Movie City News Archive for March, 2012

Sicinski On “Radical Conservative” Terence Davies And The Deep Blue Sea

Sicinski On “Radical Conservative” Terence Davies And The Deep Blue Sea

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Streamer-Steamer Netflix Nabs DVD.Com Domain

Streamer-Steamer Netflix Nabs DVD.Com Domain

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The Lasting Influence Of John Berger’s Ways Of Seeing Documentaries

The Lasting Influence Of John Berger’s Ways Of Seeing Documentaries

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Has Hunger Games Cut A New Digital Marketing Template For Tentpole Pics?

Correct Answer: No. Has Hunger Games Cut A New Digital Marketing Template For Tentpole Pics?

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Remembering The Era When Whit Stillman Remembered That Other Era

Remembering The Era When Whit Stillman Remembered That Other Era

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109 Minutes With Candice Bergen

109 Minutes With Candice Bergen

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Dan Kelly On A Benefit Hoping To Save Chicago’s 1920 Portage Theater

Dan Kelly On A Benefit Hoping To Save Chicago’s 1920 Portage Theater

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Online Film Critic Christopher Revilla, 29, And Father Die In Utah Car Crash

Online Film Critic Christopher Revilla, 29, And Father Die In Utah Car Crash And – His Reviews As “Slyder”

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Screen Media Films Acquires Award-Winning Festival Favorite “SHUFFLE”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE New York, March 29, 2012 – Suzanne Blech, president of Screen Media Films, has announced the acquisition of North American distribution rights to Kurt Kuenne’s thriller SHUFFLE with an eye towards a release in 3Q of 2012.  The film stars TJ Thyne as a man who wakes up at a different age…

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SAG, AFTRA Members Approve Merger to Form SAG-AFTRA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE LOS ANGELES (March 30, 2012) — The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Screen Actors Guild are pleased to announce that members of both organizations have overwhelmingly voted to approve a merger, creating a new entity, SAG-AFTRA. SAG members voted 82 percent in favor of the merger. AFTRA members favored…

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SAG-AFTRA Merger Approved

SAG-AFTRA Merger Approved

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Hachette First “Big 6” Publisher To Add DRM Encryption To E-Books?

Hachette First “Big 6” Publisher To Add DRM Encryption To E-Books?

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2,150 Words From Kevin Smith’s “Tough S—: Life Advice From A Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good”

2,150 Words From Kevin Smith‘s “Tough S—: Life Advice From A Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good”

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When’s William H. Macy Going To Get To Direct Again?

When’s William H. Macy Going To Get To Direct Again?

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Jerry Lee Lewis Weds For Seventh Time At The Age Of 76; Ex-Wife Of His Cousin Rusty Is His Caregiver

Jerry Lee Lewis Weds For Seventh Time At The Age Of 76; Ex-Wife Of His Cousin Rusty Is His Caregiver

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Yahoo! To Fire Thousands Next Week

Yahoo! To Fire Thousands Next Week

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Entire Alan Lomax Sound Archive, 17,000 Recordings Strong, Now Online

Entire Alan Lomax Sound Archive, 17,000 Recordings Strong, Now Online

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“Universal Music Claims Piracy Justifies Monopoly, Wants The Power To Control Digital Music Services”

“Universal Music Claims Piracy Justifies Monopoly, Wants The Power To Control Digital Music Services”

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Sternbergh On “How The American Action Movie Went Kablooey”

Sternbergh On “How The American Action Movie Went Kablooey”

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Considering Why A Big IMAX Megascreen Will Usually Beat A Shiny Silvered 3D Screen

Considering Why A Big IMAX Megascreen Will Usually Beat A Shiny Silvered 3D Screen

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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