Movie City News Archive for April, 2012

Girish On “Real Musicians In Fiction Films”

Girish On “Real Musicians In Fiction Films”

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Behind Gatekeeper China Film Group, By Cieply-Barboza

Behind Gatekeeper China Film Group, By Cieply-Barboza

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Stephen King Sez, Tax Me, For F’s Sake

Stephen King Sez, Tax Me, For F’s Sake

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Singer Marginalia-izes The Sight & Sound Poll, Due Today From Its Denizens Of The Decade

Singer Marginalia-izes The Sight & Sound Poll, Due Today From Its Denizens Of The Decade

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How The NYT Came Upon Its 92-Year-Old Movie-Pirate-To-The-Troops And How The Writer Congratulates Himself

“I knew it would be on the front page of the New York Times—that is, if he was willing to go public. I think people in this business know, it’s like pornography: you can’t define [a front page story], but you know it when you hear it. I would have some fun with it because…

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Why California Senate Authorized Increased Piracy Damages

Why California Senate Authorized Increased Piracy Damages

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Megaupload’s Dotcom Gets $750,000 In Assets Restored

Megaupload’s Dotcom Gets $750,000 In Assets Restored

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Microsoft Books $300 Million In Nook

Microsoft Books $300 Million In Nook

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Carr On Amazon’s Peremptory Cutting Price Of Buzz Bissinger’s New E-Book To Zero

“Hell, I need the money. Authors need everyone—Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Byliner—to make a go of it and to continue to do what we do.” Carr On Amazon’s Peremptory Cutting Price Of Buzz Bissinger’s New E-Book To Zero

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Jason Epstein On How Books Can, Will Survive Amazon

Jason Epstein On How Books Can, Will Survive Amazon And – The Latest Appendage Swinging From Publisher-Distributor-Middleman-Dissing-Big Fella Amazon

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Truly Strange Cars Congregate On Set Of New Gondry Film

Truly Strange Cars Congregate On Set Of New Gondry Film

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Peter Bart Thinks He Gets Fox Searchlight

Peter Bart Thinks He Gets Fox Searchlight

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SUNDANCE INSTITUTE RETURNS TO MOROCCO WITH FILM FORWARD: ADVANCING CULTURAL DIALOGUE FROM MAY 7 TO 12, 2012

For Immediate Release The U.S. Embassy in Morocco Collaborates with Sundance Institute to Present FILM FORWARD in Six Cities across Morocco Rabat, Morocco – April 30, 2012 – Sundance Institute in collaboration with the U.S. Embassy in Morocco will present FILM FORWARD: Advancing Cultural Dialogue in cities throughout the Kingdom of Morocco from May 7 to…

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Juliette Binoche And Existential Elles

Juliette Binoche And Existential Elles

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Hulu Takes First Steps Toward Model Where Viewers Have To Prove They Are A Pay-TV Customer

Hulu Takes First Steps Toward Model Where Viewers Have To Prove They Are A Pay-TV Customer

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British High Court Asserts Right To Tell Internet Providers What To Block And When

British High Court Asserts Right To Tell Internet Providers What To Block And When

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Ti West’s 5 Golden Rules Of Filmmaking

Ti West‘s 5 Golden Rules Of Filmmaking

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Cannes Rolls Seven

Cannes Rolls Seven

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10 Facts About Burt Reynolds’ Nude Centerfold

10 Facts About Burt Reynolds’ Nude Centerfold

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Australian Court Rules DVR-To-Streaming Of Broadcast TV Illegal

Australian Court Rules DVR-To-Streaming Of Broadcast TV Illegal

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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