"A visual genius working at the height of his powers. For emotional heft, this film can’t compete with Wong Kar Wai’s heartbreaking In the Mood for Love, but just try keeping The Grandmaster’s gorgeous imagery from being seared into your brain. The cinematography and choreography are exquisite. They’re just poetry. I was absolutely transfixed watching this film during the early stages of Kubo’s production cycle. After I picked my jaw off the floor I completely reconsidered all of Kubo’s action scenes. We had to step up our game. Wong Kar Wai had raised the bar to soaring, impossible new heights. The terrific filmmaker Zhang Yimou — who himself made two flawless action epics (Hero and House of Flying Daggers) — once said that every boy wants either a train set or to make a martial arts movie. I never had a train set. After seeing The Grandmaster, I have a feeling Wong Kar Wai didn’t either."

"I was just being honest. The most listened-to records in my collection, I'm just astounded at the extraordinary thing that they did. I'm from a generation of people who listen to music, or who listened, past tense, to music. I really wanted to belong to it, you know, you'd paint an album sleeve on the back of your coat to say this is who I am and what I listen to. And I was very happy throughout my teen years to be defined by what I was listening to. And I wanted the world to know about that, claiming a band as my own. I was a total fan when they did what I still consider to be the bravest thing that any band in rock music has done, which was after creating this amazing, successful commercial record that nevertheless is so incredibly creative and artistic, to then go further into the arts and completely disregard the fiscal side of what they had done with the success of The Colour Of Spring."

"In a glorious surge of deserved success in 1974, the very comprehensive lyric sheets accompanying Sparks albums prove that Ron Mael is clearly driven to tell, yet he answers the media by skillfil Quietism and by impersonating various walls. Ron Mael is an undoubted genius, and where else would a true genius live but in the catacombs of hell? Ron asks his younger brother Russell to sing the words - in chilling falsetto. Russell sings in what appear to be French italics, and has less facial hair that Josephine Baker. It is a scream, because the songs are screams. (...) Who on earth would write a pop song in such a way? A song about an arts and crafts competition where 'lovely Claudine Jones/has to come to push her quilt', but where Tracy Wise gets a prize. There is no category for this madness - except the category of madness, and Sparks are only let down by their name. At 14, I want to live with these people, to be - at last! - in the company of creatures of my own species"