MCN Columnists
Leonard Klady

Columns By Leonard KladyKlady@moviecitynews.com

The Weekend Report: January 30, 2011

The debut of the ExoRcIsT-lite The Rite possessed the top of the weekend box office charts with an estimated $14.7 million. In another soft film going frame the other national opener The Mechanic ranked fifth with an $11.1 million bow.

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Another Sundance, ANOTHER EARTH

After Thursday night’s Library screening of Another Earth in Park City, lead-co-writer-co-producer Brit Marling and director-cinematographer-co-writer-co-producer Mike Cahill take questions. More reviews, including of this Fox Searchlight acquisition, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Redemption of General Butt Naked, I Melt With You, and dozens of photographs, after the festival’s end: there’s so much to do, writing…

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Wilmington on Movies: The Rite and Nora’s Will

The Rite (Two and a Half Stars) U.S.; Mikael Hafstrom, 2011 Exorcism movies are intended to scare the hell out of you, and The Rite is a classy, but forgettable example. Purporting to tell us a true story, about the devilish experiences of a Chicago priestly novitiate — the not-that-sure-of-his-vocation Michael Kovack (Colin O’Donoghue), who…

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The DVD Wrap: Red, Secretariat, Broadcast News, White Wedding, and more …

 Red: Blu-ray There are so many holes stitched into the fabric of Red, it would make a wedge of Swiss cheese turn green with envy … or is that mold? No matter, because the whole point of Robert Schwentke’s comic thriller is to enjoy watching a veritable over-the-hill gang of retired CIA agents – played…

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DVD Geek: The Town

At one point in the movie, the robbers put on uniforms to escape detection because, Affleck explains, “People see a uniform and not a person. I always wondered about that until we had to shoot the piece going to the train on the end, and I actually decided to take the subway from where we were to South Station, where the train was, wearing this outfit, and not a single person said anything to me.” Except one old woman, who came up to ask him for directions.

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Picturing Sundance Day 4

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Frenzy on the Wall: If I Had a Ballot 2011

I’m going to give my picks for the Oscars in the major awards, as if I had an actual ballot. Since the Academy cannot be trusted to make the right decisions and will probably make the safe choice whenever possible, it’s fun to give my perspective. Needless to say, I don’t see the Academy sending me a ballot anytime soon.

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David Carr Talks Times And “Going Toward Things”

THE AFTERNOON AFTER THE SUNDANCE 2011 PREMIERE OF Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times—where post-screening Tweeters were well-impressed that New York Times reporter David Carr was greeted at the Q&A afterwards with a “rock-star standing ovation”—director Andrew Rossi and Carr talked about media at a casual Bing Bar panel moderated by Anne…

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Weekend Report: January 23, 2011

Zonk Went the Strings of My Heart  The debut of rom-com No Strings Attached led weekend box office sales with an estimated $20.3 million. It was the session’s only national debut in what proved to be a depressed marketplace. Also new were several late year Oscar hopefuls. The endurance saga No Way Back struggled to…

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Sundance Day 2: World-Premiering THE INTERRUPTERS

Until a magnificent movie in the middle of the evening, the highlight of a woozy first day of Sundance was the sight of Jeff Dowd, “The Dude,” pouring a sleeve of Emergen-C into his Sundance 11 Nalgene water bottle and advising his friends, “Zinc’s better.” A day late and sleep-deprived from the get-go, I had…

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On Predicting Sundance Bests

Predicting film festival bests isn’t my game. But I am hopeful for surprises like a couple years back when, toward the end of Sundance, Robert Koehler is urgently telling me to run, don’t think, go directly to an end-of-festival presser for Man On Wire. (Thank you, Bob.) I’d gotten the same pleasure from being at…

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Sundance Review: Silent House

I admit to being a bit paranoid about big spooky houses and things that go bump in the night. I can’t imagine that I would ever choose to live in a big, rambling old house so isolated from civilization that my cell phone wouldn’t work in an emergency. That’s just asking for trouble. And if…

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Sundance Day 1: The Bear Went Up The Mountain…

A shuttle filled with Sundance-bound travelers. IPhones bing, tinggg, jing, bongggg. (Withstanding the text of time.) The sound-swarm is like a Brian Eno app on an iPad, like Bloom or Trope. It’s not until halfway up into the mountains, as the gray sky cracks blue over a crest up ahead, higher up, that a biz…

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Sundance Dispatch: Good News, Bad News

The good news was, I flew Southwest, where Bags Fly Free!(tm) So I was able to bring two bags. Major bonus, because that meant I could bring more boots! And a stash of food cheaper than it would cost me at The Market Formerly Known As Albertsons. The bad news was, my flight was delayed…

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Sundance Preview

The independent film world is already descending upon beautiful Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. The shuttles will be crowded, Main Street will be packed with film buffs, talent, people who are there to socialize and score some free swag, and probably Banksy will not show up this year to adorn Park City…

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“The Film That Changed My Life”: Richard Kelly On Brazil

Robert K. Elder’s latest book, “The Film that Changed My Life,” came together as he met filmmakers as part of his regular writing assignments, and then got them to expand on one film that changed their lives, and what form that “change” took. Among the thirty equally appealing conversations, Kevin Smith talks Slacker; Danny Boyle,…

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The Gronvall Files: Good Company: A Conversation with The Company Men Director John Wells

As this year’s Sundance Film Festival unfolds, one of the films that made a splash there a year ago, The Company Men, John Wells’s feature directorial debut, is gathering steam in its commercial rollout. The acclaimed writer-producer behind TV hits like ER and The West Wing, as well as Southland (which found a new home…

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The DVD Wrap: Stone, Lebanon, Buried, Piranha 3-D, Death Race 2 … and more

Stone John Curran’s extremely creepy psycho-thriller, Stone, paints a portrait of a Middle America dominated by religious fanatics, talk-radio Cassandras, trailer trash, clandestine meth labs and two-bit criminals. Good people inhabit the same emotionally barren territory, but the potential for violence in their homes is as close as the nearest gun case, liquor cabinet or…

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Wilmington on DVDs: Lebanon, Shock Corridor, Dances with Wolves, Sherlock Jr. and more

We are inside an armored tank with four Israeli soldiers, in Beirut, in the throes of the Lebanon War. The battle is a raging hellfield punctuated with death, only barely comprehensible to the men or to us. Israelis battle Arabs battle Phalangists (Christian Arabs). The streets pop with gunfire. You can’t tell civilians from killers. The tank is hot and stinking and so small, the four can barely move around — tempers flaring, nerves frayed — as they roll though the streets, and peer through a periscope or gun sight seeking traps to avoid, enemies to kill.

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Frenzy on the Wall: Downsized and Dispirited, The Company Men Still Has Feeling

The Company Men is a satisfying film, but not an altogether successful one. However, I’m inclined to give it a pass for a lot of its faults because its cause is such a noble one. The film will serve as a time-capsule for future generations to be able to look back and pinpoint this particular…

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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