Movie City News Archive for December, 2014

Roger Ebert’s Reflections On Edward Herrmann At The Time He’d Read The Audiobook Of Life Itself

Roger Ebert‘s Reflections On Edward Herrmann At The Time He’d Read The Audiobook Of Life Itself

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“The movie’s kind of dark, but at its core is this optimism that tomorrow’s going to be better than today. The most important thing that I touched on earlier is that I wanted the movie to look like the characters were walking into a painting of their own design – they’re very self-serious characters who are very formal in their presentation.”

A Most Violent Year is “kind of dark, but at its core is this optimism that tomorrow’s going to be better than today. The most important thing is that I wanted the movie to look like the characters were walking into a painting of their own design–they’re very self-serious characters who are very formal in…

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White House Deflects Experts’ Doubts On Source Of Sony Hack

White House Deflects Experts’ Doubts On Source Of Sony Hack

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“I really wanted to get my arms around Roger’s whole life because I felt like his life truly informed his criticism.”

“I really wanted to get my arms around Roger’s whole life because I felt like his life truly informed his criticism.”

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Ciepley And Barnes Tick Their Own Sony Hack Tock, At 3,000 Words

Ciepley And Barnes Tick Their Own Sony Hack Tock, At 3,000 Words

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“I’ve never been a snob about my career. I’ve spent a lot of time playing supporting characters, but to play a lead, the eponymous character, was something. Mike Leigh has always given the best shots for the most unlikely characters. That was true of Dickens and of Shakespeare. The profundity of tragedy creates a sense of the absurd.”

“I’ve never been a snob about my career. I’ve spent a lot of time playing supporting characters, but to play a lead, the eponymous character, was something. Mike Leigh has always given the best shots for the most unlikely characters. That was true of Dickens and of Shakespeare. The profundity of tragedy creates a sense…

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Manohla Dargis And A. O. Scott Situate The Awards Season

“My least favorite genre of film writing may be the ‘What Film X gets wrong about Historical Topic Y’ chin-scratcher, which generally shows little understanding of either movies or history. But such articles do serve a purpose during awards campaigns, smudging the narratives producers and publicists carefully lay down.” Manohla Dargis And A. O. Scott…

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“Lyndon Johnson’s aides are mad that MLK is the hero of Selma”

“Lyndon Johnson’s aides are mad that MLK is the hero of Selma“

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The Great Edward Hermann Was 71

The Great Edward Hermann Was 71

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David Cronenberg: Concerned About The Future Of The Professional Critic

“There are all these other people who just say they’re critics and you read their writing and they can’t write, or they can write and their writing reveals that they’re quite stupid and ignorant. Some voices have emerged that are actually quite good who never would have emerged before, so that’s the upside.” David Cronenberg:…

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Phil Zabriskie Goes Farther Than American Sniper In Describing What It Means To Kill In Combat

Phil Zabriskie Goes Farther Than American Sniper In Describing What It Means To Kill In Combat

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“I’m never satisfied with the way I see my people photographed in movies. I think it comes from a lack of consciousness–if you grew up in a community where you don’t know black people, I wouldn’t suspect you would photograph them in a concerned way.”

“I’m never satisfied with the way I see my people photographed in movies. I think it comes from a lack of consciousness–if you grew up in a community where you don’t know black people, I wouldn’t suspect you would photograph them in a concerned way.”

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J. C. Chandor On His Roots Before A Most Violent Year

“It’s not that money is the root of all evil—it’s that it’s the root of everything.” J. C. Chandor On His Roots Before A Most Violent Year

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20 Weeks To Oscar: Oscar Zit Of The Day

Wasn’t it just 48 hours ago that I wrote about the foolishness of reconsidering Selma as a work of art because of what may a legitimate beef on the detail of the film by a witness to a part of the history the film covers? Now we have an eruption from the only participating central subject in Foxcatcher, Mark Schultz. He is angry, angry, angry at Bennett Miller…

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CNN Asserts H’wd Should Have Some Femme-Centric Tentpoles

CNN Asserts H’wd Should Have Some Femme-Centric Tentpoles

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The DVD Wrapup: Binoche, Coogan, Lewis, Clarkson, Mamet, Maclaine & Plummer and More

Anyone who fell in love with Michael Winterbottom’s wonderfully offbeat buddy/road comedy, The Trip, should relish the opportunity to follow Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in the equally delicious sequel, The Trip to Italy. I doubt, however, that anyone unfamiliar with or unimpressed by The Trip — or the not-for-everyone Coogan, for that matter – will have their minds changed by what happens to them in Italy.

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“Sony is the leading edge of something that’s been building steam for a long time: the ability of failing states, angry states and nonstate actors to reach deep inside their adversaries, trigger havoc and make demands.”

“Sony is the leading edge of something that’s been building steam for a long time: the ability of failing states, angry states and nonstate actors to reach deep inside their adversaries, trigger havoc and make demands.”

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WSJ Gets The Sony Pictures Inside Hack Tick-Tock From Michael Lynton

WSJ Gets The Sony Pictures Inside Hack Tick-Tock From CEO Michael Lynton

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Kings Theater Movie Palace On Flatbush Avenue In Brooklyn To Reopen In February

Kings Theater Movie Palace On Flatbush Avenue In Brooklyn To Reopen In February

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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