell

My style icon has always been Sidney Poitier.

- Elvis Mitchell

In his very first film, Mr. Gonzalez Inarritu makes the kind of journey some directors don't - or can't - travel in an entire career.

- Elvis Mitchell

Probably the worst thing that ever happened to the movies was the megahit.

- Elvis Mitchell