Movie City News Archive for February, 2012

On The Legal Limbo Of Iranian Filmmaker Jafar Panahi

On The Legal Limbo Of Iranian Filmmaker Jafar Panahi

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SPC Goes West Of Memphis

SPC Goes West Of Memphis

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SONY PICTURES CLASSICS ACQUIRES HIGHLY ANTICIPATED DOCUMENTARY WEST OF MEMPHIS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NEW YORK (February 29, 2012) – Sony Pictures Classics announced today that they have acquired worldwide rights to Academy Award® nominated filmmaker Amy Berg’s (DELIVER US FROM EVIL) high profile documentary WEST OF MEMPHIS. The film debuted at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in the Documentary Premiere Section to great critical acclaim….

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The Monkees’ Davy Jones Was 66

The Monkees’ Davy Jones Was 66

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“Nostalgia Has Wussified Our Culture! Make It Stop!” Sez Michael Musto

“Nostalgia Has Wussified Our Culture! Make It Stop!” Sez Michael Musto

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A Dozen Oscars Go For $3 Million

A Dozen Oscars Go For $3 Million

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Digitalizing Kannapolis, North Carolina’s 1936 Gem Theater

Digitalizing Kannapolis, North Carolina’s 1936 Gem Theater

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The LAT On B*ing Fl*nn’s Original Title, “Another Bullshit Night In Suck City”

“(the full title is unprintable in this newspaper)” The LAT On B*ing Fl*nn‘s Original Title, “Another Bullshit Night In Suck City”

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Ebert Compares The Artist To Presumptive GOP Nominee Romney

Ebert Compares The Artist To Presumptive GOP Nominee Romney

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Cinemark and Paramount Pictures Celebrate the 40th Anniversary of “The Godfather” with Exclusive Cinemark XD Events at Theatres Across the US

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Plano, TX, February 29, 2012 – Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CNK), a leading motion picture exhibitor, is proud to partner with Paramount Pictures to offer movie-goers the opportunity to see Francis Ford Coppola’s restored version of his Academy Award®-winning “The Godfather,” on 55 Cinemark XD auditoriums across the country, on Thursday, March…

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Deutchman Sez “Indie Theaters Face Digital Mayhem”

Deutchman Sez “Indie Theaters Face Digital Mayhem”

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Lea Thompson, “Long-Distance Runner” At 50

Lea Thompson, “Long-Distance Runner” At 50

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“This Is DCP”: How Preferred New Exhibition Format Is Reducing Archival Titles To “Greatest Hits”

“This Is DCP”: NYC’s Film Forum Shows How Preferred New Exhibition Format Is Reducing Archival Film Titles To “Greatest Hits”

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2012 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL TO OPEN WITH THE WORLD PREMIERE OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES’ THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT

For Immediate Release Comedy from Forgetting Sarah Marshall Creative Team Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller and Producer Judd Apatow to Kick Off 11th Edition of TFF on April 18 New York, NY (February 29, 2012)—The Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) and Universal Pictures today announced that The Five-Year Engagement will open the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival,…

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James Murdoch Steps Down As News Int’l Chairman

James Murdoch Steps Down As News Int’l Chairman With – The Press Release

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Catherine Keener And “Normalcy”

Catherine Keener And “Normalcy”

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This Is Not A Farce: Iranian Filmmaker Jafar Panahi In Legal Limbo

This Is Not A Farce: Iranian Filmmaker Jafar Panahi In Legal Limbo

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Cinematographer Bruce Surtees, 74, Shot Play Misty For Me, Lenny, Night Moves, Beverly Hills Cop

“He didn’t believe in flat light or just bright, Rexall drugstore lighting, which a lot of times you can get if you get somebody that isn’t very imaginative.” Cinematographer Bruce Surtees, 74, Shot Play Misty For Me, Lenny, Night Moves, Beverly Hills Cop

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The Artist “Old H’wd” Guide To Lost Angeles

The Artist “Old H’wd” Guide To Lost Angeles

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DVD Wrapup: Myth of American Sleepover, Hugo … More

David Robert Mitchell’s debut feature easily qualifies as one of the most criminally under-screened and neglected movies of the young century. While Hollywood continues to search in vain for the new John Hughes and independents hope to capture the same lightning in a bottle as “American Pie,” “The Myth of the American Sleepover” was there all along. Even in DVD, it succeeds at almost every level in capturing the joys, angst and insanity of being a teenager in middle-class America.

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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