MCN Columnists
Mike Wilmington

Columns By Mike WilmingtonWilmington@moviecitynews.com

Wilmington on DVDs: Slumdog Millionaire, Danton, Il Generale Della Rovere and more …

PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW Slumdog Millionaire (Three-and-a-Half Stars) U.K./India; Danny Boyle Slumdog Millionaire is a dancing, crackling shockwave of a movie, an incandescent

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The Mount Rushmore of Forgettable Actors

It’s a troubling time in theaters right now, not for most moviegoers who see a movie or two a week, but for people like me who have an addiction; I don’t really know what to do with myself. I’ve caught up withDuplicity, I Love You, Man, and pretty much every movie I have any interest in…

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Monster Smash

The debut of Monsters vs. Aliens scared up an estimated $57.3 million to handily take control of weekend movie viewing.The Haunting in Connecticut, a more traditional chiller, also bowed to an impressive $23.2 million and the two top sellers accounted for approximately 55% of the frame’s admissions. The session also saw a rather flaccid bow…

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Wiley Wiggins Star of Sorry, Thanks

This week Noah talks to Wiley Wiggins about his new film, Sorry, Thanks, being in the cast of Dazed and Confused, mumblecore films, and great sci-fi films. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with Wiley Wiggins

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In Which We Discuss the Need for Nicolas Cage to Stop Making Bad Movies

I like Nicolas Cage, but he needs a new agent. Whatever happened to the Cage who started out making films like Racing with the Moon, Peggy Sue Got Married, Raising Arizona and Moonstruck? Or the later Cage, who intrigued with potent, evocative performances in Wild at Heart and Leaving Las Vegas? Or even the Cage who carried solid, action-packed films like The Rock…

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Wilmington on DVDs: A Secret, Dodes’ka-den, L’Innocente and more … plus, this week’s box set

PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW A Secret (Un Secret) (Three-and-a-Half Stars) France; Claude Miller, 2007 (Strand Releasing) The young French film critic Francois Truffaut used to snipe at the obvious craftsmanship and overt

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The Brilliance of Hunger

Hunger shed light on something of which I, being an American who was born two years after the events depicted in the film, was unaware. While I can’t say that I walked out of the film with a greater understanding of the political reason why IRA prisoners would deliberately starve themselves to achieve their goals,…

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Knowing … and Not Knowing

The science-fiction anxiety raiser Knowing led the weekend box office chart with an estimated $24.1 million. In a session where a trio of national releases was expected to be closely bunched, the separations were noticeable. The romantic comedy I Love You, Man debuted in second spot with $17.6 million and the tongue-in-cheek thriller Duplicity took…

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ShoWest ’08

LAS VEGAS – Not many robins add a visit to the Strip to their itinerary, as they migrate north from their winter digs in Mexico. Blossoming fruit trees are few and far between and the fancies of young men turn less often to love than the pleasures associated with strip clubs and wagering on the…

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SXSW’s Janet Pierson on Stepping Up to the Plate and Out of the Shadows

Photo Credit: Jason Whyte This is Janet Pierson‘s “Hillary Moment,” and she’s loving every minute of it. For Pierson, taking over the reins of the South by Southwest is something that’s been decades in the making. Pierson started college at 16, where she quickly determined that film was going to be a part of her future. …

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Wilmington on DVDs: Synecdoche, NY, Faust and more …plus, this week’s box set

PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW Synecdoche, New York (Three-and-a-Half Stars) U. S.; Charlie Kaufman, 2008 (Sony) Synecdoche (def.): A figure of speech where the whole is used for

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South by Southwest by Northeast, or, Mumblecore Must Die

Sometimes I really love the direction that movie distribution is going in. With movie theaters becoming less and less of a place I’d like to visit because of rude crowds, rising ticket prices and sticky floors, I enjoy having the option of watching something at home. With HD becoming more of a standard and the…

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Witch Way to the Front

Race to Witch Mountain ambled to the top of weekend ticket sales with an estimated $24.8 million. The frame’s other national debuts also showed predictable potency. The horror remake Last House on the Left ranked third with a $14.6 million gross and the twenty-something comedy Miss March mustered $2.3 million. Additionally there were a slew…

