Movie City News Archive for July, 2010

Julie Taymor's The Tempest North American Premiere lands Centerpiece Selection of New York Film Festival

48th New York Film Festival Sept. 24 – Oct. 10 NEW YORK, July 31, 2010 — The North American premiere of Julie Taymor’s The Tempest will be featured as the Centerpiece film at the 48th New York Film Festival on Saturday, October 2nd, 2010 in Alice Tully Hall, the Film Society of Lincoln Center announced…

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ANIMATION VOICE ARTISTS TO SPEAK UP AT THE ACADEMY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Beverly Hills, CA

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Disney Announces Sale of Miramax Films to Filmyard Holdings LLC

Sale to Include Rights in Miramax Film Library, Book Titles and Development Projects BURBANK, Calif., Jul 30, 2010 — The Walt Disney Company announced today the sale of Miramax Films to Filmyard Holdings LLC for over $660 million subject to certain adjustments. Partners in Filmyard include Los Angeles businessmen Ron Tutor, Tom Barrack, Colony Capital…

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Wilmington on Movies: Dinner for Schmucks, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, Charlie St. Cloud, The Concert, 8 1/2

Dinner for Schmucks (Two and a Half Stars) U.S.; Jay Roach, 2010 There are plenty of primo American comedy actors around right now; all we really need is the movies to put them in. Dinner for Schmucks, with its story courtesy  of French buddy-comedy master Francis Veber, and its showcase roles for Paul Rudd, Zach…

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LEN WISEMAN TO DIRECT

CULVER CITY, Calif., July 29, 2010

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A Star is Born

The outstanding George Cukor 1954 production of A Star Is Born has been reissued by Warner Home Video as a two-platter Deluxe Edition. The first version of the 176-minute feature was fit onto one side of a single platter, with special features placed on the other side. The new release splits the film onto two…

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WARNER HOME VIDEO ANNOUNCES FIRST WORLDWIDE BLU-RAY 3D™ BUNDLES

Three Critically Acclaimed IMAX® Films Make Their Blu-ray 3D Debuts; IMAX® Under the Sea 3D, IMAX® Space Station 3D and IMAX® Deep Sea 3D

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WARNER HOME VIDEO ANNOUNCES FIRST WORLDWIDE BLU-RAY 3D

Three Critically Acclaimed IMAX

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TICKETS NOW ON SALE FOR THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS HOWARD SHORE’S SCORE PERFORMED BY OVER 300 MUSICIANS LIVE TO FILM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FEATURING THE 21ST CENTURY ORCHESTRA THE GRAMMY® AWARD-WINNING BROOKLYN YOUTH CHORUS KAITLYN LUSK, SOPRANO CONDUCTED BY LUDWIG WICKI TWO PERFORMANCES ONLY, OCTOBER 8 & 9, 2010 AT RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL There is only one Lord of the Rings. Come share in the power.

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TICKETS NOW ON SALE FOR THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS HOWARD SHORE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FEATURING THE 21ST CENTURY ORCHESTRA THE GRAMMY

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Traverse City Film Festival Honors John Hughes with Michigan Filmmaker Award

TRAVERSE CITY, MI (July 27, 2010) – The sixth annual Traverse City Film Festival’s Michigan Filmmaker Award will be dedicated this year to the late John Hughes on opening night. The acclaimed writer, director and producer, widely known for his great comic films about American life, will be honored on Tuesday before the 6:30 p.m….

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SUNDANCE INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES 2010 CINEREACH PROJECT AT SUNDANCE INSTITUTE GRANTEES

For Immediate Release Eleven Documentary and Narrative Feature Film Projects Selected for Development, Production and Post-Production Support LOS ANGELES, CA – Sundance Institute and Cinereach announced today the 2010 projects awarded grants for development, production, or post-production as part of a $1.5 million, three-year initiative, The Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute. The initiative is designed…

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CELEBRATED ACTORS AND FILMMAKERS TAKE CENTRE STAGE AS TIFF ANNOUNCES STELLAR LINEUP OF GALAS AND SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Toronto – The Toronto International Film Festival® rolls out the red carpet with a selection of 15 Galas and 35 Special Presentations for this year‟s Festival, including 25 World Premieres.

