MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BYOB: Feeling A Little More At Home?

So… bigger fonts, Recent Comments, a direct link to Hot Blog from anywhere on the site…

Day by day…

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17 Responses to “BYOB: Feeling A Little More At Home?”

  1. Foamy Squirrel says:

    Just a quick note to say the old mcnblogs.com site is still live and kicking – might want to put a redirect page there, as a couple of people are still posting at the Old Blog ™.

  2. NickF says:

    ^ Good point, and the new font size or style is better.

  3. Jeff McM says:

    I’m finding it difficult, after posting, to find a link to go back to the main blog page, which was very clear and easy to find previously.

  4. mutinyco says:

    I went to type in foxnews.com to see their headline on Obama’s speech, but I accidentally typed: fixnews…

  5. IOv3 says:

    Did anyone else notice we got the red border back and now it fades to white? That’s awesome.

    Jeff, the link is up there. It’s just mixed in now next to film essent or what not.

  6. Jeff McM says:

    Yeah, I know it’s up there. What I’m saying is that it’s lost amidst a bunch of clutter, which was not the case previously.

  7. Brian says:

    You might make it easier to find the RSS feeds also – I had to figure it out for myself.

  8. Paul MD (Stella's Boy) says:

    Anyone see Takers? Kind of shocked by its opening. Expected Armored-type numbers. Hopefully Idris Elba starts getting better roles soon, though maybe Takers is better than it looks. The review my local paper ran insinuated that it’s similar to but ultimately better than Heat because it’s less ambitious and therefore “more realistic.”

  9. Al E Ase says:

    I actually laughed out loud

  10. Chris says:

    Takers is god awful and anyone who compares it to Heat in even a remotely positive way doesn’t know anything about film.

  11. EthanG says:

    Mr. Poland,

    Since your site is re-launching I thought I would dispense with a very brief re-introduction. I’m a 23-year old wannabe film student, actual federal gov. bureaucrat who began reading your site as it launched via a friend’s suggestion. Your site greatly increased my passion for film over the years, and that love was transferred to my boyfriend who via much encouragement graduated from nyu in film studies (at least in a slight part due to you & Sasha at AD over the years) & who currently is a top screenwriter for Marvel on (Exclusive!) rewrites for Thor, as well as the SP for Capt. America &…Ant-Man.
    So….as much as I attack you, and fight with you irrationally Mr. Poland, thank you for providing a compass that’s accurate about 70% of the time over the years to the world of film.

    Ethan

  12. anghus says:

    Yeah, a redirect might be good. I took me 72 hours to realize the blog had moved here. i was like ‘man… no one’s talking right now’

  13. EthanG says:

    PS…

    I am still stunned that Armond White is referred to in this blog. Mr. White repeatedly refers to Mr. George Clooney as “Anti-American” or on an “Anti-American kick” in public appearences. He takes the leap from free speech to McCarthyism quite freely, but is not penalized (in the same article he praises the widely panned Chinese remake of “Blood Simple” for improving on the Coens’ “crapfest”).

  14. But is Takers better or worse than LA Takedown?

  15. Beat me to it Joe… (was busy writing my Machete review). I have no problem seeing a Perry film as a possible Oscar contender. He’s the only mainstream filmmaker outside of Clint Eastwood who consistently makes adult dramas, and I contend that The Family That Preys would have been a serious contender had it been released in the fall and had Perry been a more respected name at that point. I’m not saying it’s a masterpiece, but it’s a damn good melodrama with several ‘Oscar bait elements’. It’s easily his best, most complicated, and most refreshingly open-ended and downbeat picture.

  16. Jeff McM says:

    Wow, congrats to Ethan – how does a 23-year-old become a full-fledged bureaucrat and have a relationship with somebody at more-or-less the peak of their career? Let me know so I can travel back in time and make the appropriate life choices.

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