Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If life is going well, I watch quality things like period dramas and 'The Blue Planet.' But other times, I'll trawl through anything Freeview has to offer. I do believe TV can ruin your mind, but it can also be a really good friend.
Two of my dramas, 'Unforgotten' and 'River,' were airing at the same time, and Dad had read about my 'success' in a newspaper - he thought it was brilliant. I was thinking, 'Does this mean I'm going to be put in a box for a bit now?'
The idea of science fiction, mythology, and creating a world is my favourite thing. I do love the reality of dramas and playing that, but being able to start from scratch, to completely build the character and this world, I love that.
Few dramas in American political history remain more riveting than that of Nixon's exit and Mr. Ford's reaction, at first halting and then decisive, to the looming possibility of a former president on criminal trial for months on end.
I really like coming-of-age dramas. It's probably the most intense period in anyone's life, those years before you become an adult. Dramatically, there's so much to explore there. And it's nice to be around young talent coming through.
I feel very blessed in my career to have been able to bounce back and forth between different things, television and film, comedies and some dramas, but I am, um, as long as the script inspires me and there good people, that's it. I'm in.
I think the sheer hell of trying to get a film made; I don't know if it would ultimately be worth it. The sort of format that I have, these TV things, sit somewhere between documentaries and reality shows and entertainment shows and dramas.
With action movies, that's just fun stuff for me. That's me being a kid again. Same with 'The Best of Me' and these romantic dramas. It's such a freedom from reality and social constructions. You get to just have fun and play and be in a movie.
I worked on dramas before, I love sinking my teeth into something dramatic or a period piece, but there's something so fun about doing a comedy. When you go to set and your only job is to make people laugh, there's an unbelievable energy on set.
I think what you call 'metropolitan America' - as in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles - I think there's more awareness of the atypical, while in more traditional Britain, there's the kitchen-sink dramas and thrillers. It's more formulaic.
I was trained classically, and that's something that I want to do, but I do want to say that right now it's a good market for female comedians, and I want to explore that right now. I really do want to do dramas and meatier roles, especially film.
I've had enough of the bleak headlines and divisive politics, dark TV dramas and hate-filled social media. I'm embracing a new movement with a slightly ridiculous name and a single mission, to make the world a better place. It's called 'hopepunk'.
I always have to get my U.K. fix, and 'Downton Abbey' is definitely that. I absolutely love period dramas, but this one is particularly appealing - following the ins and outs of aristocracy as well as the interaction between the rich and the poor.
I've done a show at the Largo Theater called The 'Thrilling Adventure Hour.' We read, like, radio teleplays. It's a send-up of radio dramas from the '30s and '40s. We just did a Kickstarter for that so that we can do a web series and a concert film.
In most espionage novels, the characters risk their lives trying to save somebody or while protecting a nation from some threat. In 'The Travelers,' that's not what's going on. I used espionage as a device to heighten the characters' personal dramas.
Stories about the ongoing dramas in our lives as we age are not being told because women find it difficult to be honest about what's going on - about, for example, our heightened sexuality as we age or about living in a society that only values youth.
My heroes are Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman. Those are the two actors that both do comedies and dramas, seamlessly. Also John C. Reilly and Philip Seymour Hoffman. They're all just great actors, neither comedic nor dramatic. They're just great actors.
I love down-and-dirty and grit. But I do think that my favorite dramas are ones that are dark comedies because I think that the only way the audience and the actor can really go as dark and deep as you may want to go is if there's some levity added to it.
We don't see a lot of LGBTQ representation in period dramas because there was so much shame around it at the time. The stories that we tell about that time don't tend to focus explicitly on those sorts of characters, which is nonsense because they existed.
It's amazing to me how quickly the industry will try to put you into a box. It's like, I did 'Beale Street.' And they decided now, all of a sudden, 'Oh, okay. KiKi Layne does those little quiet indie dramas.' I'm like, 'No! That's just where I got started.'
I grew up watching period dramas, as we all did in the 1980s and '90s - endless adaptations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens - and I loved them. But I never saw anyone like me in them, so I decided to find a story to erode the excuses for me not doing one.
The reality of any location in Britain being used in a TV program of a film is that something bad is going to happen! That's the nature of drama. Most of the things that get made or basically grisly detective shows about murders, accidents or medical dramas.
From time to time there is a move to do a little less in the way of period dramas, but people rebel. Audiences say we want them. There is a big hunger for them. I don't think it's sentimentality or nostalgia, it's often that they are simply the best stories.
Oh gosh, I'm completely allergic to historical dramas. Particularly those around the civil-rights movement. It's not my favorite thing to watch. So often they feel like medicine. Or not even a history lesson, because I really like history. Just... obligatory.
I've done a lot of dramas, and I've done a lot of serious stuff - some really heavy stuff... which I loved, but I wanted to do something light and airy. I think the challenge for an actor is always to see which parts of you you can explore and go have fun with.
On telly, there's been a move towards entertainment - with some very high-powered, fast-moving dramas. Then we have the Internet, where we get our information but it's all in bite-size pieces. I think the documentary, as a form, actually speaks to what's missing.
