

Columns By Other Voicesvoices@moviecitynews.com
Part Two: The First 120 Hrs. Of Production
May 17, 1982 FIRST DAY OF SHOOTING The first of two days on location, out doors, in Modesto, California, two hours south of San Francisco where we’re headed for ten days after this… Sonny Landham & James Remar Get Dirty Basically our job is to shoot the sequence of Ganz and his native American partner…
Read the full article »Chop Shop

Willets Points is so far off the beaten path trod by visitors to New York, it might as well be in Sao Paulo, Tijuana or Manila, which it more closely resembles. Equals parts scrap yard, flea market and slum, the “Iron Triangle” is the daytime home to a tightly knit community of mechanics, sanders, buffers,…
Read the full article »Me and Sex and the City: A Love-Hate Relationship
A Brief History I haven’t been to a screening yet of Sex and the City: The Movie and it’s not just because I haven’t been invited, but because I would never miss the opportunity to see this on the big screen with a throngs of frenzied women and the ingenious ways in which they snuck cosmos…
Read the full article »Crystal Blue Persuasion…
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder and if that’s not quite the case for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, one can certainly say that audiences maintained a healthy enthusiasm for the fedora-topped adventurer. The long in the musing fourth chapter of the franchise grossed an estimated $123.7 million during…
Read the full article »Sangre de Mi Sangre

Immigration has become such a hot-button topic in America, it’s almost impossible now to convince those who think everything is political that a drama about immigrants needn’t also takes sides. If a threat of deportation isn’t clear and present – or an uninvited guest in our country isn’t gorging himself on tax dollars — some…
Read the full article »Part One: Before The Movie Shoots
Walter Hill APRIL 18, 1982 Last Thursday Walter Hill phones. A call my agent had promised me would come but didn’t know when. I’d hung on for four long days. He was calling, I knew, already, to discuss my gong to work for him on a go picture in active pre production at Paramount called 48 Hours….
Read the full article »Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Anxiety over the fallout from a botched jewelry store robbery is the engine turning the emotional grinder inSidney Lumet’s fine 2007 drama, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, a ThinkFilm Image Entertainment release. Philip Seymour Hoffmanand Ethan Hawke are brothers, frantically trying to cover their tracks and deal with the absence of the cash flow they thought would…
Read the full article »John Cusack .. Stuff Happens
This is incredibly tough for me to write. You see, I’m an enormous John Cusack fan and not just because I grew up watching Better Off Dead, The Sure Thing, One Crazy Summer, and Say Anything… over and over again. Of course, I remembered him in all those films and thought of him fondly, but he was…
Read the full article »Caspian Sees Wave…
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian crested with an estimated $56.7 million to rank as the weekend’s top movie attraction. The anticipated commercial potency of the franchise had competitors large and small avoiding a head on and giving the youth appeal adventure a clear shot among debuting national releases. Debuting niche and regional newcomers were…
Read the full article »Are We Ready For More Bush?
I’m an Oliver Stone apologist. I can find something to admire in all of his films and I love at least four of them (Salvador, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, Natural Born Killers). I admire his unique point of view, even if it is a bit out-there at times, because he’s truly an artist…
Read the full article »Torpid Racer!
Iron Man rigidly held sway in the marketplace despite a 49% box office decline with an estimated $50.2 million gross. That proved to be bad news for the bow of Speed Racer that was expected to rank a close second but wound up fighting a hard race with the romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas….
Read the full article »Fall of the Roman Empire
Remove the handful of action and battle scenes, andAnthony Mann’s epic-styled 1964 take on The Fall of the Roman Empire would seem to work perfectly well as a stageplay. There is an awful lot of talking in the movie, and its sluggish pace, combined with its relatively dark atmosphere, led not only to the film’s financial…
Read the full article »Home is Where My Eyes Are
The big recent news story that is sending shockwaves through the movie industry was iTunes announcing that they are partnering with many of the big studios in a deal that will allow iTunes to offer new releases for download on the same day that those films are released on DVD. A lot of people believe…
Read the full article »Hollywood, Inc.: May 5, 2008
By R.J. Matson
Read the full article »Mahvalous!
The industry crossed its fingers and let out a sigh in hopes that Iron Man would kick off the summer season with a $100 million debut. And when Thursday sneaks were tossed into the mix the tally reached an estimated $101.8 million. In the record books it ranked second among non-sequel debut weekends and elevated…
Read the full article »Mr. Lonely

The television was on, but I wasn’t much attention to it. My ears up perked up, however, when I heard a disembodied voice say, “From the director of Gummoand Julien Donkey-Boy.” Or, did I? It would be difficult to imagine two less-promotable films than Harmony Korine’s wildly eccentric and inarguably challenging Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy (a.k.a., Dogma # 6)….
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