Movie City News Archive for May, 2012

The DVD Wrapup: Talk About Kevin, more

Plus Aggression Scale, Maverick, Coriolanus, Harry Belafonte, Ernie Kovacs: The ABC Specials
, New York Stories and Highlights of the 2012 Masters Tournament.

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Men In Bite: China Censors Reportedly Eat 13 Minutes Of MIB3 That Have Aliens Posing As Chinese Restaurant Workers

Men In Bite: China Censors Reportedly Eat 13 Minutes Of MIB3 That Have Aliens Posing As Chinese Restaurant Workers

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Alan Horn has been named Chairman of The Walt Disney Studios

BURBANK, Calif. – May 31, 2012 — Bob Iger, Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, announced today that Alan Horn has been named Chairman of The Walt Disney Studios effective June 11. Horn will oversee worldwide operations for The Walt Disney Studios including production, distribution and marketing for live-action and animated films from Disney,…

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Alan Horn To Run Disney

Alan Horn, Former Longtime Head Of Warner Bros., Keeper Of Franchises, To Run Disney

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Emma Straub On “The awesomeness that is powering through a television series”

Emma Straub On “The Awesomeness That Is Powering Through A Television Series”

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NYT Signs With Hulu To Expand Auds For Its Long Videos

NYT Signs With Hulu To Expand Auds For Its Long Videos

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Origins Of “50 Shades Of Grey” As Twilight FanFic Go Missing

Origins Of “50 Shades Of Grey” As Twilight FanFic Go Missing

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Review: Snow White & The Huntsman (Conceptual Spoilers Only)

Swimming through the thick subtext, Snow White is, really, what evil Queen Ravenna (Theron) could have been… had she had the opportunity to remain unsullied… beauty and kindness and toughness. Ravenna is not only trying to kill Snow for her direct benefit, but she is trying to kill the representation, in flesh, of what she might have been.

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Sez Dennis Lim on Cannes

“A tumultuous Cannes Film Festival, marked by constant downpours and frequent boos, ended with the restoration of order.” Sez Dennis Lim 

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Pixar-Disney Animation’s Ed Catmull Talks Brave

Pixar-Disney Animation’s Ed Catmull Talks Brave

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“The close-up in the trailer for The Master of Joaquin Phoenix during his interview carries the weight of all the power of cinema.”

“The close-up in the trailer for The Master of Joaquin Phoenix during his interview carries the weight of all the power of cinema.”

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Steve Wasserman On “The Amazon Effect”

Steve Wasserman On “The Amazon Effect”

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Daily Mail Gets In Malibu Surf With One Of Malick’s Current Films

Daily Mail Gets In Malibu Surf With One Of Malick’s Current Films

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Is It Time For All University Presses To Close?

Is It Time For All University Presses To Close?

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Screenwriter Jerry Stahl Observes Birth Of Daughter With Customary Restraint

Screenwriter Jerry Stahl Observes Birth Of Daughter With Customary Restraint

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“‘I’ve been slashed, stabbed and shot at” And Acted In A Ken Loach Joint

“‘I’ve been slashed, stabbed and shot at” And Acted In A Ken Loach Joint

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John Waters On Writing, Art, Fixations

“I believe in the opposite of original sin. I believe every baby is born innocent, and something —-s it up. But every once in a while, there are people…” John Waters On Writing, Art, Fixations

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Is 30-Year-Old Rocky III The Original “MTV Movie”?

Is 30-Year-Old Rocky III The Original “MTV Movie”?

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Athens’ Summery Open-Air Cinemas

Athens’ Summery Open-Air Cinemas

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3 European Parliamentary Committees Reject ACTA Copyright Treaty

3 European Parliamentary Committees Reject ACTA Copyright Treaty

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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