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Jim Jarmusch to be honored by President of Iceland as guest of honor at the 2010 Reykjavik International Film Festival

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson will present Director Jim Jarmusch with the 2010 RIFF Honorary Creative Award at the upcoming Reykjavik International Film Festival, September 23 – October 3. Jarmusch is without a doubt among the most important independent filmmakers of our time. Some of his best known films include Night On…

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Guillaume Canet’s Series of Most Fortunate Events

Considered one of the most versatile leading actors of contemporary French cinema, Guillaume Canet self-confesses that stardom –even the prospect of becoming a working performer — was a series of accidents. Canet, 37, is ostensibly in Los Angeles for a few days to promote the film Farewell, a fact-based thriller about a French functionary in…

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Arthouse Redux: How Very Verite of You

Filipino arthouse director Brillante Mendoza’s 2007 film Tirador (Slingshot) opened in NYC this weekend, but I’m still thinking of the film he made a year later, Serbis. In one of those instances of cinematic scheduling perversity, Tirador is releasing after Serbis, which debuted at Cannes in 2008 after Tirador played at Toronto in 2007. It…

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WILL EISNER’S LANDMARK GRAPHIC NOVEL “A CONTRACT WITH GOD” TO BE ADAPTED FOR THE BIG SCREEN

Written And Produced By Darren Dean With Film Segments To Be Directed by Tze Chun, Alex Rivera, Barry Jenkins and Sean Baker Principal Photography Set to Begin in 2011 San Diego, CA (July 23, 2010) – Legendary comic book master Will Eisner’s groundbreaking graphic novel “A Contract with God” is being adapted into a live…

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RELATIVITY MEDIA REACHES A DEAL WITH STARZ TO TAKE OVER OVERTURE’S DISTRIBUTION AND MARKETING UNITS

Peter Adee and Kyle Davies Move to RML to head up Theatrical Marketing and Distribution Arms LOS ANGELES – JULY 23, 2010 – Relativity Media will take over the distribution and marketing operations and some assets of the Starz Overture Films subsidiary. Approximately 45 staff members, or two-thirds of Overture’s employees, will make the move…

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XpanD Sponsors Refurbishment Of Iconic Cinema in West Bank: Cinema Jenin To Open With Festival And New 3D Theater

World Leader in 3D Donates Cinema Package for Palestinian Theater Renovation JENIN, West Bank –With an ambitious goal of bringing cutting-edge entertainment and good will to the West Bank, German filmmaker Marcus Vetter has teamed with international sponsors, including global 3D leader XpanD, to renovate and reopen the sole-standing cinema complex in the city of…

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“LOST” THE OFFICIAL SHOW AUCTION TO TAKE PLACE LIVE FROM BARKER HANGAR IN SANTA MONICA

Profiles in History, in Partnership with ABC Studios, Will Offer Fans and Collectors over 1,000 Lots of Props, Costumes and Set Pieces From the Emmy Award-winning Television Series, LOST, Spanning All Six Seasons

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Movie City News

“I don’t think it’s cruel to say this, because John himself would undoubtedly have turned it into a gleeful anecdote: When he had the stroke that killed him, he was at a local dinner theater. Hell of a review.”

“I am inclined to aver that every activity needs its critics, from narcissists bloviating in Washington to exhibitors of knee holes in their blue jeans by way of following a fad. So, too, tennis players and others wearing their caps backward. There is, to be sure, only fairly innocuous folly in puncturing pants or reversing caps, but for political or artistic or religious twisting of thought or harboring holes in the head there is rather less excuse. I have always inveighed against the bleary journalism practiced by newspaper reviewers, as opposed to the real criticism performed by, well, critics.”

“I often felt a twinge of grief at the idea that John Simon had devoted his life to a method of work that could only make him increasingly unhappy. Here was a man, elegant, articulate, and vastly knowledgeable, fluent in at least half a dozen languages, whose gifts of mind gave nothing back to the arts he wrote about except a few unkind remarks that made fun of someone’s performance, ethnicity, physical attributes, or, with a pun, on his target’s name. (“If this is Norman Wisdom, I’ll take Saxon folly.”) Other theatre critics keep such darts in their rucksacks for occasional use; John lived by them.”

“One person’s critic is another person’s crackpot. That they are not united in their opinions is ascribable to the Latin saying: quot homines, tot sententiae. I myself prefer being considered a creep, but that is what you get for having what Vladimir Nabokov called ‘Strong Opinions.’ It is odd that in a country so wallowing in negativity, starting with mass shootings and climaxing with Trump, such an unimportant matter as theater criticism should generate so much hostility. The only target patently more important is lead in the drinking water.”

Review: Little Women (no spoilers)

The DVD Wrapup: Cold War, Betty Blue, Official Secrets, Demons, Olivia, American Dreamer, Land of Yik Yak

20 Weeks To Oscar: Cinema, Trump, and Oscar

E. Scott Weinberg On Youthful Fangoria Encounters

Rome Bookstore Closes

With a Grauniad-Alleged $300 Million Budget, Could The Yet-Unseen But Surely Weird Cats Pass A Billion Dollars at The Box Office?

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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