MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BLECH!!!

The new musical version of A Christmas Carol on NBC… that is what I see as the crap film that people who despise the film of The Phantom of the Opera seem to be talking about.  Banal, horrid lyrics with no wit and performers with no apparent soul, though most of them have proven to be of value in other venues in the past.

Where is the Albert Finney Scrooge when you need it???

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4 Responses to “BLECH!!!”

  1. Pale Viewer says:

    Kelsey “In my defense, Niles is the only one who has ever seasoned his crepe pans” Grammer as Scrooge. Good God. Where is Bill Murray staplin’ antlers to a mouse when you need him?

  2. bicycle bob says:

    the people that are gonna trash phantom were gonna trash it no matter what. it could be the greatest film in history and they would trash it. personal resentments fuel a lot of the critic industry now.

  3. davideo says:

    You guys are like a dog with a bone about Phantom of the Opera. I was at the MCN screening and saw the film. I am not a film critic nor do I have any grudges against WB or Andrew Lloyd Webber. But I agree with the opinions that the film is crap. It’s very well designed but very poorly directed. The showcase numbers are good but the rest of the talking/singing in the film is pretty dull. Butler is a no-show as the Phantom. It’s not just that he can’t sing (and he can’t), but his character is given less prominence than the play where the Phantom is the lead character. Plus the odd choice in the film to stop the movie dead with the long sequence that explains how the Phantom became the Phantom, which it seems to copy from The Elephant Man. Not to mention the framing sequence out of Titanic. I’m in the minority in the fact that I like musicals…but this one bored me to death. The guest that I brought to the screening felt the same way and kept tugging at my sleeves to leave early (which we didn’t, and for which I had to buy her dinner for after the film). So give it a rest…if someone doesn’t like Phantom (and it seems that many don’t, and won’t)…it’s not some grudge…it’s just that the film, IMHO, sucks.

  4. Swampfox says:

    OT I know but….
    What’s with “banal” this week? Did it pop up on your Word A Day toilete paper this week – first in the hot button, now here.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon