robotnic’s most recent Quotables

I felt dumb and subdued. Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off, like a skater, into a large empty space, and pirouetted there, absently.

I'd woken up early and I took a long time getting ready to exist.

None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.

Before you talk, listen. Before you react, think. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try.

Karma is like 69 you get what you give.

A hard fall means a high bounce...if you're made of the right material.

Take refuge in the self, take refuge in the dharma, take refuge in nothing else.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

Sometimes I'm terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.

“Tell him yes,” she said. “Even if you are dying of fear, even if you are sorry later, because whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life if you say no.”

But this was nothing compared with the sales of the blandest and most disgusting thing of all, the Creme Egg. Between Christmas and Easter, Cadbury sells 350 million of these fondant-filled horrors. I won't eat them. Nobody I know eats them. But somebody obviously does, by the bucketful.

Writing, for me, has always been a way of not having a career.

Billed as the world’s first 3D sports movie, that third dimension is really just window dressing on a motorbiking doc that’d be exhilarating in only two. The Isle Of Man TT is pure cinema—an insane blur of leather and machines that claims several lives every year—and director Richard De Aragues shows the bikers in their fearless element...It all makes for a motorsports movie you don’t need to be a petrolhead to enjoy.

Whether you like motorcycle racing or not, Richard de Aragues’s debut is a must-see evocation of the event’s inherent dangers and the ‘balls to the wall’ bravery (or stupidity) of its adrenaline-seeking, carefree contenders. In the realm of the rousing sports doc, this truly excels.

The film is visually stunning, filled with more breathtaking shots than you can count: silently falling snow; clouds' moving shadows caressing a green mountainside; a bird singing on a single, bare branch; the cold white moon set against a midnight sky. It's pure poetry.

Made as well in the restrained tradition of Frederick Wiseman, "Sweetgrass" is intent on doing no more than observing, on having as unobtrusive a presence as possible in the world it is recording. But that world turns out to be as compelling as the circumstances under which the film came to be made.

Sergei Puskepalis (Sergei) and Grigory Dobrygin (Pavel) give powerful performances, but the real star is Mother Nature -- her fury and her beauty, which cinematographer Pavel Kostomarov breathtakingly captures with his hand-held camera.

Visually, it’s not ugly, but sundry shots of spectacular ice fields feel academically picturesque and impart a sense of prettiness not profundity. Characters, too, totter in arbitrary circles, their motivations entirely unfathomable. Their gradual descent into savagery is signposted by much anguished wailing and even a laughable shot of Dobrygin gnawing at some salted trout like a grizzly bear in a body warmer.

Visually, it’s not ugly, but sundry shots of spectacular ice fields feel academically picturesque and impart a sense of prettiness not profundity. Characters, too, totter in arbitrary circles, their motivations entirely unfathomable. Their gradual descent into savagery is signposted by much anguished wailing and even a laughable shot of Dobrygin gnawing at some salted trout like a grizzly bear in a body warmer.

Full of foot-to-the-floor action, bikini babes and gleaming hoods, Fast and Furious 5/ makes no attempt to adjust the formula. But why should it? Converts may be scarce, but fans will lap up its major-league mayhem. Oh, and stay for the end-credits cliffhanger…