By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Page 10

Link to the List

Marjorie Baumgarten
Austin Chronicle

1 Synecdoche, NY
2 Tell No One
3 Milk
4 The Pool
5 Elegy
6 My Winnipeg
7 Gomorrah
8 Gran Torino
9 U2 3D
10 Slumdog Millionaire
Link to the List

Laura Emerick
Chicago Sun-Times

1 Wall-E
2 W
3 Revolutionary Road
4 Gran Torino
5 My Winnipeg
6 Milk
7 The Wrestler
8 Frozen River
9 Doubt
10 Che
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Jim Ridley
Nashville Scene

1 The Exiles
2 Rachel Getting Married
3 In the City of Sylvia
4 Let the Right One In
5 Paranoid Park
6 The Order of Myths
7 Synecdoche, NY
8 My Winnipeg
9 The Unforeseen
10 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Link to the List

Gerald Peary
Boston Phoenix

1 The Pool
2 Let the Right One In
3 Milk
4 Waltz with Bashir
5 My Father My Lord
6 Hunger
7 W.
8 Reprise
9 In Bruges
10 My Winnipeg
Link to the List

Chuck Stephens
Film Comment

1 Ashes of Time Redux
2 Ballast
3 Boarding Gate
4 The Exiles
5 Flight of the Red Balloon
6 Gomorrah
7 In the City of Sylvia
8 Paranoid Park
9 Still Life
10 Wendy & Lucy
Link to the List

Jonathan Rosenbaum
JonathanRosenbaum.com

1 The Silence Before Bach
2 The Exiles
3 Trouble the Water
4 The Order of Myths
5 Flight of the Red Balloon
6 The Lucky Ones
7 Opera Jawa
8 Momma’s Man
9 Gran Torino
10 The Band’s Visit
Link to the List

Jenny Halper
Spare Change News

1 I’ve Loved You So Long
2 Nothing but the Truth
3 Frozen River
4 The Visitor
5 Secret Life of Bees
6 Slumdog Millionaire
7 The Dark Knight
8 Battle in Seattle
9 Boy in the Striped Pajamas
10 Australia
Link to the List

Nell Minow
BeliefNet

1 Frost/Nixon
2 Rachel Getting Married
3 Milk
4 Wall-E
5 I’ve Loved You So Long
6 The Visitor
7 Be Kind Rewind
8 Doubt
9 Iron Man
10 Son of Rambow
Link to the List

Michelle Orange
The Village Voice

1 Slumdog Millionaire
2 Milk
3 Wendy & Lucy
4 Waltz With Bashir
5 Wall-E
6 Flight of the Red Balloon
7 Rachel Getting Married
8 Paranoid Park
9 The Last Mistress
10 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Link to the List

Betsy Pickle
Women on Film

1 The Fall
2 Frozen River
3 Milk
4 I’ve Loved You So Long
5 Wall-E
6 Happy Go Lucky
7 Tropic Thunder
8 The Lucky Ones
9 Rachel Getting Married
10 The Visitor

Marjorie Baumgarten | Laura Emerick | Jenny Halper | Nell Minow | Michelle Orange | Gerald Peary | Betsy Pickle | Jim Ridley | Jonathan Rosenbaum | Chuck Stephens

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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