MCN Columnists
Mike Wilmington

Wilmington By Mike WilmingtonWilmington@moviecitynews.com

Wilmington on DVDs: Pick of the Week, New. Biutiful

PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW Biutiful (Also Blu-ray) (Four Stars) Spain: Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, 2011 (Roadside Attractions) In Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu’s sad and moving film Biutiful, Javier Bardem gives an extraordinary performance as a dying man named Uxbal: a small time Barcelona hustler working a variety of scams and shady deals to support his two young…

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Wilmington on Movies: Meek’s Cutoff

  Meek’s Cutoff (Three and a Half Stars) U. S.: Kelly Reichardt, 2011 Meek’s Cutoff, like the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, is an art film Western for a contemporary audience, and an unusually good one — made by a director and writer (Kelly Reichardt and Jonathan Raymond), who show a real feeling for what it…

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Wilmington on Movies: Kung Fu Panda 2

  Kung Fu Panda 2 (Two and a Half Stars) U.S.: Jennifer Yuh Nelson, 2011  Kung Fu Panda 2 is a cute, likable movie, done with a lot of skill and A-level talent, and with all the visual virtuosity we expect by now from big-budget cartoon features — especially from sequels to gigantic hits, like…

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Wilmington on Movies: The Hangover Part II

     The Hangover, Part II (Two Stars) U.S.: Todd Phillips, 2011 I laughed a lot at 2009’s big comedy hit, The Hangover — that tense and raunchy tale of three longtime buddies at a wedding who wake up after a night of incredible but totally forgotten debauchery and have to try to figure out…

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Wilmington on DVD: The Rest. I Am Number Four, The Roommate, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, El Topo, Hurry Sundown, Grand Prix

I Am Number Four (One a Half Stars) U.S.: D. J. Caruso 2011 (Touchstone/DreamWorks) Sometimes, you look at a movie, and you know it’s going to give you a bad time. But what can you do? I Am Number Four is a super-glossy, not very good science fiction teen thriller, produced by Michael Bay and directed…

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Wilmington on DVD, Pick of the Week: Box Set. Silent Naruse

PICK OF THE WEEK: BOX SET Silent Naruse (Three Discs) (Three and a Half Stars) Japan: Mikio Naruse, 1931-34 (Criterion/Eclipse) He was a sad-looking man who’d had an unhappy love life, early feuds with his bosses, and little beyond his career to make him feel any joy or optimism about life. He’d been raised in…

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Wilmington on DVD, Picks of the Week: Kes, Gnomeo and Juliet

PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW Gnomeo and Juliet (Two and a Half Stars) U.S.-U.K.: Kelly Asbury, 2011 This movie seems to have a totally crazy idea — a musical animated feature riff on William Shakespeare‘s unbeatable Romeo and Juliet, with two sets of feuding lawn ornaments (mostly gnomes, but also a green plastic frog, and…

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Wilmington on Movies: Midnight in Paris

  Midnight in Paris (Four Stars) U. S./France: Woody Allen, 2011 Midnight in Paris is a funny valentine to the City of Light, a sweet, jazzy fairy tale about the wonders of Parisian art and artist cliques in the ‘20s — a time when you could actually (if you were connected enough) go to a…

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Wilmington on Movies: Louder Than a Bomb

Louder than a Bomb (Three and a Half Stars) U. S.: Greg Jacobs & Jon Siskel, 2011             Louder than a Bomb made me feel good about some of the kids of today, made me feel that they’re probably being maligned, at least in part, by most other America movies…

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Wilmington on Movies: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

The “Pirate“ series may be at its height of its production expertise here, it may look better than ever, and it may have recaptured some of the initial light, breezy touch. But, script wise, it’s clearly running out of planks to walk. Not enough to hurt the movie financially — but enough to justify at least some of the fussilade of amusing critical blasts the picture has generated. (Audiences will like the show better.)

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Wilmington on DVD, The Rest: The Mechanic, Blue Valentine, No Strings Attached, The Alien Movies

CURRENT AND RECENT DVD RELEASES The Mechanic (Two Stars) U.S.: Simon West, 2011 (Sony) Remember 1972? The great movie year of The Godfather, of Cabaret, of Deliverance, of Frenzy, and Junior Bonner, and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Fellini’s Roma, Cries and Whispers, Solaris, Ulzana‘s Raid, The King of Marvin Gardens, Avanti!, Sleuth, and…

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Wilmington on Movies: Thor

THOR By Mike Wilmington   Thor (Three Stars) U.S.: Kenneth Branagh, 2011   High on the endless spires and bridges of Asgard, plunged in a vast gloom in monumental, sinister “Viking Noir” decor, besieged by Frost Giants, and always in danger of tumbling into New Mexico, dwells the Odin family.   Ah, the Odins! There…

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Wilmington on Movies: Bridesmaids

  Bridesmaids (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.: Paul Feig, 2011 Kristen Wiig is one funny lady, and Bridesmaids — in which she is both star and co-writer — is one funny movie.  That’s hardly news. “Bridesmaids” is one of the best reviewed, best liked Hollywood comedies of the year. By current consensus, it’s also…

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Wilmington on DVD, Picks of the Week: The Illusionist, Patton, Tracy & Hepburn: The Definitive Collection, Mon Oncle

PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW The Illusionist (Four Stars) France: Sylvain Chomet, 2010 (Sony Classics) In this wonderful feature cartoon, master old-style French animator Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville) takes an unproduced Jacques Tati script about an aging magician (who looks and dresses just like Tati, with trench coat, hat, lanky frame and mildly distracted air),…

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Wilmington on Movies: The Princess of Montpensier

The Princess of Montpensier (Four Stars) France: Bertrand Tavernier, 2010 The Princess of Montpensier is a splendid French historical drama, a movie in the tradition of Jean Renoir, of Luchino Visconti, of Jean-Paul Rappeneau — and of course, in the best tradition of the filmmaker who made it, the usually first-rate, sometimes magnificent Bertrand Tavernier (Coup…

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At the TCM Classic Film Festival: From An American in Paris to Fantasia

The second edition of the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood…. It began and it ended in that most magical of all super-Hollywood movie palaces, Grauman‘s Chinese Theatre — with two great examples of the kind of things Hollywood does best: A classic Gene Kelly Hollywood Musical and a classic Walt Disney feature length cartoon: An…

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Wilmington on DVDs: The Dilemma, 12 Angry Men, Smiles of a Summer Night, The Green Hornet

PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW The Dilemma (Three Stars) U.S.: Ron Howard, 2011 (Universal) Vince Vaughn and Kevin James make a nice couple in The Dilemma, a buddy-comedy-drama (or maybe a drama-buddy-comedy) in which they play a couple of Chicago pals-since-college and business partners. Vaughn is fast-talking huckster Ronny Valentine and James is slower-talking design…

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Wilmington

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Carrie Mulligan on: Wilmington on DVDs: The Great Gatsby

isa50 on: Wilmington on DVDs: Gladiator; Hell's Half Acre; The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Rory on: Wilmington on Movies: Snow White and the Huntsman

Andrew Coyle on: Wilmington On Movies: Paterson

tamzap on: Wilmington on DVDs: The Magnificent Seven, Date Night, Little Women, Chicago and more …

rdecker5 on: Wilmington on DVDs: Ivan's Childhood

Ray Pride on: Wilmington on Movies: The Purge: Election Year

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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