MCN Weekend Archive for December, 2011

Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: The Help. The Debt.

  “The Help” (Three Stars) U.S.: Tate Taylor, 2011 Like smooth Kentucky Bourbon or hot cornbread and jambalaya, or like Ray Charles’ great bluesy versions of “Georgia on my Mind” and “America the Beautiful,” The Help is old-fashioned, flavorsome stuff — old-fashioned in many good ways, and a few not-so-good ones. Set in Jackson, Mississippi…

Read the full article »

The Weekend Report

Moviegoers were otherwise engaged this weekend and overall box office sank by slightly more than half. With no new national releases in the mix, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn easily held onto the top spot with an estimated $16.8 million.

Niche and exclusive newcomers generally did little to brighten the picture. The exception was the exclusive bow of the controversial Shame that grossed $364,000 from 10 engagements. Also good was Bollywood newcomer The Dirty Picture with a $263,000 tally at 52 venues. But otherwise it was the blahs across the ages and genders.

Read the full article »

Wilmington on Movies: Hugo

      Hugo (Four Stars) U.S.: Martin Scorsese, 2011  Martin Scorsese’s Hugo — a movie masterpiece if there ever was one — is a film for film lovers to dream on.  It’s an incredibility entertaining show. But how could it not be? Scorsese has made it at the peak of his craft and art,…

Read the full article » 1 Comment »

Friday Estimates, December 2, 2011

It’s not easy being green. But the green flows like blood for those wacky Twilight kids sucking the life out of The Muppets and the rest of he parade of family films (and Jack & Jill and The Descendants). Maybe Kermit should have worked on his abs.

Read the full article »

Wilmington on Movies: Shame

           Shame (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.-U.K.: Steve McQueen, 2011   There have always been lots of movies that show or exploit sex, but far fewer that try to explore it seriously, as a rich, meaningful subject, whether psychological or social. And there’s only a handful of that few that try to portray…

Read the full article » 2 Comments »

Box Office Hell — December 1

Our Players|Coming Soon|Box Office Prophets|Box Office Guru|EW|Box Office . com The Muppets|14.5|n/a|13.0|14.5|16.5 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1|14.0|n/a|14.5|15.0|16.0 Hugo|6.5|n/a|9.0|8.0|8.0 Happy Feet Two |6.4|n/a|n/a|6.0|6.3 Arthur Christmas|5.8|n/a|6.0|6.1|6.5

Read the full article »

Critics Roundup — December 1

Shame |Yellow||Green||Green Coriolanus (NY, LA – one week Oscar run) |Yellow||Green|| Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh) (limited) ||||Yellow|Red Outrage (limited) |||Yellow||

Read the full article »

The DVD Wrapup: Our Idiot Brother, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Radioactive Wolves, Another Earth, The Future, The Art of Getting By, Horror Express, Rules of the Game, Smallville …

Our Idiot Brother: Blu-ray It’s interesting how individual members of a family can be a close as peas in a pod or, in this case, as different from each other as snowflakes. For “Our Idiot Brother” to work, viewers must suspend their disbelief long enough to accept the possibility that a guileless flower child (Paul…

Read the full article » 1 Comment »

Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classics, Sets. Orpheus; La Villa Santo-Sospir; Jean Cocteau: Autobiography of an Unknown

      Orpheus (Also Blu-ray) (Two Discs) (Four Stars) France: Jean Cocteau, 1950 (Criterion Collection)   Jean Cocteau, the French artist-of-all-trades who mastered many forms — he painted, drew, wrote and made movies — was a fountain of talent and an apostle of art. He was also a bit of a dandy and a…

Read the full article »

MCN Weekend

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