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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BYOB 8814

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14 Responses to “BYOB 8814”

  1. Mike says:

    I’m running out of movies on my Netflix queue. Any suggestions?

  2. Triple Option says:

    Did you ever see “Tell No One”, French film? Came out 8-9 years ago. “Departures” is available for streaming as well. It was a best foreign film from like 6-7 years ago. Four Minutes was a German film that you might not have heard of. I got that one on disc. You didn’t specify disc or streaming. maybe some parameters in style or genre would help.

    I haven’t seen Turtles yet but I was wondering if this’ll do anything for Megan Fox’ career. Then I was wondering if she hadn’t been booted from Trans3 would that have done anything for her besides the big payday itself. Prolly likely she wouldn’t have done the last one. Jonah Rex and Jenny’s bod didn’t do anything. How much ahead of where she’s at do you think she would’ve been? Do you think there’s any linger poison about her? I don’t know how good or bad she may really be. Articles will mention her past w/Bay but nothing to point to the overall blowback she may’ve experienced.

  3. movieman says:

    2 largely overlooked gems eminently worth watching on Netflix:

    Jaco van Dormael’s “Mr. Nobody” w/ Jared Leto in an even better performance than his Oscar-winning turn in “DBC.”

    Arnaud Desplechin’s “Jimmy P.” (Benicio del Toro has never been better).

  4. Mike says:

    I’m not too picky on genre, and prefer disc to streaming. Here are some recent ones I watched and liked: Robot & Frank, Pariah, Ernest & Celestine, Devil. Maybe no docs. I tend to catch the big ones that seem worth watching, but there are so many foreign, indie and dependent ones that slip through the cracks now. I’ve seen Tell No One, but not the others – they’ll go on the queue. Thanks.

  5. doug r says:

    I dunno if it’s still in rotation, but Shakes the Clown is the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies. And I saw Fantastic Voyage got added recently.

  6. cadavra says:

    Track down John Sayles’ HONEYDRIPPER. A remarkable film.

  7. Mike says:

    Seen Shakes. Loved some of Sayles, but sort of lost track of him. Passion Fish is a personal favorite.

  8. SamLowry says:

    MR NOBODY also showed up in my “recommend” queue and I agree that it’s a good movie; someone even came up with a PDF to explain all the possible timelines, which comes at the bottom of a lengthy article discussing the film.

  9. SamLowry says:

    Okay, it’s a jpeg, of a flow chart. My bad.

    Just don’t look at it until after you’ve seen the movie, not because it’ll reveal any shocking secrets but it’ll make you wonder “WTF is this?” and you might not want to watch it.

  10. Mike says:

    Triple Option, Departures was excellent! I’ll try Four Minutes soon.

    Also happened on Submarine, which knocked the socks off me. Then watched Cashback, which was god-awful.

  11. Triple Option says:

    Glad you liked it, Mike! Thanks!

  12. Hcat says:

    I couldn’t get through cashback either, but given the poster how do you not give it a shot. I’m a weak weak man

  13. Mike says:

    I kept waiting for Cashback to realize its whole premise was a setup for a darkly comedic rumination on working retail, and it just took itself SO seriously. Such an empty film.

    Departures has made me go back and watch After Life again, another Japanese movie about death and life. I haven’t seen it in years, but remembered loving it.

  14. movieman says:

    Another Netflix streaming title that’s definitely worth checking out is Zack Parker’s “Proxy.”
    It’s seriously fucked-up, but I mean that it in the nicest possible way.
    If Ti West is this generation’s John Carpenter, Parker could very well be the Millennial answer to Brian DePalma.
    And “Proxy” just might be Parker’s “Sisters.”

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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