Movie City News Archive for September, 2011

Who Will Take On The 35,000-Deep Stock Of Vancouver’s Videomatica When It Closes?

Who Will Take On The 35,000-Deep Stock Of Vancouver’s Videomatica When It Closes?

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SHERWOOD PICTURES’ COURAGEOUS REACHES MORE THAN $2 MILLION IN PRE-SALES

Film Opens Nationwide September 30th CULVER CITY, CA (Sept. 29, 2011) – TriStar Pictures and Sherwood Pictures are pleased to announce that COURAGEOUS, the latest installment from Sherwood Pictures, has reached more than $2 million in pre-sales ticketing in anticipation of Friday’s national release. Pre-sales numbers for COURAGEOUS more than double that of Sherwood Pictures’…

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Howell Talks Nick Ray With His Widow

Howell Talks Can’t Go Home Again With Nick Ray’s Widow

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Splatter Elder Herschell Gordon Lewis Looks Back

Splatter Elder Herschell Gordon Lewis Looks Back

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Production Head Out At CBS Films; Gets Producer Slot

Production Head Out At CBS Films; Gets Producer Slot

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Ebert Peruses The Two Reviews His Memoir Got From The Gray Lady’s Ladies

Ebert Peruses The Two Reviews His Memoir Got From The Gray Lady’s Ladies And Lines That Eventually Bite Back

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Picketing May Prevent Vancouver Film Fest’s Opening Night Gala In Union-Lockout Venue

Picketing May Prevent Vancouver Film Fest’s Opening Night Gala In Union-Lockout Venue

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Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic, Blu-ray. Strike

     PICK OF THE WEEK: Classic/Blu-ray Strike (Stachka) (Four Stars) U.S.S.R./Russia: Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 (Kino Classics) 1. Eisenstein  In 1925, Sergei Eisenstein, a rich architect’s son who had become a passionate convert to Communism during the Russian Revolution and afterward a brilliant theatrical director with the Proletkult Theatre of Moscow, directed two silent films…

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“Google now tells you a famous person’s sexual orientation”

“Google now tells you a famous person’s sexual orientation”

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Rick Perlstein Finds Contagion’s Politics Kinda Reactionary

Rick Perlstein Finds Contagion‘s Politics Kinda Reactionary

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Ted Hope Sez There’s At Least 99 Steps To Start With To Make A Good Movie

Ted Hope Sez There’s At Least 99 Steps To Start With To Make A Good Movie

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Albanian Protests That Albania’s Oscar Bid Is Not By An Albanian, But An American

Albanian Protests That Albania’s Oscar Bid Is Not By An Albanian, But An American

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Studiocanal Sets $200 Million+ Finance Deal With London’s Anton Capital Entertainment

Studiocanal Sets $200 Million+ Finance Deal With London’s Anton Capital Entertainment

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Spielberg Talks Lincoln

Spielberg Talks Lincoln

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ACADEMY ANNOUNCES NICHOLL SCREENWRITING FELLOWSHIP FINALISTS FOR 2011

September 29, 2011 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Beverly Hills, CA – Seven individual writers and three writing teams have been selected as finalists for the 26th annual Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Their scripts will now be read and judged by the Academy’s Nicholl…

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Kenny Engages The Carnage-Dangerous Method-Induced “What Is Cinematic” Debate

Kenny Engages The Carnage–Dangerous Method-Induced “What Is Cinematic” Debate

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DP/30 @ TIFF 2011: Take Shelter, wr/dir Jeff Nichols, actors MIchael Shannon, Jessica Chastain

Jeff Nichols’ second feature, like his first, Shotgun Stories, is thrilling and challenging audiences. By his side again is Michael Shannon, who has risen from obscurity to awards bait actor. And by Mike’s side, Jessica Chastain, who has risen from obscurity to ubiquitous awards bait just this year. Meet the trio.

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“Unclassifiable” Director Isabel Coixet Goes Worldwide

“Unclassifiable” Director Isabel Coixet Goes Worldwide

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Anna Faris Does A Number

Anna Faris Does A Number

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Craig Brewer On Getting The New Footloose Right

Craig Brewer On Getting The New Footloose Right

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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