The last two paragraphs of a letter written by film critic Roger Ebert to film maker Werner Hertzog about his documentary "Encounters At The End Of The World":
"In the process of compiling your life’s work, you have never lost your sense of humor. Your narrations are central to the appeal of your documentaries, and your wonder at human nature is central to your fiction. In one scene you can foresee the end of life on earth, and in another show us country musicians picking their guitars and banjos on the roof of a hut at the South Pole. You did not go to Antarctica, you assure us at the outset, to film cute penguins. But you did film one cute penguin, a penguin that was disoriented, and was steadfastly walking in precisely the wrong direction—into an ice vastness the size of Texas. “And if you turn him around in the right direction,” you say, “he will turn himself around, and keep going in the wrong direction, until he starves and dies.” The sight of that penguin waddling optimistically toward his doom would be heartbreaking, except that he is so sure he is correct.
But I have started to wander off like the penguin, my friend.
I have started out to praise your work, and have ended by describing it. Maybe it is the same thing. You and your work are unique and invaluable, and you ennoble the cinema when so many debase it. You have the audacity to believe that if you make a film about anything that interests you, it will interest us as well. And you have proven it.
With admiration,
Roger "
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The Shoulders We Do Not See
1 hour ago
Yeah well if Michael Bay was a penguin, then watch out for the big ass "Orca" waiting for him at the end of the ice shelf ... his latest installment T2 was an awesome film - awesome cause lots of big ass robots blow shit up, but it could have been much better. Some of the fake scripts hitting the net during the film's production in my opinion would have made much better films.
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