Movie City News Archive for November, 2011

Cinemark Knows No Shame

Cinemark Knows No Shame

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Tony-Winning Parker-Stone “Book Of Mormon” Makes Its Return In 9 Months Flat

Tony-Winning Parker-Stone “Book Of Mormon” Makes Its Return In 9 Months Flat

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“So Long For Awhile”: Ebert Announces Hiatus For “At The Movies”

“So Long For Awhile”: Ebert Announces Hiatus For “At The Movies”

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The New Yorker Asks The Right Questions About The Disappearing Of Margaret, But Apparently Didn’t Ask Them Of The Right People

The New Yorker Asks The Right Questions About The Disappearing Of Margaret, But Apparently Didn’t Ask Them Of The Right People

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Producer Graham King On Hugo’s Slow Rollout: “A Masterpiece Needs To Be Nurtured”

Producer Graham King On Hugo’s Slow Rollout: “A Masterpiece Needs To Be Nurtured”

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Wilmington on DVDs. The Rest: Friends With Benefits; 30 Minutes or Less; One Day; Island of Lost Souls

     “Friends with Benefits” (Two Stars) U. S.: Will Gluck, 2011 Falling in love is such great movie material that it’s a pity Hollywood screws it up so often, especially  these days. Friends with Benefits is  supposed to be smarter and funnier than the usual pseudo-romantic comedy of today, but it’s really ust another rommie-commie with more (and…

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The 5 Best Philadelphia Movies

The 5 Best Philadelphia Movies

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74-Year-Old Senator-For-Life Jay Rockefeller Tells FCC Commissioners That Media Is Too “Dumbed Down,” “Obscene” And “Promiscuous” For His Liking

“Everybody yells First Amendment so you never get very much done about it.” 74-Year-Old Senator-For-Life Jay Rockefeller Tells FCC Commissioners That Media Is Too “Dumbed Down,” “Obscene” And “Promiscuous” For His Liking

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MPAA Spokesman Says Dangerously Overreaching SOPA Legislation Will Be Pared Back Ever-So-Slightly

MPAA Spokesman Says Dangerously Overreaching SOPA Legislation Will Be Pared Back Ever-So-Slightly

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Errol Morris On The Art Of The Interview

Errol Morris On The Art Of The Interview

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Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Blu-ray. Cave of Forgotten Dreams

      Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Also Two Disc Blu-ray/3D Blu-ray combo) (Four Stars) Germany/France: Werner Herzog, 2011 (MPI Home Video)   Perhaps 30,000 years ago, or less, in the age of the paleoliths, a man or woman, or a group of them, stood before the walls of the cave of Chauvet, in France,…

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Sundance 2012 Announces Films In Competition

110 Features From 31 Countries 88 World Premieres 46 First-Timers 4,042 Feature Submissions Sundance 2012 Announces Films In Competition

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2012 Sundance Film Festival Announces Films In Competition

For Immediate Release November 30, 2011 — Park City, UT — Sundance Institute announced today the films selected for the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competitions of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The Sundance Film Festival will take place January 19 through 29 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah….

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Constellation introduces Virtual Theatrical (“VT”) Exhibition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE New York – As the consumption of media content has changed dramatically over the last few years to include subscription on-demand streaming services like Netflix; and online rentals and downloads via iTunes, YouTube, Facebook, and others, a new form of film distribution is now in place – virtual theatrical (VT) exhibition. CEO…

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Variance Films and Might Entertainment announce theatrical and VOD release of “The Trouble with Bliss”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Comedy formerly known as “East Fifth Bliss,” starring Michael C. Hall, Brie Larson, Peter Fonda, and Lucy Liu, to open in theaters on March 23, 2012 New York, November 30, 2011 – Variance Films has acquired US theatrical rights and Might Entertainment, along with its investors at Rilean Pictures, have acquired US digital distribution…

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Lim On Murakami

Lim On Murakami

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Michael Shannon Is Not Trying To Exorcise Any Demons

Michael Shannon Is Not Trying To Exorcise Any Demons

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A Petition To Free The Great-But-Disappeared Margaret For Critics’ Year-End Consideration, With Admirers’ Comments

A Petition To Free The Great-But-Disappeared Margaret For Critics’ Year-End Consideration, With Admirers’ Comments And – Ebiri On Why It Matters

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IFC FILMS TAKES U.S. RIGHTS TO SAMUEL L. JACKSON’S THE SAMARITAN

New York, NY (November 30, 2011) – IFC Films announced today that the company is acquiring U.S. rights to THE SAMARITAN, starring Academy Award® nominated Samuel L. Jackson, produced by Andras Hamori and directed by David Weaver from a screenplay by Weaver and Elan Mastai.  THE SAMARITAN also stars Luke Kirby (TAKE THIS WALTZ), Ruth Negga (LOVE/HATE) and Oscar…

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Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. Sarah’s Key

      Sarah’s Key (Elle s’appelait Sarah) (Three Stars) France: Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2010 (Weinstein Company/Anchor Bay) Sarah‘s Key (Elle s’appelait Sarah) is a movie about public and private tragedies, based on the novel by Tatiana de Rosnay and filmed with much fidelity and feeling by director-screenwriter Gilles Paquet-Brenner. It’s a good movie, with one…

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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