By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Page 19

Link to the List

Brad Brevet
Rope of Silicon

1 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
2 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3 The Wrestler
4 The Dark Knight
5 Wall-E
6 The Class
7 In Bruges
8 Tropic Thunder
9 I’ve Loved You So Long
10 The Reader
Link to the List

Whitney Matheson
USA Today

1 Iron Man
2 The Dark Knight
3 The Wrestler
4 Slumdog Millionaire
5 Rachel Getting Married
6 Pineapple Express
7 Wendy & Lucy
8 Milk
9 Young at Heart
10 Nights and Weekends
Link to the List

Dana Stevens
Slate

1 A Christmas Tale
2 The Class
3 The Edge of Heaven
4 Encounters at End of the World
5 Frozen River
6 Man on Wire
7 Milk
8 Wall-E
9 Wendy & Lucy
10 The Wrestler
Link to the List

Pam Grady
FilmStew

1 My Winnipeg
2 The Wrestler
3 Slumdog Millionaire
4 JCVD
5 Wall-E
6 What we do is Secret
7 Boy A
8 The Visitor
9 Milk
10 In Bruges
Link to the List

Harry Knowles
AICN

1 Let the Right One In
2 The Dark Knight
3 The Wrestler
4 Wall-E
5 Brothers Bloom
6 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
7 Milk
8 Pineapple Express
9 Slumdog Millionaire
10 Burn After Reading
Link to the List

Peter Knegt
IndieWire

1 Wendy & Lucy
2 Happy Go Lucky
3 Wall-E
4 The Dark Knight
5 Waltz with Bashir
6 Milk
7 A Christmas Tale
8 Synecdoche, NY
9 Ballast
10 Let the Right One In
Link to the List

Michael Hawley
Twitch

1 A Christmas Tale
2 Synecdoche, NY
3 The Duchess of Langeais
4 Still Life
5 Stranded
6 The Pool
7 My Father, My Lord
8 Stuck
9 The Last Mistress
10 4 Mos, 3 Wks & 2 Days
Link to the List

Dennis Harvey
Variety

1 Encounters at End of the World
2 Battle for Haditha
3 My Brother is an Only Child
4 Kenny
5 The Class
6 A Christmas Tale
7 The Signal
8 I Served the King of England
9 Happy Go Lucky
10 Planet B-Boy
Link to the List

Paul Gallagher
FutureMovies

1 The Dark Knight
2 Wall-E
3 No Country for Old Men
4 There Will Be Blood
5 Waltz with Bashir
6 Juno
7 Son of Rambow
8 In Bruges
9 The Visitor
10 Man on Wire
Link to the List

Dennis Lim
Moving Image Source

1 Flight of the Red Balloon
2 Before I Forget
3 Still Life
4 In the City of Sylvia
5 Paranoid Park
6 Wendy & Lucy
7 The Duchess of Langaeis
8 Hunger
9 My Winnipeg
10 Milk

Brad Brevet | Paul Gallagher | Pam Grady | Dennis Harvey | Michael Hawley | Peter Knegt | Harry Knowles | Dennis Lim | Whitney Matheson | Dana Stevens

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