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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BYOB 073014

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24 Responses to “BYOB 073014”

  1. KMS says:

    Marking time until an Inherent Vice trailer drops.

  2. Stella's Boy says:

    So I haven’t been to Toronto since 2005, back when they weren’t doing online movie selections. I never had a problem getting tickets to my first choices back then. Has anyone used the online system? I’m a little apprehensive about it since I know they randomly give people a date/time when they can begin picking their movies.

  3. berg says:

    I’ve always been a fan of Howard the Duck

  4. EtGuild2 says:

    Any thoughts on “The Congress?” I loved it. What an effing amazing year for sci-fi….”Edge of Tomorrow,” “Apes,” “Snowpiercer,” “Under The Skin,” “Congress,” “Guardians,” and “Godzilla” and “The Signal” had a lot of potential.

    Combine this summer’s releases with “Her” and “Gravity” from last Fall and we are in the greatest one year period for science fiction in Cinema History.

  5. SamLowry says:

    Well, the Wiki page for THE CONGRESS peters out into incoherence, but it did remind me that I haven’t watched LOOKER in over 25 years and boy do I wish that was available on Blu-ray.

    BTW, did anyone else see “Zvyagintsev: Leviathan seed was ‘killdozer'” and assume they were talking about Killdozer!

    I think that means I watched too much TV in the ’70s.

  6. Nick says:

    hoping guardians dies, but know it wont. hopefully it will do the whole $200 million blowout that is the trend this summer. it’s like emperor wears no clothes level bad how much critics and fandom just give these horrible films a free pass.

  7. KMS says:

    I’ll be shocked if it’s as bad as Nick’s claiming.

  8. Smith says:

    Stella – I’ve used the on-line system the past few years and have had zero problems. It’s very easy to use, and I believe I’ve gotten all of my first choices for several years running. If you’re gunning for a lot of mainstream fare, especially in the first weekend, you may have a bit less luck depending on when your ticket selection time is, but otherwise you should be good to go. Did you buy a ticket package?

  9. Stella's Boy says:

    Thank you for the information Smith. That’s good to know. I do have a ticket package. I wanted a Premium Flex Pack, but they were sold out even by the time Visa holders got to buy ticket packages. So I got 10-ticket Regular Flex Pack, which is what I’ve always gotten in the past. I’ll be there opening weekend, from the 4th to the 8th.

  10. Nick says:

    also, are we supposed to think James Gunn is brilliant because he used a song that QT used in Resevoir Dogs?

    and…

    I think Judd Apatow’s films would be much better if they were shot on digital.

  11. Chris says:

    “I think Judd Apatow’s films would be much better if they were shot on digital.”

    Because that is what makes a movie good or bad, the material on which it was recorded. Totally makes sense. If Funny People was shot on digital instead of film, it would have been 30 minutes shorter and better.

  12. Pete B. says:

    Any ideas on what the promotion budget is for Guardians? The commercials on TV have been non-stop. Its bordering on overkill. And I say that as someone looking forward to seeing the movie.

  13. cadavra says:

    I think Judd Apatow’s films would be much better if they were shot with the lens caps on and the mikes turned off.

  14. Nick says:

    to be honest Chris, you missed the whole point (cadavra got it), but since you brought it up, yes, I do believe that how a film is shot greatly impacts how it is perceived.

    not that it would matter for apatow films, because they all inherently suck, but, if we were to use, say, this is 40 as an example, shooting it digitally, might have given it a tad more realism.

    or, we can go the other way, let’s say leone had to shoot the end of the good the bad and the ugly on digital. might not have been the same impact right?

  15. SamLowry says:

    In a similar vein:

    “The world is filled with neutral or positive ways to spend your money, and we now have confirmation that going to see a Michael Bay movie is one of the worst ways to do so.”

    Okay, we all know his movies suck, but what got me was this:

    “Nothing that you’ve said is funny, TJ! Not one thing, all day! We hired you to be funny. There’s 300 people here — none of them are laughing at you! Say something funny! I can cut you out of the movie!”

    So does this mean Bay doesn’t follow a script and all his movies are improv? That would explain a lot.

    And if some folks can’t handle this:

    “She changes her hair color from blond to brunette to avoid detection from the cops–but the film stops short at having her change her racial identity which as implied by the story and her other powers”

    Why? According to the reviewer, “Scarlett Johansson could not turn black because that would be: blackface.”

