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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BYOB 71714

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52 Responses to “BYOB 71714”

  1. KMS says:

    If you listed 10 BP predictions right now, would Boyhood be on there? If not, why?

  2. Stella's Boy says:

    Was hoping Gone Girl would premiere in Toronto this year. Same with Birdman. 0-2.

  3. EtGuild2 says:

    “Persecuted,” the most appalling movie of the year, finally opens this weekend after playing at a number of conservative gatherings like CPAC. It makes “God’s Not Dead” look almost benign by comparison, with one of the lead figures, implied to be the False Prophet or the Antichrist, reading an Obama speech verbatim on screen (a speech that called for religious tolerance) and further implying that anyone who doesn’t believe in the gospel is a threat, deserving of vigilante execution in the proud tradition of 90s Rwanda.

  4. Stella's Boy says:

    I have been devouring reviews of Persecuted. It sounds hilariously and amazingly awful.

  5. Triple Option says:

    Any thoughts on Murdoch’s attempt to buy Time Warner? What is he mainly after? I’m wondering what can’t he do with Fox presently that he’d need to acquire TW? Not saying this just to say “well, that’s just crazy, no one should be that big” although I don’t exactly see this as a potential win for consumers. I just kinda wonder why would you bother? Wasn’t he just made to divest NewsCorp from 20th Cent Fox? I wish someone would stop TW from overreaching on their sports deals and I’m not the most enthused by their broadband service but I don’t know if making a behemoth conglom is the way to do it.

  6. Ray Pride says:

    Some analysts are calling it’s a union of content and distribution, TO, but I think it’s much simpler than that. One last vast deal.

  7. SamLowry says:

    Well, Murdoch once got pied, so he should be used to the disgruntled public and their dogs.

    (I saw this at TheChive this morning but they’ve pulled it since, for some unexplained reason, however it’s all over the place now.)

  8. Hcat says:

    It would give Fox more muscle when it come to carriage rates ans liscencing deals. The next time they face off against Comcast and threaten to pull their channels they can take hbo and a third of cable along with it. And as far as ip they would have fox , Warner’s, MGM and through the liscence with Sony ua and rko. Warner’s already produce more television than anyone and if they were combined today they would account for 1 of 3 movie tickets sold this year.

    And if Warner’s doesn’t want to sell I can see Viacom going for cheaper and withou the standoff ( does it seem that anyone in their corporate office gives a damn how paramount has been doing the past few years?) or regulatory hurdles (no CNN/fox news fox broadcast/ cw conflicts. This would still give them the cable muscle they are looking for.

    And this might sound cynical but boyhoods Oscar chances are hinders by the fact that its going through IFC. Just as CBS was unable to wage a campaign to get Llewelyn Davis in last year, boyhood may get left out for reasons other than quality.

  9. leahnz says:

    “Any thoughts on Murdoch’s attempt to buy Time Warner? What is he mainly after?”

    he’s after world domination, to turn it into a seventh australian state. to that i say, never! we will not go quietly into the night, we’re fighting for our right to live without ‘Strains up in our bidness, piss off

  10. SamLowry says:

    Only two senators were quoted as speaking out against combination in the article on the front page, and not at all surprisingly both were Democrats.

    What amazes me is not that any elected officials actually favor this merger (I’m sure several have already been bought off), but that any see the current system as acceptable. Of course there’s competition, they’ll say–there’s the one company that has access to your phone line, the one company that has access to your cable line, and a few companies that might sell you a dish if you happen to have an unobstructed south-facing view. That’s plenty of competition!

    How about splitting up these existing monopolies into companies that’ll have to spend some money to upgrade their fiber and their services in order to actually compete with each other?

  11. christian says:

    Amazing that with all of Murdoch’s spying and lying minions before court that he’s built a money wall around himself. Well, not so amazing.

    Fox News has never reported once on Murdoch’s overseas empire scandals. Honestly, none of the other phony news networks have much either. They know who butters their bread.

  12. leahnz says:

    in other news: Bill maher is still a moronic asshole, and my heart goes out to the victims and their families and loved ones of the 298 people killed in the plane shot down over the Ukraine, unbelievably horrible. so much pain and violence in the world, love and light must triumph over hate and dark.

