By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Page 15

Link to the List

Joe Morgenstern
Wall Street Journal

1 Slumdog Millionaire
2 Wall-E
3 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
4 Iron Man
5 Man On Wire
6 Still Life
7 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
8 The Visitor
9 Waltz with Bashir
10 The Wrestler
Link to the List

Ruthe Stein
San Francisco Chronicle

1 Milk
2 Revolutionary Road
3 Slumdog Millionaire
4 Frost/Nixon
5 I’ve Loved You So Long
6 The Wrestler
7 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
8 Elegy
9 Wendy & Lucy
10 The Visitor
Link to the List

Joe Williams
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

1 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2 Revolutionary Road
3 Frost/Nixon
4 Milk
5 Wall-E
6 Slumdog Millionaire
7 Up the Yangtze
8 Wendy & Lucy
9 Trouble the Water
10 Man on Wire
Link to the List

Peter Hartlaub
San Francisco Chronicle

1 The Dark Knight
2 The Wrestler
3 Slumdog Millionaire
4 Milk
5 Frost/Nixon
6 The Visitor
7 Tropic Thunder
8 Man on Wire
9 Wall-E
10 Iron Man
Link to the List

Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle

1 Revolutionary Road
2 Milk
3 4 Mos, 3 Wks and 2 Days
4 I’ve Loved You So Long
5 The Wrestler
6 Frost/Nixon
7 Roman de Gare
8 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
9 The Life Before Her Eyes
10 Baghead
Link to the List

Neil Rosen
NY1

1 Wall-E
2 W
3 Changeling
4 Slumdog Millionaire
5 The Wrestler
6 Man On Wire
7 Towelhead
8 Zack & Miri Make A Porno
9 Step Brothers
10 Bolt
Link to the List

Josh Bell
Las Vegas Weekly

1 Funny Games
2 Happy Go Lucky
3 Rachel Getting married
4 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
5 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
6 Wall-E
7 The Wackness
8 Cloverfield
9 Chop Shop
10 Standard Operating Procedure
Link to the List

Jeffrey M. Anderson
Las Vegas Weekly

1 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
2 Flight of the Red Balloon
3 Still Life
4 The Dark Knight
5 Burn After Reading
6 Rachel Getting Married
7 Gran Torino
8 Happy Go Lucky
9 My Blueberry Nights
10 Encounters at End of the World
Link to the List

Rafer Guzman
Newsday

1 Wall-E
2 A Christmas Tale
3 The Last Mistress
4 The Dark Knight
5 Let the Right One In
6 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
7 Rachel Getting Married
8 Milk
9 I’ve Loved You So Long
10 The Wrestler
Link to the List

James Ward
Visalia Times-Delta

1 Milk
2 The Changeling
3 The Dark Knight
4 The Black Balloon
5 Slumdog Millionaire
6 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
7 The Visitor
8 Doubt
9 In Bruges
10 RocknRolla

Jeffrey M. Anderson | Josh Bell | Rafer Guzman | Peter Hartlaub | Mick LaSalle
Joe Morgenstern | Neil Rosen | Ruthe Stein | James Ward | Joe Williams

Be Sociable, Share!

Comments are closed.

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