Movie City News Archive for December, 2010

What’s Next For The Schwarzenator?

What’s Next For The Schwarzenator?

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Why Criticism Matters: The Book Review Turns Pages

Why Criticism Matters: The Book Review Turns Pages The Editors Intro The Package O’ Ponders With – Roiphe On The “Weight Of Authority” And – “Beyond The Critic As Cultural Arbiter” Plus – Mishra On Being “At Play In The Larger World” With – Kirsch On “The Will To Self-Understanding” And – Criticism Makes Art…

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Why Ken Loach Doesn’t Listen To Music Anymore

Why Ken Loach Doesn’t Listen To Music Anymore

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The Gold Standard In Movie Posters—Bill Gold

The Gold Standard In Movie Posters—Bill Gold At 90

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What 2010 Films Gained Most From “Screen Convergence”?

What 2010 Films Gained Most From “Screen Convergence”?

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Buschel Sez Sofia Fashions Swell Trailers

Buschel Sez Sofia Fashions Swell Trailers

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IMAX Dismisses Talk Of Sony Sale

IMAX Dismisses Talk Of Sony Sale

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Top 10 Documentaries of 2010

I had kind of a bad year for documentaries, which is too bad because I love docs. Maybe it’s partly because I missed Sundance, or because docs can be hit and miss and I just happened to fall on the wrong side of that equation this year. Whatever the case, I managed somehow to miss…

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Comedy Profits Peter Principato, Talent Manager To Tee-Hees

Comedy Profits Peter Principato, Talent Manager To Teething Tee-Hees

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Fotog David Strick On-Sets The Green Hornet

Fotog David Strick On-Sets The Green Hornet

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Wilmington: The Ten Best of 2010

So here’s my list of The Ten Best Movies of 2010, plus Honorable Mentions and a separate list of documentaries. I know it’s customary at this time to write about how awful a year it was, and how I had to struggle to find ten movies worthy of recognition, and how Hollywood is so bankrupt…

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In Case You Wanted To Watch Nine Oscar-Winning Shorts From The National Film Board Of Canada…

In Case You Wanted To Watch Nine Oscar-Winning Shorts From The National Film Board Of Canada…

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Top Tens: December 31, 2010

There were a couple of technical glitches as the new system settles in – but the lists are starting to add up now. Yes, Social Network stays on top, but Inception and The King’s Speech are moving up the charts.

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LA Times Editor Muses On “Unveiling” Of Resto Cricket And Why Two Stars Is “Very Good”

Editor Muses On “Unveiling” Of Resto Cricket And Why Two Stars Is “Very Good”

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Will Sony And Disney Absorb IMAX?

Will Sony And Disney Absorb IMAX?

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Tomorrow Is Public Domain Day… At Least Theoretically

“Not a single published work is entering the public domain this year. Or next year. Or the year after. Or the year after that. In fact, in the United States, no publication will enter the public domain until 2019.” Tomorrow Is Public Domain Day… At Least Theoretically

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Times Trio Try Out Alt-Oscar Picks

Times Trio Try Out Alt-Oscar Picks

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Meet Bristol’s Colin Needham: He Runs IMDB

Meet Bristol’s Colin Needham: He Runs The IMDB

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Pulitzer’d Food Writer Jonathan Gold Offers Two Cheers For A Critic’s Anonymity

Pulitzer’d Food Writer Jonathan Gold Offers Two Cheers For A Critic’s Anonymity

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Winklevii Say Continuing Lawsuit Against Facebook A Matter Of Principle

Winklevii Say Continuing Lawsuit Against Facebook A Matter Of Principle

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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