I'm really into sci-fi. The reason I'm an actor is because of 'Star Wars' - I saw that and I knew that's what I wanted to do. But most of the projects I'm offered as an actor are straightforward dramas, so I haven't really been given a chance to do that kind of role.
Foucault's genius is to go down to the little dramas, dress them in facts hardly anyone else has noticed, and turn these stage settings into clues to a hitherto un-thought series of confrontations out of which, he contends, the orderly structure of society is composed.
I know I'm as comfortable doing period as I am contemporary. I suppose we grow up with it in a sense, in the theater. We get to put on costumes and play a lot of period dramas or plays so we're exposed to it a little bit more I think because of our theatrical background.
I am not a political writer. I agree with Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, who are social writers. I can't write in that fashion. I am not good enough for that. What I am interested in is family dramas and why we are doing bad things to each other and what our motives are.
All the great novels, all the great films, all the great dramas are fictions that actually tell us the truth about us or about human nature or about human situations without being tied into the minutia of documentary events. Otherwise we might as well just make documentaries.
If someone pulls me down, I pull them down, as I don't feel I should live my life in the way other people want me to. If they have a problem with my films, I can rip off their films, be it comedy or their family dramas, which are low on content and have over-theatrical acting.
Family dramas are tough, as a playwright. Most stories are about characters going on a trip or a new character coming to town, because that's how you learn information about them. But with family, they all know each other already. There's years of history in every interaction.
While I prefer generally more personal dramas in which I can stretch myself... and while I'm not a science fiction buff, I consider '2001' a great film, absolutely enthralling; at 'Star Wars' I had a fabulous time, and, at 'Alien,' while it was a silly story, I was knocked out.
There's been a vacuum with movies that people can relate to. There's been a paucity of dramas that people can relate to. I think audiences are clamoring to connect - particularly after 9/11 - with things that are genuine and real and I think documentaries are filling that need.
When I meet fans who relate to Korean films and dramas even though they don't understand the language or the culture, and when they talk about studying Korean and traveling to Korea because of those films and dramas, I think to myself that this is the true force of the Hallyu wave.
We're definitely still interested in the Avatar/Korra universe and fantastical world building in general, but I think many of the core themes and tones found in our two kids' series would be present as well in any sort of adult dramas we might be lucky enough to make in the future.
I love soap operas - the stories, the plots! And I love the game shows and the courtroom dramas and the detectives - Jessica Fletcher, 'Columbo,' 'Perry Mason,' 'L.A. Law.' Any sense of guilt appeals to me in a television program - a sense of guilt, or a sense of making a lot of money.
I have done a lot of short dramas that are three, four or five episodes and so that makes the filming process similar to the independent film process; it is very intimate, and it is a small cast and a small crew and everyone is there with a common goal and want the best for that project.
Fairytales work on two levels. On a conscious level, they are stories of true love and triumph and overcoming difficult odds and so are pleasurable to read. But they work on a deeper and symbolic level in that they play out our universal psychological dramas and hidden desires and fears.
We received our initial inspiration from our family, as from childhood we exhibited an inclination towards art. While Johns randomly drew pictures, I used to present dramas for my siblings. But when we grew up, we both got addicted to our interests and it was fueled by political activism.
By importing into the U.K. the divisive politics of anti-racism from America, with its demented campus dramas and neuroses about 'safe spaces', 'micro-aggressions' and 'cultural appropriation,' they make it almost impossible for people of goodwill of all ethnicities to rub along together.
I like 'The Usual Suspects'. Great film. I also like 'Scarface', films like that. Lots of gangster films. I really like watching all kinds of films, dramas, romance. I'll watch comedies. I like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Denzel Washington, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle. I'd like to meet them.
How can even the best novelist or playwright invent someone like Augustus Caesar or Catherine the Great, Galileo or Florence Nightingale? How can screenwriters create better action stories or human dramas than exist, thousand upon thousand, throughout the many centuries of recorded history?
When I do an action thing, it speaks louder than the things that I've done that are dramatic and comedy. Actually, if you look at my resume, I have just as much comedic things as dramas, and I have far less action things than all of the other things, but I'm kind of defined as an action person.
I've kind of always had this balance between genre and personal dramas. It almost feels like the two help each other. If I was just to make a genre film, maybe it would be hollow and soulless. If I was just to make a personal drama, maybe it would be melodramatic and nobody would ever go see it.
I feel I'm able to get rid of any demons lurking in my psyche through my writing, which leaves me free to create all of this and to enjoy our family life, stepping away from all the fictional traumas and the dramas. If I write about family in crisis, then I won't have to live through it, I guess.
Most of the dramatism in Wagner comes from a very close link between the music and the language of the text. So much of the expressivity of Wagner's music dramas comes from the singers' capacity to play with the sound of the language. This kind of thing you can do very well in concert performance.
I think TV is a fantastic medium right now because of what you can do visually. It's phenomenal, and it's just getting better and better, but in a way, there's no beating the personal image you can create in your head, with those personal aspects, which you can only get from reading or radio dramas.
I sort of was inspired by 'Friday Night Lights,' where it was a very different show, but similar in that they were both large ensemble dramas where you had many stories going on at once. I wanted to do a show that shared that element, and that's really why I wanted to develop 'Parenthood' as a series.