  13. Ray Pride says:

    Check out the quote about Shteyngart’s predictions in the quote sidebar.

  14. brack says:

    Bill Maher might be an asshole to some, but he’s hardly moronic. You just don’t like him.

  15. leahnz says:

    oh really? cool story bro

  16. brack says:

    Better story than yours. This have to do with your fake outcry over violence against women, which Maher was not advocating at all? Otherwise myself and no one else knows what the fuck you’re talking about.

  17. SamLowry says:

    Since I thought those issues were connected, I have to admit I wasted some time trying to find insulting comments Maher may have made about the latest Malaysian airliner, but since there were none maybe I should offer him a free joke:

    Those Russians are like redneck deer hunters who come home with a cow tied to their bumper; they don’t care what they shot, they’re just happy they shot something.

  18. leahnz says:

    hey good to be told my outcries are ‘fake’ by a simpleton (just like maher, what a koinkidink – weakminded sheep do tend to herd together), how else would i know all’s wrong with the world

  19. Pete B. says:

    Did I miss the conversation anywhere in these Blogs, where we discussed James Garner’s passing?

    War veteran, Purple Heart winner, Oscar nominated, and I haven’t even got to The Rockford Files yet…

  20. SamLowry says:

    Hey, kids, it’s time for another episode of The Lex Show!

    This week, fun and hilarity ensue when Uncle Lex gets his penis stuck in a shop vac!

  21. brack says:

    leahnz – simpleton, good one. Resorting to name calling shows how intelligent you are. You’re the biggest fucking hypocrite here. Keep up being a windbag, cuz no one cares about who offends you, which is your agenda most of the time on here. And newsflash: no one knows what the fuck you’re even talking about.

  22. Stella's Boy says:

    Maher is pretty notorious for misogyny. That’s nothing to be proud of.

  23. brack says:

    Not really, he’s one of the decent people out there. He made a comparison that only only a touchy person like leahnz would find offense soley because it contained “crazy bitch” and “slap.” That was enough for her to completely miss the point and have it serve her agenda once again. That’s nothing to be proud of. Throwing around misogyny is just lazy.

  24. Stella's Boy says:

    If there’s no truth to it, then yes, throwing around misogyny would be lazy. In Maher’s case, there’s definitely truth to it, regardless of how you feel about the recent comment he’s taking heat for (and it is not just “touchy” people who are offended by what he said). He’s an “old school misogynist.” That’s hardly decent. He strikes me as a smug idiot.

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/07/18/bill_maher_s_sexist_tweet_the_so_called_progressive_makes_light_of_domestic.html

  25. brack says:

    That link you posted is pointless, fake outrage, and fake reporting. It takes attention away from the Middle East and makes it about Bill Maher. Like I wrote before, lazy reporting. He’s not advocating violence against women, if you take more than 2 seconds to comprehend what he was talking about, you’d understand that. No need to post about other windbags on the internet, as it doesn’t prove anything.

  26. Stella's Boy says:

    I like Slate, but whatever, to each their own. And as that post makes clear, he has said many misogynistic things in the past that have upset the left and the right (bipartisanship!). “Fake outrage.” “You just don’t get it.” Talk about lazy. Doesn’t get any lazier than claiming someone who disagrees with you just doesn’t get it.

  27. leahnz says:

    hilarious

    (valiant effort stella’s as always, but i suspect you can try to reason/talk sense with brack till you’re blue in the face but dudebro’s gonna dudebro in his dudebro world where dudebros like to shout fake, fake, fake! there’s no misogyny (for the lazy!); sexism against women isn’t so bad and i/they should shut the fuck up about it already (i mean he should know!) plus he doesn’t even hang around with sexists (er, except himself, can’t get away from that guy unfortunately, attached at the brain). geeze maybe i’ll just keep my lip zipped from now on…oh no wait, i just remembered – i don’t give the slightest fuck what brack thinks about wanting to silence my annoying ladybrain opinions, how liberating!)

  28. SamLowry says:

    This ties into a new article on Cracked about campus rape, written by a young guy, and what amazes me is that he’s repeating the same “Take Back the Night” rhetoric I’ve been hearing on the local campus for nearly thirty years and, as the statistics prove, it’s working just as well now as it did then, meaning not at all.

