Movie City News Archive for June, 2013

Washington Post Big Thinker Samuelson Wants To Un-invent The Internet

Washington Post Big Thinker Samuelson Wants To Un-invent The Internet; Cowers In Fear Of “Cyberattacks”

Read the full article »

Mulling Murdoch’s NewsCorp Rebrand

Mulling Murdoch’s NewsCorp Rebrand And – The Twenty-Quid Logo Design For “News UK” (No Longer “International”)

Read the full article »

Edelstein Listens To Obst’s “New Abnormal” Patter About H’wd Today And Tom’w

“The movie marketers believe that women go to guys’ movies if they’re good, but guys won’t go to women’s movies ever. I’ve proved that wrong—as have many others—but they deeply believe that.” Edelstein Listens To Obst’s “New Abnormal” Patter About H’wd Today And Tom’w

Read the full article »

Hedge Fund Activist Investor With 6.9% Of Holdings Renews Sony Grumbles After White House Downed

Hedge Fund Activist Investor With 6.9% Of Holdings Renews Sony Grumbles After White House Downed

Read the full article »

Lopez Apologizes For Singing For Turkmen Tyrant Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov

“Had there been knowledge of human rights issues any kind, Jennifer would not have attended.” Lopez Apologizes For Singing “Happy Birthday” To Turkmen Tyrant Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov

Read the full article »

Enter The Dragon’s Jim Kelly Was 67

Enter The Dragon‘s Jim Kelly Was 67

Read the full article »

Spec Scripts For White House Down And The Heat Sold Within 24 Hours Of Each Other; Opened On Same Day

Spec Scripts For White House Down And The Heat Sold Within 24 Hours Of Each Other; Opened On Same Day

Read the full article »

“Hollywood’s refusal to stand up to Alec Baldwin is shameful”

“Hollywood’s refusal to stand up to Alec Baldwin is shameful”

Read the full article »

Report: FBI Files Show Michael Jackson Paid $35 Million For Silence Of Two Dozen Boys’ Families

Report: FBI Files Show Michael Jackson Paid $35 Million For Silence Of Two Dozen Boys’ Families

Read the full article »

Borelli’s Breakfast With Michael Shannon

Borelli‘s Breakfast And Banter With Michael Shannon

Read the full article »

The Weekend Report

A couple of new films enlivened weekend moviegoing, but it was moola-moola at the top for the second frame of Monsters University, with an estimated $46.1 million. That left the bridesmaid slot to debuting The Heat with $39.3 million and position four for incoming White House Down with $25.3 million.

Read the full article »

Wilmington on Movies: The Heat

The Heat is a crude, violent, often tasteless, clichéd and outrageously foul-mouthed buddy-buddy cop comedy that also happens to be funny—sometimes screamingly funny.

Read the full article » 1 Comment »

Wilmington on Movies: White House Down

I hate to admit this, but I sort of enjoyed White House Down. This doesn‘t mean that I‘m ready to forgive producer -director Roland Emmerich and his latest landmark-basher all their cinematic sins (among them Emmerich’s last movie raid on Washington D. C., and the White House, the 1996 Independence Day) , or that I think that moviemakers with outlandishly big budgets at their disposal should keep attacking and blowing up the White House on screen until they get it right —which may never happen until they hire Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and James Franco for the job — or that I‘m getting soft in my old age. It’s just that White House Down, defying all my expectations, made me laugh a little.

Read the full article »

Jennifer Lopez Does The Happy Birthday, Mr. President Thing For Turkmenistan Strongman, Dictator Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov

Jennifer Lopez Does The Happy Birthday, Mr. President Thing For Turkmenistan Strongman, Dictator Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov

Read the full article »

Andrew Sullivan Dissects Why He Finds Alec Baldwin “Worthless”

“Conservatives would be crucified for saying something like this. A liberal is given an easy exit. I’m not for punishing people for speech; but I am against excusing the threat of homophobic rape against a specific individual because the bigot says he pro-gay.” Andrew Sullivan Dissects Why He Finds Alec Baldwin “Worthless”

Read the full article »

Evan Goldberg On Getting The Final Cash And A Feast Of Friends For This Is The End

Evan Goldberg On Getting The Final Cash And A Feast Of Friends For This Is The End

Read the full article »

“Feminism Is A Bit Of An Old-Fashioned Word,” Sez Sarandon

“Feminism Is A Bit Of An Old-Fashioned Word,” Sez Sarandon

Read the full article »

How Will Facebook’s Robot Censors Detect And Define “Porn”?

How Will Facebook’s Robot Censors Detect And Define “Porn”?

Read the full article »

A 1983 Miniseries Pitch By Orson Welles To An HBO Exec, As Alleged By Henry Jaglom And Peter Biskind

A 1983 Miniseries Pitch By Orson Welles To An HBO Exec, As Alleged By Henry Jaglom And Peter Biskind

Read the full article »

“If Films Were Reviewed Like Videogames”

“If Films Were Reviewed Like Videogames”

Read the full article »

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