Movie City News Archive for September, 2010

Paramount Cuts Another 53 Jobs

Paramount Cuts Another 53 Jobs To Save $10 Million

Read the full article »

Box Office Hell – September 30

This week our pundits predict The Social Network as a solid lock for the #1 slot, while there’s some dissension over whether Let Me In will draw enough box office blood to capture the place position.

Read the full article »

Deciphering The Many Cameos In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Deciphering The Many Cameos In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps And – Plenty Of Product Placement Stretched The Budget Plus – What Does All The Art On The Walls Signify?

Read the full article »

Vet East Cost Publicist Jeff Hill Chops IHOP Praisery

Vet East Cost Publicist Jeff Hill Chops IHOP Praisery

Read the full article »

Ruing The Local Video Store’s Slow Fade

Ruing The Local Video Store’s Slow Fade

Read the full article »

Michael Caine Might Retire In, Oh, Three Years?

Michael Caine Might Retire In, Oh, Three Years?

Read the full article »

Leading Judy Greer

Leading Judy Greer

Read the full article »

Sharper footage of Apollo 11 moon landing

Sharper Footage Of Apollo 11 Moon Landing Emerges

Read the full article »

Canadian Politicians Bow To James Cameron On Albert Oilsands

Canadian Politicians Bow To James Cameron On Alberta Oilsands

Read the full article »

Ebert’s Awake In The Dark

Ebert’s “Awake In The Dark” Is A U Of C Free Download Today Only

Read the full article »

Kenny Pooh-Pooh’s “Convenient” “Rule Of Three” Of Celeb Deaths

Kenny Pooh-Pooh’s “Convenient” “Rule Of Three” Of Celeb Deaths

Read the full article »

Rushkoff On Deep Focus, The Mini-Monographs On 1970s Films

Rushkoff On Deep Focus, The Mini-Monographs On 1970s Films

Read the full article »

Bowles Questions Children Appearing In Horror Films

Bowles Questions Children Appearing In Horror Films

Read the full article »

Arthur Penn’s Years Of Struggles With The Studios

Arthur Penn’s Years Of Struggles With The Studios

Read the full article »

Digital Nation: Barry Munday

As red herrings go, it’s tough to beat castration. The title character of Chris D’Arienzo’s truly offbeat comedy, Barry Munday, undergoes just such an operation. It’s required after the father of a promiscuous teenager slams a trumpet into crotch of the two-bit, happy-hour lothario in a movie theater. Poor Barry didn’t even have time to…

Read the full article » 2 Comments »

Wes Anderson Adapts Old Paris Review Questions For Anjelica Huston

Wes Anderson Adapts Old Paris Review Questions For Anjelica Huston

Read the full article »

Reversing The Australian Film Talent “Brain Drain” With Animal Logic

Reversing The Australian Film Talent “Brain Drain” With Animal Logic

Read the full article »

Latvia Confesses Hong Kong Confidential For Oscar

Latvia Confesses Hong Kong Confidential For Oscar

Read the full article »

Breakfast At Tiffany’s At 50

Breakfast At Tiffany’s At 50

Read the full article »

Giamatti’s Version

Giamatti’s Version

Read the full article »

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?

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