Movie City News Archive for June, 2014

Time Inc. Says It Wants To Be LinkedIn, Or Maybe, Like, Facebook

Time Inc. Says It Wants To Be LinkedIn, Or Maybe, Like, Facebook

Read the full article »

Cara Buckley NYT’s New Awards Season “Carpetbagger”

Cara Buckley NYT’s New Awards Season “Carpetbagger”

Read the full article »

Kino Lorber Goes Godard In 3D

    KINO LORBER ACQUIRES ALL NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO JEAN-LUC GODARD’S 3D MASTERWORK GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE, JURY PRIZE WINNER AT THIS YEAR’S CANNES FILM FESTIVAL     New  York, NY – June 30, 2014 – Kino Lorber is proud to announce the acquisition of all North American rights to Jean-Luc Godard’s 3D masterwork Goodbye…

Read the full article »

Docs Rock HBO’s Monday

  MONDAY NIGHT IS DOC NIGHT ON HBO, WITH GROUNDBREAKING HBO DOCUMENTARIES NOW ANCHOREDWEEKLY ON MONDAY NIGHTS YEAR ROUND             NEW YORK, June 30, 2014 – With the popularity of nonfiction filmmaking increasing, HBO has created a regular slot for its powerful and provocative documentaries, featuring debuts of new original films along with timely encore presentations every Mondaynight. The Monday night slot kicked off…

Read the full article »

The “Simmering Tension” Between Groucho Marx And T. S. Eliot

The “Simmering Tension” Between Groucho Marx And T. S. Eliot

Read the full article »

Harmony Korine And Kenneth Anger Have A Little Chat

Harmony Korine And Kenneth Anger Have A Little Chat

Read the full article »

Ebiri On Why Mark Wahlberg Is A Better Actor Than You Ever Realized

Ebiri On Why Mark Wahlberg Is A Better Actor Than You Ever Realized

Read the full article »

“Perhaps the most startling thing about Facebook’s efforts to control the emotions of nearly 700,000 people without their explicit consent is the fact that some people are actually defending the company.”

“Perhaps the most startling thing about Facebook’s efforts to control the emotions of nearly 700,000 people without their explicit consent is the fact that some people are actually defending the company.”

Read the full article »

Frere-Jones On Eno’s Musical Invention

Sasha Frere-Jones On Brian Eno’s Musical Invention

Read the full article »

So Sez Writer-Producer Beau Willimon

“One thing I’ve said about likability, and Netflix got mad at me for saying it: Someone asked me about the likability of my characters, and I said, verbatim: —- likability. I don’t give two s—s whether someone likes my characters. I do care if they’re attracted to them.” So Sez Writer-Producer Beau Willimon

Read the full article »

Michael Henry Wilson, 68, Positif Film Critic Specializing In American Cinema, Wrote Books On Scorsese, Walsh Tourneur; Script For Alan Rudolph’s Investigating Sex

Michael Henry Wilson, 68, Positif Film Critic Specializing In American Cinema, Wrote Books On Scorsese, Walsh Tourneur; Script For Alan Rudolph’s Investigating Sex

Read the full article »

Nantucket Film Fest Honors Boyhood, Actress, Kumiko

Nantucket Film Fest Honors Boyhood, Actress, Kumiko

Read the full article »

Fleming & Bart Join Hands To Wring Them Over China; Comedy Lite Ensues

“Everyone I encounter in town this week seems fixated on Chinese takeout—only it’s finance, not food.” Fleming & Bart Join Hands To Wring Them Over China; Comedy Lite Ensues

Read the full article »

Meshach Taylor Was 67

Meshach Taylor Was 67

Read the full article »

Murdochs March Ahead!

Murdochs March Ahead!

Read the full article »

The Weekend Report

Mere quibbling! Transformers: Age of Extinction pretty much hit its target with an estimated $99.2 million that consumed roughly 55% of the marketplace and set the benchmark for 2014 openings. And to no great surprise its brethren majors opted not to set up a sacrifice title as counterprogramming. New titles in exclusive bows also registered some potent starts, including dystopian sci-fier Snowpiercer with a torrid $163,000 at eight railways and musical rom-com Begin Again tuning up $143,000 at five gigs. Biopic Yves Saint Laurent fashioned $23,700 from two screens and the fanciful historical re-write America summed up to $36,300 from four playdates.

Read the full article »

Friday Box Office Estimates

Transformers: Age of Extinction is the biggest opening day launch of 2014 so far, but not by a lot. Godzilla opened to $38.4 million on Friday and ended up with just $93.3 million for that weekend. The best opening of the year is still Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with $95 million. So while the assumption was be that Transformers would be the first $100m opener of the year, it is unclear at this time. High-profile openers Begin Again and Snowpiercer are only on 5 and 8 screens, respectively, and will have decent weekends as limited releases. Maleficent continues to be the best mainstream holder of the summer, driven by a lack of any other titles for girls.

Read the full article »

Seven Ways To Tell You’re A Woman In A Michael Bay Movie

Seven Ways To Tell You’re A Woman In A Michael Bay Movie

Read the full article »

“How Facebook Moved 20 Billion Instagram Photos Without You Noticing”

“How Facebook Moved 20 Billion Instagram Photos Without You Noticing”

Read the full article »

Confessions Of More Than One Star Wars Stormtrooper

Confessions Of More Than One Star Wars Stormtrooper

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