    These folks actually believe that if you make all men sit through a seminar where they’ll hear that rape is bad, illegal, and hurtful (because apparently they were unclear on the concept), then rape will magically disappear. And after the next seminar, where everyone gets told that stealing is bad, you’ll be able to leave your laptop and phone unattended in the library while you go take a whiz.

    Sorry for linking rape and theft once again, but I believe both result from Eloi meeting Morlocks, the naive childlike utopian introduced to a savage reality that respects naught but selfishness and violence. Good luck taking the night back from that. (And if I just made Republicans sound like Morlocks…did you have another question?)

    So…it looks like the Rock really didn’t want to make a gladiator movie, eh? Gotta cram that whole Greek part of his history back into the closet where it belongs.

  29. leahnz says:

    samlowry, obviously this is a complex topic and i don’t know from these seminars of which you speak – sounds like way too little too late – but i and many others believe that consent is a concept that can be effectively taught, especially to young people (ALL young people). for example at my son’s school (co-ed high school) as part of their health/sex ed class they had an entire section on consent, which was terrific; basically the kids were all taught what consent means and what ‘enthusiastic consent’ consists of, that it’s never acceptable to initiate sexual contact with someone who’s too out of it to enthusiastically consent (meaning active and willing positive participation by both parties in the act); i thought it was a great way to take a proactive, positive and gender-neutral approach to the issue of sex, consent, agency and responsibility, and if we start at a young age to teach respect and consideration for the agency of others it may counteract and begin to wear away at the insidious messages of entitlement and control that contribute to the current culture of sexual assault/violence/abuse. of course there are many more aspects that need to be addressed to change the current culture but i was pretty stoked to see this type of positive proactive approach at my kid’s school anyway (i mean of course this stuff should be taught at home first and foremost, but i think learning things amongst your peers at school can be a powerful tool).

  30. SamLowry says:

    Sounds like a great program, Leah; if you start young enough then perhaps you can change some minds, but the kind of dudebro who will spike a girl’s drink, drag her to a back room and invite all his buddies to partake knows he’s doing something wrong and not even a million workshops will change his behavior.

    That’s why I said “some”–there will always be a predatory segment of the population that should be locked away from the rest of us as soon as they can be diagnosed; when I was 11 years old one of my classmates reworked the Coke commercial to “I’d like to take a woman and throw her on a bed.” Two years later he broke a girl’s arm during a “date” and then he vanished–I don’t know if he transferred to another school because no one wanted to associate with him anymore or, more imaginatively, perhaps the grownups had solved the problem in a more permanent manner (it was a backwoods redneck town). BTW, to anyone to jumped to the conclusion that he wasn’t “one of us”, shame on you because he was white.

    In an amusing piece of parallelism, I just saw this story on the front page about the severely underpaid voice of Thomas the Tank Engine: “‘I find it ironic,’ Sherman said, ‘that most of the shows that Hit Entertainment puts out are about worlds where good people get rewarded, justice happens, and bad things happen to bad people.'”

    “They themselves don’t live up to that world in any way.”

  31. SamLowry says:

    Darn timer; I’d have erased that last bit and replaced it with this:

    Britain may have a sexist culture – but at least it’s British sexism, eh?

    “Not as bad as Saudi Arabia, eh? That’s a banner for feminists of all stripes to march behind.”

  32. spassky says:

    I had no idea about what Maher said, but what disturbs me more than the pretty explicit misogyny, is his naive treatment of the gaza issue… he is a blind blind man if he is characterizing the relationship as being about a “crazy bitch” one needs to “slap” into submission… ugh

    And, yes, I do believe his is an idiot as well, not because of his comments, but because of how absolutely thick he seems… he is a phony progressive who uses progressive talking points in an obtuse and mindlessly offensive way in order to galvanize an audience of people who would rather watch crap like this than get a balanced viewpoint… don’t get me started on how people are lashing out against stewart (who I don’t particularly like either but acknowledge as a person much more informed than Maher)…

    In addition, I’ve been back in the US for a month visiting a sick relative, and I have been thoroughly disgusted by the news coverage in this country (maybe not the coverage itself, but how people accept it as truth so frequently). I know there are people who take what Maher (not to mention others in the US news media) says as authoritative in some way, and that scares the living shit out of me.

