MCN Columnists
Douglas Pratt

The Ultimate DVD Geek By Douglas PrattPratt@moviecitynews.com

Youth Without Youth

Francis Ford Coppola’s lovely intellectual comic book fantasy, Youth without Youth, is presented as a captivating DVD release by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. To begin with, the 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound is fantastic. Its hyper-dimensionality and directional effects significantly enhance a viewer’s involvement with the film’s atmosphere and environment. The sound is then supported by Mihai Malaimare,…

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The Golden Compass: Lost Bearings

When was the last time a movie broke your heart? It happened to me 45 seconds into the New Line Home Entertainment Widescreen release, The Golden Compass , as a voiceover narration proceeded to explain in itemized fashion almost every mystery the narrative holds. Yes, the 2007 film was co-produced with Scholastic and comes in a…

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Superbad

..MCN DVD Wrap ..The DVD Page Except that the heroes act much more like high school sophomores than seniors, even nerdy seniors,Superbad, doesn’t cop out the way the other 2007 comedy that shared a number of creators and cast members, Knocked Up did, and is a riotously amusing nighttown adventure, similar in a lot of ways…

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National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets

Only a grouch could seriously dislike the high-energy adventure fantasy, National Treasure 2 Book of Secrets, released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (UPC#786936735390, $30). Nicolas Cage, whose often eccentric screen persona fits perfectly with the 2007 film’s fanciful alterations of government institutions and monuments, stars in the tone-perfect follow up to the first National Treasurefeature, with his…

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The Ultimate DVD Geek

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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