"Taken together, Edward Yang’s two masterpieces run nearly seven hours. I would give almost anything for more of either. Mathematically structured and teeming with ideas, characters, wisdom, and feeling, they move with astonishing humanity through every big thing: love, family, alienation, technology, cinema, politics, globalism, history, regret, obsession, murder, sex, time, adolescence, and so much more. Despite their novelistic hugeness, Yang’s genius feels approachable rather than impossible. (As opposed to Hou Hsiao-hsien, for example.) This quality also inspires the tantalizing thought that, hey, I could do that. No, no I can’t. I really encourage listening to the wonderful commentaries on both: Edward Yang and critic Tony Rayns for Yi Yi, and, in an act of epic insight, Rayns solo for A Brighter Summer Day."

"Taken together, Edward Yang’s two masterpieces run nearly seven hours. I would give almost anything for more of either. Mathematically structured and teeming with ideas, characters, wisdom, and feeling, they move with astonishing humanity through every big thing: love, family, alienation, technology, cinema, politics, globalism, history, regret, obsession, murder, sex, time, adolescence, and so much more. Despite their novelistic hugeness, Yang’s genius feels approachable rather than impossible. (As opposed to Hou Hsiao-hsien, for example.) This quality also inspires the tantalizing thought that, hey, I could do that. No, no I can’t. I really encourage listening to the wonderful commentaries on both: Edward Yang and critic Tony Rayns for Yi Yi, and, in an act of epic insight, Rayns solo for A Brighter Summer Day."

"After my parents divorced, my dad bought me 10 random records for Christmas one year. This was the one I connected with the most. Some of the songs are quite hard-hitting – my favourite, All the Girls Love Alice, has this killer guitar riff and a dark subject matter, about a teenage lesbian who gets murdered. I'm just a little kid, eight or nine at the time, and I'm really grooving on the music but also trying to absorb some of the lyrics. I barely even know what sex is at the time and here's this weird lesbian murder intrigue. I was like, what the fuck's going on man? I was totally in. Elton John is more than just Candle in the Wind."

"My second favorite film, I would probably say my most favorite documentary of all time, is a film called Brother’s Keeper by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. Those are the same guys who did Paradise Lost and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Brother’s Keeper is this amazing film about a brother who was murdered, and it’s this omniscient journey as the murder gets uncovered and the investigation is happening. You know, they take one of the brothers to court, and the story just unfolds in front of you in a way that’s so twisted and bizarre and weird. This, for me, represents what a great documentary does. It just kind of unfolds in front of you in a way you can’t expect."