  33. EtGuild2 says:

    Well…I liked “Lucy,” but don’t call it a Besson comeback. It is his best film as a director this millennium, but only by a bit. It reminded me a lot of “The Island,” another film featuring ScarJo. It has a lot of big ideas, but approaches them in the most incredibly stupid way possibly. The action sequences are pretty great though…similar to “Salt.”

    Also ashamed to admit I kind of enjoyed “Hercules.” It knows it’s dumb. Ratner, for all his failings, has usually been self aware.

    The interesting thing is that “Lucy” is tracking significantly ahead of “Hercules.” We truly are in a new age.

  34. YancySkancy says:

    It’s been kind of sad to see Kevin Sorbo taking heat for thinking he should have had a cameo in Ratner’s HERCULES. The reaction seems to be along the lines of, “Dumb TV actor. Chris Nolan didn’t put Adam West in THE DARK KNIGHT, so who the hell do you think YOU are?” But you know, it’s Brett Ratner’s HECULES, for crying out loud, not Terrence Malick’s. Why not a little nod to the TV Hercules fans, just for fun? Totally unnecessary, of course, but so is the movie, I’m guessing.

    I met Sorbo once, and he seemed really friendly and down to earth, FWIW.

  35. leahnz says:

    “what disturbs me more than the pretty explicit misogyny, is his naive treatment of the gaza issue… he is a blind blind man if he is characterizing the relationship as being about a “crazy bitch” one needs to “slap” into submission… ugh”

    fwiw, THIS comment of spassky’s is what i meant when i said maher was a moronic asshole; making a misogynist comment, yeah that makes maher a dick, which he undoubtedly is, but the mindset that follows the path of, “won’t i be pithy and amusing if i use uber-cliché misogynist violence to make a joke about this horribly fraught human conflict the result of which is scores of people are dying right now” that makes him an IGNORAMOUS. but yeah, I missed the point, har de har, no i think it’s maher’s ‘fans’ that miss the point about what completely gormless fuckwad and lacking in any actual insight maher is.

    (samlowry i hear you, unfortunately it’s true that a small pernicious segment of often-recidivist sexual predators, who tend to be responsible for a disproportionate number of sexual assaults, are rarely held responsible and allowed to get away with it; when this changes that may signal a sea-change in the way sexual assault is dealt with in society)

  36. Bulldog68 says:

    Meanwhile, in news from the Ad Nauseum Daily, Pirates of the Caribbean 5 is announced for release July 7th 2017. Oh Joy.

  37. movieman says:

    Et- What did you think of “Guardians of the Galaxy”?
    I thought it was fun (albeit a good 20 minutes too long). But I kind of liked “Howard the Duck” 28 summers ago, too
    The biggest takeaway is that Chris Pratt can indeed carry a movie…even a big, rambling, messy tentpole.
    For my money, it’s the kitschiest, most baroque movie of its kind since Mike Hodges’ “Flash Gordon.”
    I mean that as a compliment, lol.
    Gunn does a decent enough job working on a (much!) bigger scale than his norm. Yet I couldn’t help thinking that a “Repo Man”-era Alex Cox would have been the ideal director.
    (And that Cox’s version would have been rated “R.”)

  38. SamLowry says:

    I have to admit that every time I thought about this HERCULES movie, “Kevin Sorbo” popped into my head immediately. I had to think a few moments to remind myself that, no, someone else was starring in this one, despite the fact that I might have watched 2 episodes of the TV series, total, 17 or 18 years ago.

    Because Xena was far, far better.

    In other news, it was “funny” that Stewart did a segment portraying himself as an anti-Semitic Jew because he dared to criticize Israel’s recent bout of murderous idiocy, yet if you criticize America’s drone program (or pick any other recent American idiocy) you aren’t slammed as anti-Christian. I guess that’s what happens when there’s no separation of church and state in Israel (and why Israeli teens think it’s a hoot to take duckface selfies at Auchwitz because their elders keep waving the bloody Holocaust shirt to prove they’re more Israeli than their Israeli opponents).

  39. SamLowry says:

    Here’s a better quote from that article about STAR WARS from the front page:

    “American works of art belong to the American public; they are part of our cultural history… People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society.”

