"It’s difficult to watch The Great Dictator without thinking about how the world was about to be plunged into five years of war and horror, and it saturates everything with more wistful sadness than Chaplin probably could have imagined. It’s a comedy at the end of the world . . . this brief and desperate beam of optimism, laughing in the face of evil, just before everything went dark. These two Chaplin releases, as well as The Gold Rush and City Lights, are among the most amazing-looking Blu-rays I’ve seen. Could Criterion please do the same restoration work for Buster Keaton next?"

"It’s difficult to watch The Great Dictator without thinking about how the world was about to be plunged into five years of war and horror, and it saturates everything with more wistful sadness than Chaplin probably could have imagined. It’s a comedy at the end of the world . . . this brief and desperate beam of optimism, laughing in the face of evil, just before everything went dark. These two Chaplin releases, as well as The Gold Rush and City Lights, are among the most amazing-looking Blu-rays I’ve seen. Could Criterion please do the same restoration work for Buster Keaton next?"

"I went to a college called the Drama Center, where we had nine main philosophies and were trained in all of them, but I still remember Mamet: “Nothing will sway me, nothing will go without me, nothing will stop me achieving what I have sworn to achieve; the repetition of this will teach in life that action is better than inaction, bravery better than cowardice, truth better than lies. Without this you add to the loneliness of an audience’s life, you add to their sadness.” I still read his books, but it’s all in this compilation."