Movie City News Archive for January, 2011

Did Steve Jobs “Out-Japan” Japan?

Jeff Yang Asks, Did Steve Jobs “Out-Japan” Japan?

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Philip Pullman: “Leave the libraries alone. You don’t understand their value.”

Philip Pullman: “Leave the libraries alone. You don’t understand their value.”

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Borders Late With Payments Again

Borders Late With Payments Again

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Conversations With George Lois: Iconic Magazine Designer Has A Few Words For 21st Century Media

Conversations With George Lois: Iconic Magazine Designer Has A Few Words For 21st Century Media

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Study Sez Nearly A Quarter Of All Internet Traffic Sails Under The Jolly Roger

Study Sez Nearly A Quarter Of All Internet Traffic Sails Under The Jolly Roger

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Hilary Swank Goes Day-And-Date on DirecTV With The Resident For $4.99

Hilary Swank Goes Day-And-Date on DirecTV With The Resident For $4.99

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Hearst Buys 102 Publications In 15 Countries With Almost $1 Billion In Revenue Last Year

Hearst Buys 102 Publications In 15 Countries With Almost $1 Billion In Revenue Last Year

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IFC News Podcast Ends At #215 With Desert Island Movies

IFC News Podcast Ends At #215 With Desert Island Movies

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Good Dr. Bordwell on Facebook Facework In Social Network

Good Dr. Bordwell on Facebook Facework In Social Network

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Five-Time Oscar-Winner John Barry Was OO77

“I think James Bond would have been far less cool without John Barry holding his hand.” Five-Time Oscar-Winner John Barry Was OO77 And – Sample The Sounds Of The John Barry Seven From 1959 With – His Slaggy Brass From 1960 Plus – The Black Hole Theme And – An Obscurity Called “The Girl With…

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Gurus o’ Gold: Oscar Nominations (Pt 3 of 3)

The third group of Oscar nominations, as seen by The Gurus. None are unanimous, though Song and Score come closest.

Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3

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SAG Awards Speech, King, Swan, Crackhead, Mom

SAG Awards Speech, King, Swan, Crackhead, Mom

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Screen Actors Guild Honors Outstanding Film And Television Performances at the 17th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®

LOS ANGELES (Jan. 30, 2011) – Screen Actors Guild presented its coveted Actor® statuette for the outstanding motion picture and primetime television performances of 2010 at the “17th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®” in ceremonies attended by film and television’s leading actors, held Sunday, Jan. 30, at the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center. The “17th…

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20 Weeks Extra: Could There Be One More Turn?

After becoming the favorite for Best Picture in just the last week, does The King’s Speech now have a lock on the win? Or is the another spin coming?

And when those who aren’t so happy about the turn of events look for a comparison, which on sticks best? Rocky? Ordinary People? Or maybe something else…

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Geoffrey Rush On His Drunks, Rogues, Ratbags, Idiots And Wise Fools

Geoffrey Rush On His Drunks, Rogues, Ratbags, Idiots And Wise Fools

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Amazon Set To Challenge Netflix?

Amazon Set To Challenge Netflix?

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Thinking About Revolutionary Claims For Twitter

Thinking About Revolutionary Claims For Twitter

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Roundtabling The Mechanic With The Winklers

Roundtabling The Mechanic With The Winklers

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Saving Windjammer

Saving Windjammer

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Ernest Borgnine On SpongeBob SquarePants

Ernest Borgnine On SpongeBob SquarePants

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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