    –George Lucas, speaking before Congress, March 3rd, 1988

  40. Chucky says:

    It is time to ban LexG — permanently. He’s no different from the Boston shock jock who used the B word to describe a woman who works for Fox Sports.

  41. christian says:

    What Spassky said.

    Maher is an asshole even tho i agree with some of his stances. He brings on racist loons like Charles Murray and treats him like he’s a for reals scientist. He brings on the criminal Darrell Issa repeatedly, giving him cover. His idiotic “gay mafia” comments with pro hysteric Andrew Sullivan over the Mozilla firing shows how quick he is to knee jerkism. Not to mention his anti-vaccine idiocy has been well documented.

    He’s too often like most libertarians: white entitled and often wrong. Combine that with the comic’s need to dominate with cheap jokes….

  42. SamLowry says:

    “Our First Glimpse of Batman V. Superman Includes the New Wonder Woman”.

    So how long do you think we’ll have to wait for someone to release a color-corrected version of this movie? All the degraded colors in MAN OF STEEL were bad enough, but good gravy this is awful. (…and Affleck needs to run his ass around the block a few times.)

  43. leahnz says:

    xena woman

  44. SamLowry says:

    Yeah, if I was Robert Tapert I’d be calling my lawyer.

    The comparison is so obvious you really have to wonder if Snyder doesn’t remember Xena (he would’ve been 35 when it went off the air) or if Warner is so relaxed about ripping the show off because perhaps they own some rights?

    And yet they could’ve avoided this comparison altogether by simply putting some red, white or blue in her armor.

  45. SamLowry says:

    Holey moley, this is depressing:

    5 Behind-the-Scenes Features That Show Why Movies Went Wrong”.

    Nice to know, though, that anyone who considered TWILIGHT a movie worth discussing was wrong because it’s merely “emotional porn for girls”. So I guess that means TRANSFORMERS are merely testosterone porn for boys.

    Oh, and my condolences, Peter Jackson, since you apparently consider directing to be a burden of Herculean proportions.

  46. cadavra says:

    If the color in MAN OF STEEL had been any more desaturated, it might as well have been in B&W. The WW costume clearly indicates this is not going to change. The Nolan Legacy: Comic book movies (especially DC) can’t have “real” color.

  47. SamLowry says:

    Paramount deletes tweet of Australian ‘TMNT’ poster amid 9/11 controversy…because the poster showed the Turtles jumping out of an exploding skyscraper while the release date of “September 11” is clearly visible at the bottom.

    Idiots.

  48. SamLowry says:

    If you’d like to help keep the Hot Blog alive then be my guest; otherwise, we’re down to about four posts a day when there are no box office figures to talk about (and even then it’s like an argument over the Mets vs the Yankees).

    I’d rather talk about movies as movies (like why didn’t any critics mention that the world in HER is a socialist utopia?), but if you’d rather sit back and wait for someone to intermittently break into all caps and talk about his sexual needs then I have other things to do.

  49. EtGuild2 says:

    Can we get a new BYOB? Or a new post…DP, this blog had quite a comeback between mid-June and early July. Quite a bit of provocative and reflective content. And then it died all over again.

  50. Bulldog68 says:

    Re “5 Behind-the-Scenes Features That Show Why Movies Went Wrong”.”

    Sorry. How can you call Temple of Doom the worst Indiana Jones with Crystal Skull hanging around. And while I may be in the minority, I still consider Doom the second best of the series.

    And haven’t we heard enough of this Lucas raped my childhood bullshit.

  51. SamLowry says:

    If you’ll check the comments section, most respondents said TEMPLE OF DOOM qualifies as the worst of the three…because they’re pretending CRYSTAL SKULL doesn’t exist.

    It’s a Joke, Son! (as Foghorn Leghorn used to say…and that’s doubly relevant since it’s a movie title, too.)

  52. Hcat says:

    The Indy movies lost 2% of their mojo for each year they were released from the original. So temple of doom is about 6% off of one of the top greatest adventure movies of all time, Last Crusade is 16% and if they had kept making them in the interim they would have continuied to decline until they reached the crystal skull level whose only significance is costume design (love to see him in the hat again) and sound editing (punches in Indy movies are unique, so much so I imagine they are copyrighted).

The Hot Blog

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