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Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 - 2 Comments »
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If Houseplants Can Blog, Can They Become Film Critics?

Update: High School Musical 3
Because I know you’ve all been sitting out there just dying to hear about HSM3 (I’m looking at you, Lex) …
No full review until opening day, but just to tide you over so you can sleep until then:
it will involve
singing and dancing … CHECK
broken hearts … CHECK
Troy and Gabriela singing some sappy duets …CHECK (and for added specialness, in one of them they’re singing in the rain!)
and Sharpay trying to pull some stunt or another … CHECK, but a mildly clever twist on this
but by the end, they’ll all be joining hands and singing their finale as they go off their separate ways to college … CHECK and CHECK
All for now, you’ll have to wait for the rest until later.
***
As if the print media doesn’t have enough to bitch about, what with all the bloggers out there invading their turf, now from Japan we have Midori-san, the Blogging Houseplant! No, I’m not kidding.
I have no idea if this is for real or not; it’s entirely possible this is all a big publicity stunt by the cafe where Midori-san hangs out, and it’s really the dishwasher doing the blogging. But apparently, Japanese company KAYAC Co, Ltd has developed an interface that allows Midori-san, a Sweetheart Hoya, to blog its plant-ish thoughts for all the (Japanese-speaking) world to see. Maybe for the next phase they can put Midori-san in front of a big-screen TV with surround sound, put on some DVDs, and let Midori-san try writing movie reviews. I wonder what Midori-san would think about Little Shop of Horrors …
Okay, off to a screening of High School Musical 3. Let me guess: it will involve singing and dancing, broken hearts, Troy and Gabriela singing some sappy duets, and Sharpay trying to pull some stunt or another, but by the end, they’ll all be joining hands and singing their finale as they go off their separate ways to college. I’ll let you know later how accurate my prediction is.

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2 Comments »

2 Responses to “If Houseplants Can Blog, Can They Become Film Critics?”

  1. LexG says:
    October 22, 2008 at 6:20 pm

    TEAM HUDGENS!

  2. LexG says:
    October 22, 2008 at 10:47 pm

    There is a standee of this at local multiplexes with the WHOLE GANG, and Hudgens is wearing some slinky black dress and heels.
    I NEED THAT STANDEE! Perhaps eBay will help me in this quest.
    Voynar, is there a nail painting-turned-pillowfight scene between The Hudgness and Le Tis?
    That would OWN.

Quote Unquotesee all »

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