Movie City News Archive for November, 2011

2012 FILM INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARD NOMINATIONS

2012 FILM INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARD NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED – $115,000 in grants to be awarded to filmmakers – LOS ANGELES (November 29, 2011) – Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival, announced nominations for the 2012 Film Independent Spirit Awards this morning. Anthony Mackie and Kate…

Read the full article » 1 Comment »

Gurus o’ Gold: November 29, 2011

The Gurus start this week with three questions about the award season itself, primarily about the early awards and nominations coming out in November.

Then it’s on to Best Picture, where Hugo is the big mover, and Supporting Actress & Actor, which hasn’t changed much at the top in the last month… but for which the field keeps narrowing.

Read the full article » 4 Comments »

GOTHAM INDEPENDENT FILM AWARDS WINNERS ANNOUNCED

New York, NY (November 28, 2011) – The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), the nation’s oldest and largest organization of independent filmmakers, announced today the winners at the 21st Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards ceremony in New York City’s Cipriani Wall Street. Presented by IFP, the Gotham Independent Film AwardsTM is one of the leading awards…

Read the full article »

Gothams Ties Beginners To Tree

Gothams Ties Beginners To Tree

Read the full article »

Westwood’s AMC Avco Center 4 Moviehouse Shutters Sunday

Westwood’s AMC Avco Center 4 Moviehouse Shutters Sunday

Read the full article »

Oz Censors Refuse Human Centipede 2’s Refuse

“The film must be refused classification because it contains gratuitous, exploitative or offensive depictions of violence with a very high degree of impact and cruelty which has a high impact. Films classified RC cannot be sold, hired, or advertised in Australia.” Oz Censors Refuse Human Centipede 2‘s Refuse

Read the full article »

How Hedy Lamarr Invented Bluetooth And GPS

How Hedy Lamarr Invented Bluetooth And GPS

Read the full article »

A Warrior Moment Between Nolte And His Director

A Warrior Moment Between Nolte And His Director vid

Read the full article »

Sean O’Hagan On The Beauty Of Ken Russell’s Street Photography

Sean O’Hagan On The Beauty Of Ken Russell’s Street Photography And – Russell Picks One Of His Favorites

Read the full article »

Sounds Like Richard Brody Likes What’s Likely 2011’s Last Joe Swanberg Joint

“Much of the drama emerges through the interstices of the tensely unfolding scenes of emotional writhing and indecision; the sixty-nine-minute sketchbook implies a novelistic amplitude of experience.” Sounds Like Richard Brody Likes What’s Likely 2011’s Last Joe Swanberg Joint

Read the full article »

David Cronenberg’s “Positive Transference”

David Cronenberg’s “Positive Transference”

Read the full article »

Wilmington on Movies: The Artist

        The Artist (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.-France: Michel Hazanavicius The Artist, a movie about the Golden Age of Hollywood, is a superb silent film in black and white by the French writer-director Michel Hazanavicius. It’s an utterly wonderful show: a gloriously anachronistic little film with actors who don’t talk and pictures that…

Read the full article »

“In Praise Of Ken Russell At The BBC”

“In Praise Of Ken Russell At The BBC”

Read the full article »

Breaking Down: Rumors Stir Of Summit-Lionsgate Merger

Breaking Down: Rumors Stir Of Summit-Lionsgate Merger

Read the full article »

Feds Summarily Shutter Another 150 Websites On “Cyber-Monday”

Feds Summarily Shutter Another 150 Websites On “Cyber-Monday”

Read the full article »

Icon UK Group To End UK Distrib, Turn Library Over To Lionsgate UK

Icon UK Group To End UK Distrib, Turn Library Over To Lionsgate UK

Read the full article »

Roger Moore Is Still Looking For A Good Review

Roger Moore Is Still Looking For A Good Review

Read the full article »

A Delicious, Delirious Conversation With Carey Mulligan

A Delicious, Delirious Conversation With Carey Mulligan

Read the full article »

“Hollywood Gingrich”: The Nat’l Review On Newt’s Video Factory

“Hollywood Gingrich”: The Nat’l Review On Newt’s Video Factory

Read the full article »

Mapping Shame’s City

Mapping Shame‘s City spoilers

Read the full article »

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