By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Page 20

Link to the List

Jason Guerrasio
Filmmaker Magazine

1 The Betrayal/Che
2 The Class
3 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
4 The Dark Knight
5 Elegy/Man on Wire
6 Milk/Momman’s Man
7 Paranoid Park
8 Roman Polanski: Wanted & Desired
9 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
10 Wall-E/The Wrestler
Link to the List

Kristian Lin
Ft. Worth Weekly

1 Slumdog Millionaire
2 The Dark Knight
3 Wall-E
4 Forgetting Sarah Marshall
5 Reprise
6 Rachel Getting Married
7 Pineapple Express
8 Happy Go Lucky
9 Let the Right One In
10 Bigger, Stronger, Faster
Link to the List

Matthew Lucas
The Dispatch

1 Silent Light
2 4 Mos, 3 Wks & 2 Days
3 Synecdoche, NY
4 Gran Torino
5 Wall-E
6 Slumdog Millionaire
7 Waltz with Bashir
8 The Wrestler
9 Let the Right One In
10 Still Life
Link to the List

Tom Meek
Boston Phoenix

1 Encounters at End of the World
2 Slumdog Millionaire
3 Waltz with Bashir
4 The Visitor
5 Wall-E
6 Milk
7 Let the Right One In
8 Man on Wire
9 The Pool
10 The Bank Job
Link to the List

Joe Neumaier
NY Daily News

1 The Dark Knight
2 Doubt
3 I’ve Loved You So Long
4 The Lucky Ones
5 Religulous
6 Revolutionary Road
7 Synecdoche, NY
8 W.
9 Wall-E
10 The Wrestler
Link to the List

Dave Kehr
DaveKehr.com

1 A Christmas Tale
2 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3 Diary of the Dead
4 The Fall
5 Gran Torino
6 Sparrow
7 Still Life
8 Tropic Thunder
9 Wall-E
10 Wendy & Lucy
Link to the List

Barbara Vancheri
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

1 Slumdog Millionaire
2 The Dark Knight
3 Wall-E
4 Frost/Nixon
5 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
6 Frozen River
7 The Wrestler
8 Man on Wire
9 Doubt
10 The Visitor
Link to the List

Anne Hornaday
Washington Post

1 The Visitor
2 Wall-E
3 Milk
4 The Edge of Heaven
5 Man on Wire
6 Chicago 10
7 Happy Go Lucky
8 Rachel Getting Married
9 I’ve Loved You So Long
10 Tell No One
Link to the List

Bob Strauss
LA Daily News

1 The Dark Knight
2 Towelhead
3 Still Life
4 Milk / Paranoid Park
5 The Exiles
6 Frost/Nixon
7 Let the Right One In
8 Trouble the Water
9 Hunger
10 Pineapple Express/Tropic Thunder
Link to the List

Sean O’Connell
WBTV

1 Wall-E
2 Man on Wire
3 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
4 Rachel Getting Married
5 Frost/Nixon
6 Dear Zachary
7 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
8 Son of Rambow
9 Tropic Thunder
10 Let the Right One In

Jason Guerrasio | Anne Hornaday | Dave Kehr | Kristian Lin | Matthew Lucas | Tom Meek | Joe Neumaier | Sean O’Connell | Bob Strauss | Barbara Vancheri

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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