Movie City News Archive for April, 2012

Reflecting On A Bollywood Dynasty With Rishi Kapoor

Reflecting On A Bollywood Dynasty With Rishi Kapoor

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Errol Morris Asks, “What’s In A Name?”

Errol Morris Asks, “What’s In A Name?”

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WB First Major To Push Digital Script Publishing, Beginning With Casablanca, North By Northwest, More

WB First Major To Push Digital Script Publishing, Beginning With Casablanca, North By Northwest, More

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WARNER BROS. DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION LAUNCHES “INSIDE THE SCRIPT” DIGITAL PUBLISHING INITIATIVE

MOVIE FANS CAN NOW OWN DIGITAL VERSIONS OF SCRIPTS FROM ICONIC FILMS INCLUDING “CASABLANCA,” “BEN-HUR,” “AN AMERICAN IN PARIS” AND “NORTH BY NORTHWEST” COMPLETE WITH RARE NOTES, PUBLICITY STILLS AND OTHER INTERACTIVE ASSETS FIRST “INSIDE THE SCRIPT” TITLES NOW AVAILABLE ON iBOOKSTORE, KINDLE AND NOOK® BURBANK, CALIF., April 30, 2012 – Warner Bros. Digital Distribution…

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Jeet Heer Decodes “The Politics Of The Hunger Games”

Jeet Heer Decodes “The Politics Of The Hunger Games“

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Bruno Wu’s Seven Stars Entertainment Plans “Chinawood Global Services Base” In Beitang, Binhai New Area, Tianjin

Bruno Wu’s Seven Stars Entertainment Plans “Chinawood Global Services Base” In Beitang, Binhai New Area, Tianjin

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Garry Marshall Regrets Nothing At 77, Not Even Fonzie Jumping That Shark

“I got killed on the last one, but it made $146 million worldwide.” Garry Marshall Regrets Nothing At 77, Not Even Fonzie Jumping That Shark

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Julie Walters Sez Filmmakers Ignoring Valuable Older Generation

Julie Walters Sez Filmmakers Ignoring Valuable Older Generation

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The Broken Heart That Made Mia Hansen-Løve A Filmmaker

The Broken Heart That Made Mia Hansen-Løve A Filmmaker

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The Latest From Workaholic Brit Actor Phil Davis

The Latest From Workaholic Brit Actor Phil Davis

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The Weekend Report

Cusp of summer box office experienced a lull with weekend revenues of roughly $115 million that amounted to a 17% decline from the prior frame. It was a steeper 30% downturn from 2011 when the bow of Fast Five blew away the competition with an $86.1 million launch. The weekend’s big noise was happening overseas with The Avengers getting a jump start on domestic with a 39 territory debut estimated at close to $180 million. Also heaping up advance gelt internationally is Battleship with $150 million to date prior to its North American bow on 5/18.

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O’Hagan Talks To Photographer-Filmmaker William Klein, Spry At 84

O’Hagan Talks To Photographer-Filmmaker William Klein, Spry At 84

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A Student Reporter On James Schamus’ “My Wife Is A Terrorist” Lecture

A Student Reporter On James Schamus’ “My Wife Is A Terrorist” Lecture

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Wilmington on Movies: The Raven

But wait a minute. This isn’t the kind of horror that puts money in your pockets. A loser roaming the streets and expiring in a hospital? Not in our bottom-line, money-obsessed, failure-hating age. Let’s imagine something more horrible — and certainly more modern, more suitable to contemporary tastes.

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Google Fiber’s High SpGoogle Fiber’s High Speeds, Akin To Those In South Korea, Prompt Fearseeds, Akin To Those In South Korea, Sow Fear Among Some

“Google Fiber will definitely be a disruptive force. The studios know that if we stick our heads in the sand, we will fail, pure and simple.” Google Fiber’s High Speeds, Akin To Those In South Korea, Prompt Fears

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Stars Of Tribeca-Lauded Entry About Cubans Defecting Have Defected In Miami

Stars Of Tribeca-Lauded Entry About Cubans Defecting Have Defected In Miami

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The DVD Wrapup: Contraband, Camelot, Return, Young Goethe, Innkeepers, Hollis Frampton … More

Like JFK’s legacy, the movie version of “Camelot” hasn’t aged well in the succeeding nearly 50 years. In fact, after knocking ’em dead on Broadway in the early 1960s, the movie version failed to overwhelm Oscar voters or attract nearly the same number of fans as “My Fair Lady.”

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Peter Jackson On Why You Will Love 48FPS 3D

Peter Jackson On Why You Will Love 48FPS 3D

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“Don’t trust the cloud. Use it, enjoy it, exploit it, but don’t believe in it. Or even the web for that matter. Many people assume that the web —and its riches—will always be there waiting for you. It won’t.”

“Don’t trust the cloud. Use it, enjoy it, exploit it, but don’t believe in it. Or even the web for that matter. Many people assume that the web —and its riches—will always be there waiting for you. It won’t.”

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Reporting On Apple’s Strategy To Legally Sidestep Taxes Around The Globe

Reporting On Apple’s Strategy To Legally Sidestep Taxes Around The Globe

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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