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Mark Webber Director of Explicit Ills

This week Noah talks to actor turned writer/director Mark Webber about his new film Explicit Ills, working with Jim Jarmusch and Ethan Hawke, and starring in Nickelodeon’s Snow Day. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with Director Mark Webber

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The Big Blue Elephant in the Corner of the Room

Who’s afraid of the big blue cock, indeed? Watchmen finally opened this weekend, and all around the internet film journalists are endlessly analyzing the film’s opening weekend box office take, and whether the film will make back its bank, and how many DVDs it will have to sell to break even, and whether a Blu-ray Watchmen…

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Wilmington on DVDs: Pinocchio, Milk, Happy-Go-Lucky and more … plus, this week’s box set

PICK OF THE WEEK: CLASSICS Pinocchio (Two Discs) (Four Stars) U.S.; Ben Sharpsteen, Hamilton Luske 1940 (Walt Disney) When you wish upon a star…. A little wooden-boy puppet named Pinocchio

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10 Years Later: Still Missing Kubrick, Still Loving Eyes Wide Shut

When I found out that Stanley Kubrick died on the morning of March 7th, 1999, my eyes welled up with tears like I had lost a family member. It might seem silly that I was crying over the death of a filmmaker who I had never met, but it had only been about six years prior…

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A Watchmen Pot Boils

Propelled by the debut of Watchmen, domestic box office rose by 12% from 2008. The adaptation of the acclaimed graphic novel opened to an estimated $56.7 million and accounted for roughly 50% of all movie ticket sales on its opening weekend. The Watchmen saga – at least in regard to its tortured journey to the…

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Andy Fickman Director of Race to Witch Mountain

This week Noah talks to Race to Witch Mountain director Andy Fickman about action movies, the making of Anaconda and beating up The Rock. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with Director Andy Fickman

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I Hate It Because You Love It

Every year, after the dust settles post-Oscars, it becomes easier to see the recently nominated films more clearly. There is so much passion on both sides when it comes to almost every film that it becomes hard sometimes to parse through your nuanced feelings about a film. Similar to a political race, the Oscar nominations…

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Columns

Gary Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Ophelia, Ambition, Werewolf in Girls' Dorm, Byleth, Humble Pie, Good Omens, Yellowstone …More

rohit aggarwal on: The DVD Wrapup: Ophelia, Ambition, Werewolf in Girls' Dorm, Byleth, Humble Pie, Good Omens, Yellowstone …More

https://bestwatches.club/ on: The DVD Wrapup: Diamonds of the Night, School of Life, Red Room, Witch/Hagazussa, Tito & the Birds, Keoma, Andre’s Gospel, Noir

Gary Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Sleep With Anger, Ralph Wrecks Internet, Liz & Blue Bird, Hannah Grace, Unseen, Jupiter's Moon, Legally Blonde, Willard, Bang … More

Gary Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Bumblebee, Ginsburg, Buster, Silent Voice, Nazi Junkies, Prisoner, Golden Vampires, Highway Rat, Terra Formars, No Alternative … More

GDA on: The DVD Wrapup: Bumblebee, Ginsburg, Buster, Silent Voice, Nazi Junkies, Prisoner, Golden Vampires, Highway Rat, Terra Formars, No Alternative … More

Larry K on: The DVD Wrapup: Sleep With Anger, Ralph Wrecks Internet, Liz & Blue Bird, Hannah Grace, Unseen, Jupiter's Moon, Legally Blonde, Willard, Bang … More

Gary Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Shoplifters, Front Runner, Nobody’s Fool, Peppermint Soda, Haunted Hospital, Valentine, Possum, Mermaid, Guilty, Antonio Lopez, 4 Weddings … More

gwehan on: The DVD Wrapup: Shoplifters, Front Runner, Nobody’s Fool, Peppermint Soda, Haunted Hospital, Valentine, Possum, Mermaid, Guilty, Antonio Lopez, 4 Weddings … More

Gary J Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Peppermint, Wild Boys, Un Traductor, Await Instructions, Lizzie, Coby, Afghan Love Story, Elizabeth Harvest, Brutal, Holiday Horror, Sound & Fury … More

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