Movie City News Archive for February, 2015

Nathan Rabin Sez “The Trailer Is Not The Movie”

Nathan Rabin Sez “The Trailer Is Not The Movie”

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Friday Box Office Estimates

Focus unlikely to open to $20 million, which is not good news for any of the already superstar-deprived studios. The Lazarus Effect heads right back into the grave. Fifty Shades of Grey continues to drop like a pair of Anastasia’s panties.

And Oscar bumps arrive, but in minor fashion, for Birdman (estimated $530k Friday from last week’s $247k) and Still Alice ($750k from $685k).

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A Smart Anti-Piracy Maneuver: Fridays Will Be Worldwide Record Release Day

A Smart Anti-Piracy Maneuver: Fridays Will Be Worldwide Record Release Day

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“All Documentaries Are Participatory Documentaries,” Sez Richard Brody

“All Documentaries Are Participatory Documentaries,” Sez Richard Brody

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Netflix Doesn’t Have Ads, But Product Placement’s In The Mix, Especially With “House Of Cards,” Season 3

“A sophisticated show for a sophisticated, beautiful beer. So we put the two together and sent it to them. If we don’t think it works and somebody’s brown-bagging a Stella on a bus and it’s not the right place for our brand, then we’ll let them know that we’d prefer not to be in that scene.”…

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On Leonard Nimoy’s Passion For Photography

On Leonard Nimoy’s Passion For Photography

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How Net Neutrality Made It Despite Fierce Financial Opposition

How Net Neutrality Made It Despite Fierce Financial Opposition

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A Statement By The President On The Passing Of Leonard Nimoy

“Long before being nerdy was cool, there was Leonard Nimoy… I loved Spock.” A Statement By The President On The Passing Of Leonard Nimoy

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Wim Wenders On The Pull Of America

Wim Wenders On The Pull Of America

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Michael Phillips On The Jewish Roots Of Leonard Nimoy And “Live Long And Prosper”

The Jewish Roots Of Leonard Nimoy And “Live Long And Prosper”

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DreamWorks To Sell Glendale Campus While Reporting $263 Million Quarterly Loss

DreamWorks To Sell Glendale Campus While Reporting $263 Million Quarterly Loss

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Leonard Nimoy On Photography And The Jewish Concept Of The Feminine Presence Of God (from 2001)

Leonard Nimoy On Photography And The Jewish Concept Of The Feminine Presence Of God (from 2001)

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“Bond Woman” Monica Bellucci Is Four Years Older Than Daniel Craig

“Bond Woman” Monica Bellucci Is Four Years Older Than Daniel Craig

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Filmmaker Ben Wheatley’s Criterion 10 Contains Some Fine, Succinct Film Crit

Filmmaker Ben Wheatley‘s Criterion 10 Contains Some Fine, Succinct Film Crit

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Nick Pinkerton Has 2,800 Words Worth Of The “Subterranean Hot Take Blues”

“The Atlantic consistently runs some of the worst film writing to be found on the Internet, which is to say in the universe… If you believe that a work’s entire significance can be found in the footprint that it leaves in public discourse, then looking at the thing itself will necessarily be an afterthought. ” Nick Pinkerton…

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Revisiting The Classic 1995 Newsweek Column That Got Almost Everything Wrong About The Internet

Revisiting The Classic 1995 Newsweek Column That Got Almost Everything Wrong About The Internet

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Matthew Asprey Gear’s History Of Orson Welles’ Never-Made RFK Conspiracy Thriller

Matthew Asprey Gear‘s History Of Orson Welles’ Never-Made RFK Conspiracy Thriller

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J. Hoberman On Godard As Speaker, Thinker And Filmmaker

“I’m the model of the non-model, the person who can’t be categorized. But they categorize me as non-categorizable, which is the same thing in the end.” J. Hoberman On Godard As Speaker, Thinker And Filmmaker

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LEONARD NIMOY WAS 83

LEONARD NIMOY WAS 83

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Anne Thompson Talks To Ed Burns About His Hw’d Primer

Anne Thompson Talks To Ed Burns About His Hw’d Primer

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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