    …then it’s no wonder TRANSCENDENCE failed so miserably.

    No one uttered a word of complaint when Gigolo Joe effortlessly changed his hair color in A.I., but now, thirteen years later, we’re expected to be so sensitive to some slippery-slope of identity mutability that darkening your hair is tantamount to Al Jolson getting ready to put on a minstrel show? This Mudede twit must’ve been freakin’ earlier this year when Depp took over the body of a Hispanic laborer to put the moves on his lily-white widow.

    Do you think he has anything to say about that Patrick Swayze/Whoopi Goldberg business in GHOST? Maybe Swayze was dominating Whoopi’s body like a horny slave master back on the old plantation?

    (Full disclosure: I wrote a scene in my novel where a two thousand year-old man undercover as a tween boy reunites with a lost love at an outdoor cafe; his old flame–a thirty-five hundred year old woman–is hiding out in the corpse of a middle-aged man she just killed. The reader sees a touching love scene, the audience sees pedophilic necrophilia. Hilarious!)

  16. SamLowry says:

    Okay, I’ll admit that LUCY part was a bit tenuous; didn’t help that I was still reworking it at the final buzzer.

  17. Bulldog68 says:

    I just wonder if Morgan Freeman was confused and thought Transcendence and Lucy was one movie.

    Surprisingly, Lucy was worse IMO. Barely anything made sense, even for someone who was supposed to be smarter than everyone else, and somehow couldn’t find a way to prevent the loss of many innocent lives.

    It is actually the dumbest movie of the year thus far.

  18. cadavra says:

    “Say something funny! I can cut you out of the movie!”

    Well, THAT explains why–well, you know…

    (Though at the risk of actually defending The World’s Worst A-List Director, the character really WAS completely irritating.)

  19. movieman says:

    (Though at the risk of actually defending The World’s Worst A-List Director, the character really WAS completely irritating.)

    You mean Brett Ratner, right, Cad?

  20. YancySkancy says:

    Let’s not be disingenuous. If you don’t like Judd Apatow’s work, then obviously you’re going to dislike it no matter what media he uses. And since I DO like his work, I’d probably like it whether it was filmed, taped, performed live or transmitted to a chip in my brain.

  21. Bodhizefa says:

    GotG has an outside shot at $100 million for the opening August weekend. That’s a pretty big damned deal, especially during this summer of box office mediocrity.

  22. SamLowry says:

    While discussing how the otherwise excellent GUARDIANS fell victim to Marvel’s “third act problem”, this odd bit is tossed out:

    “When we remember The Avengers, we don’t think fondly of the numbing New York City smash-up or such generic action movie dialogue as “I’m bringing the party to you”; we think of the interactions between the characters during the film’s middle hour, and the screwball snap of Whedon’s dialogue.”

    Umm, whenever I think about THE AVENGERS, the image that pops into my mind is that tedious attack on New York City; perhaps that’s why I haven’t felt an itch to watch the movie again.

    “…you can tweak and kid all you like, but once you hit the 90-minute mark, there’s bills to pay.”

    Congrats for making the effects-heavy climax sound like a prostitute putting her knee pads on.

  23. cadavra says:

    Movieman: I know I’m opening myself up for a world of pain, but I don’t think Ratner’s all that horrible. AFTER THE SUNSET was a really delightful little caper, and even the RUSH HOUR movies had a kind of goofy energy that carried them over the rough spots. Compared to Bay (and the arguably worse McG), he’s not on my shit list.

  24. SamLowry says:

    Megan Fox’s recent comments only prove how much Liebesman and/or Bay truly despise the Turtles, as it was pointed out to me by a Turtles fan from back in the day (I was a little too old to jump on that bandwagon) that April O’Neil was always sweet, innocent and caring, yet who was selected to play her in this movie? The one working actress in Hollywood (since Lindsay Lohan no longer counts) who represents the polar opposite of those virtues.

    EDIT: Interestingly enough, that article provides links to other incidents where Hollywood-types told critical fans (y’know, the folks who are expected to fork over the price of a ticket to support their work) to “Fuck off,” and INTO DARKNESS scribe Bob “there is a reason why I get to write the movies, and you don’t” Orci was one of ’em.

    So he’s an asshole, too!

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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