Movie City News Archive for November, 2010

Jean-Pierre Gorin Picks His 10 Criterions

Jean-Pierre Gorin Picks His 10 Criterions

Read the full article »

Wolcott Makes With Vulgarity And Spoilers In “Black Swan Down”

Wolcott Makes With Vulgarity And Spoilers In “Black Swan Down”

Read the full article »

PETER CRAIG TO ADAPT FRENCH-CANADIAN MOTION PICTURE PHENOMENON “FATHERS AND GUNS”

CULVER CITY, Calif., November 30, 2010 – Peter Craig has been tapped to adapt the French-Canadian blockbuster Fathers and Guns for Sony Pictures, it was announced today by Doug Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures. The film is being developed and produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall along with Denise Robert and Emile Gaudreault, producer…

Read the full article »

Canuck Comics Recollect Leslie Nielsen

Canuck Comics Recollect Leslie Nielsen

Read the full article »

Jeff Bridges Talks “Texasville II”

Jeff Bridges Talks “Texasville II”

Read the full article »

“On Rich Girl Cinema”

“On Rich Girl Cinema”

Read the full article »

Ousted TribCo Exec, Memo Man Lee Abrams, Still Sez Firing He And Randy Michaels A Mistake

“I believe it was deliberately taken out of context and deliberately overpublicized to further a control agenda at the company.” Ousted TribCo Exec, Memo Man Lee Abrams, Still Sez Firing He And Randy Michaels A Mistake

Read the full article »

Patti Smith Profiles Johnny Depp For VF

Patti Smith Profiles Johnny Depp For VF

Read the full article »

Oscar Announces Shortlist For Live Action Shorts

Oscar Announces Shortlist For Live Action Shorts

Read the full article »

10 LIVE ACTION SHORTS STAY ALIVE IN 2010 OSCAR® RACE

November 30, 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Beverly Hills, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that 10 live action short films will advance in the voting process for the 83rd Academy Awards®. Seventy-six pictures had originally qualified in the category. The 10 films are listed below in alphabetical order by…

Read the full article »

10 ANIMATED SHORTS MOVE AHEAD IN 2010 OSCAR® RACE

November 30, 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Beverly Hills, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that 10 animated short films will advance in the voting process for the 83rd Academy Awards®. Thirty-three pictures had originally qualified in the category. The 10 films are listed below in alphabetical order by title,…

Read the full article »

Spirit Award Noms Down To Bone, Leads With Seven; Five For Kids; Four Each For Swan, Greenberg, Rabbit, 127

Spirit Award Noms Down To Bone, Leads With Seven; Five For Kids; Four Each For Swan, Greenberg, Rabbit, 127

Read the full article »

2011 FILM INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARD NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED

LOS ANGELES (November 30, 2010) – Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival, announced nominations this morning for the 2011 Film Independent Spirit Awards.  Eva Mendes and Jeremy Renner served as presenters and 2011 Spirit Awards host Joel McHale was also on hand.  Nominees for…

Read the full article » 1 Comment »

Academy Announces Animated Shorts; Pixar’s Day & Night Makes Shortlist Of 10

Academy Announces Animated Shorts; Pixar’s Day & Night Makes Shortlist Of 10

Read the full article »

2010 GOTHAM INDEPENDENT FILM AWARDS WINNERS ANNOUNCED

New York, NY (November 29, 2010) – The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), the nation’s oldest and largest organization of independent filmmakers, announced today the winners at the 20th Anniversary Gotham Independent Film Awards ceremony in New York City’s Cipriani Wall Street. Presented by IFP, the Gotham Independent Film Awards™ is one of the leading awards…

Read the full article »

Winter’s Bone And The Oath Top The Gothams

Winter’s Bone And The Oath Top The Gothams

Read the full article »

ChiTrib Enjoys Matt Damon Gawkers At Contagion Location In Glencoe, Illinois

ChiTrib Enjoys Matt Damon Gawkers At Contagion Location In Glencoe, Illinois

Read the full article »

David Zucker’s Tribute To Leslie Nielsen

David Zucker Lauds Leslie Nielsen And – A 1993 Fresh Air Interview

Read the full article »

Cieply Wants Some Bloggers To Know Cowboys & Aliens Not A Comedy

Cieply Wants Some Bloggers To Know Cowboys & Aliens Not A Comedy

Read the full article »

Oh Dear, Here’s “Good Day Today,” David Lynch’s Daft Dance Tune

“Sometimes the fire… sometimes the smoke.” Oh Dear, Here’s “Good Day Today,” David Lynch’s Daft Dance Tune

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