Movie City News Archive for January, 2011

Will Baz Ditch Gatz?

Will Baz Ditch Gatz?

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Are These The Most Cruel, Heartless Lines From Yakuza Films?

Are These The Most Cruel, Heartless Lines From Yakuza Films?

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The Four Sundance Intros By Jeremy Konner That Got Yanked At The Last Minute

The Four Sundance Intros By Jeremy Konner That Got Yanked At The Last Minute

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Miranda July Looks Back At The Future Of Sundance

Miranda July Looks Back At The Future Of Sundance

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In The New Yorker, Daniel Zalewski Goes 12,000 Words On The Monsters Of Guillermo Del Toro

In The New Yorker, Daniel Zalewski Goes 12,000 Words On The Monsters Of Guillermo Del Toro And – A Video Peek Inside His Famous Notebooks

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Hitchens Reveals Differences With Portrayal Of Royals In King’s Speech

Huh! Hitchens Reveals Differences With Portrayal Of Royals In The King’s Speech

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What’s Next For Apple?

What’s Next For Apple?

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Tom Hooper’s 5 Secrets Of Success

Tom Hooper’s 5 Secrets Of Success

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Women’s Media Center Video Spotlights Serious Gender Disparity in Film Industry

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – January 31, 2011 NOTE: Most WMC Sundance coverage is available for reposting with permission and the following disclaimer, as well as a link to the post: This article originally appeared on the Women’s Media Center Blog New York City: The Women’s Media Center (WMC) released a video it produced during the…

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Such Big Woo: 3D English-Lingo Reload Of The Killer?!

When The Doves Fly And The Bullets Cry: John Woo Producing 3D English-Lingo Reload Of The Killer?!

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Sundance Dispatch: It’s a Wrap

Another Sundance Film Festival has wrapped, and I have to say, it was a helluva good year to be in Park City. The logistical nightmare of the P&I line the first five or so days of the fest was a serious pain in the ass, but overall I’d have to say this year’s Sundance programming…

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Tony Geiss, 86, Invented Abby Cadabby, Wordsmith To Kermit And Elmo

Tony Geiss, 86, Invented Abby Cadabby, Wordsmith To Kermit And Elmo; Writer On American Tale And Land Before Time

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Why Does Memphis’ Black Lodge Video Store Thrive?

Why Does Memphis’ Black Lodge Video Store Thrive?

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“A moment of silence, please, for the lost art of shutting up.”

“A moment of silence, please, for the lost art of shutting up.”

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Jonnie Rosenbaum On The Death Of Hulot

Jonnie Rosenbaum On The Death Of Hulot

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Greater Union Mosman Ninth Sydney Cinema To Shutter Since 1999

Greater Union Mosman Ninth Sydney Cinema To Shutter Since 1999

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Blogdanovich Picks His Favorite “B.S.” Year At The Movies

Blogdanovich Picks His Favorite “B.S.” Year At The Movies

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Carr On Harvey Weinstein, Comeback Kidder

Carr On Harvey Weinstein, Comeback Kidder

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Are These Harvey’s King’s Speech Talking Points?

Are These Harvey’s King’s Speech Talking Points?

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The Financial Doings That Made Desplat’s Score For King’s Speech Possible

The Financial Doings That Made Desplat’s Score For King’s Speech Possible

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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?

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