Movie City News Archive for May, 2015

An Excerpt From J. R. Jones’ “The Lives Of Robert Ryan” On The Actor’s Pronounced Politics

An Excerpt From J. R. Jones‘ “The Lives Of Robert Ryan,” On The Actor’s Pronounced Politics

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The Cable Execs, Traders And Bankers Who Will See The Most Profit From Charter-Time Warner Cable Merger

The Cable Execs, Traders And Bankers Who Will See The Most Profit From Charter-Time Warner Cable Merger

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Jason Blum Describes The Blumhouse Model

“‘We tried to make a wide release movie, it doesn’t really feel like it, let’s not make someone spend $30 million and the movie open to $7 million, let’s go to Netflix or iTunes and have a little theatrical or no theatrical,” and that’s how the process works. Occasionally, the director and us disagree, and…

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For Fassbinder’s 70th, David Hudson Visits Berlin’s “Fassbinder—NOW” Exhibit

For Fassbinder’s 70th, David Hudson Visits Berlin’s “Fassbinder—NOW” Exhibit

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Jill Soloway Says Women In H’wd Must Cry At Work

Jill Soloway Says Women In H’wd Must Cry At Work, “Don’t Be Like Anyone Else”

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Julie Bosman Offers Background As Spike Lee Starts His Chicago Gun Violence Movie

“Way, way back when I made Do the Right Thing, there were people who said this film would cause riots all across America, that black people were going to run amok. They wrote a whole bunch of things. But those people ended up being on the wrong side of history. And the same is going to…

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For Sunday Morning, Buzzfeed Publishes “The Hardest Game Of ‘—-, Marry, Kill’ For Anybody Who Is Attracted To Hot Ladies”

“Our mission’s to do great journalism and tell people about the world,” Buzzfeed Publishes “The Hardest Game Of ‘—-, Marry, Kill’ For Anybody Who Is Attracted To Hot Ladies”

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The Weekend Report

The earth moved but there was no fault line for San Andreas as it buried the competition in the rubble with an estimated $53 million debut. The other national newcomer Aloha lei-ed an egg with a $9.8 million opening.

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“Unlike Stone’s character, I have a darker complexion and black hair. Moreover, like most Eurasian people I know, have never been able to ‘pass.’ If anything, my racial identity has necessarily entailed a great deal of explanation to clarify that I am in fact Chinese-American/French-Canadian and not, say, Brazilian, Tibetan, Colombian or Filipino.”

“Unlike Stone’s character, I have a darker complexion and black hair. Moreover, like most Eurasian people I know, have never been able to ‘pass.’ If anything, my racial identity has necessarily entailed a great deal of explanation to clarify that I am in fact Chinese-American/French-Canadian and not, say, Brazilian, Tibetan, Colombian or Filipino.”

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“Kael wrote with the same spontaneity and intelligence about popular entertainment as about the films of Renoir and Antonioni. The key was that her criticism continued to flow from the experience of viewing the film–if it made her feel good, then it was good.”

“Kael wrote with the same spontaneity and intelligence about popular entertainment as about the films of Renoir and Antonioni. The key was that her criticism continued to flow from the experience of viewing the film–if it made her feel good, then it was good.”

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“186 Movies That Should Be In The Criterion Collection”

“186 Movies That Should Be In The Criterion Collection”

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An Extensive Before-And-After Comparison Of All Manner Of VFX In Fury Road

An Extensive Before-And-After Comparison Of All Manner Of VFX In Fury Road And – “Center-framed and barreling right at the audience.”

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How The Safdies Discovered Their Heaven Knows What Star When She Was A Homeless Junkie

“She would just go stand for nine hours at a time at an Apple store. She would just write and write and write. It was no bullshit, so conversational and unpretentious. ‘Look, I want to adapt these into a movie,’ and she said, ‘That sounds awesome,’ and I was like, ‘I want you to play…

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“Showbusiness sucks,” Says Brian Cox, “It’s run by people I have little respect for”

“Showbusiness sucks,” Says Brian Cox, “It’s run by people I have little respect for”

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Nick Schager Highlights 10 Moments Of Milla Jovovich “Badassery,” Because, Milla

Nick Schager Highlights 10 Moments Of Milla Jovovich “Badassery,” Because, Milla

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Helen Mirren Says When She’s On B’wy, She Lives Like A “—-ing Nun”

Helen Mirren Says When She’s On B’wy, She Lives Like A “—-ing Nun”

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“The political sensitivities of young critics these days are so finely tuned that it’s hard to know sometimes whether a protest is part of an attempt to create a new critical paradigm centered around diversity, or just some kind of high-functioning troll activity.”

“The political sensitivities of young critics these days are so finely tuned that it’s hard to know sometimes whether a protest is part of an attempt to create a new critical paradigm centered around diversity, or just some kind of high-functioning troll activity.”

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Picturing Wim Wenders’ Borders And Open Roads

Picturing Wim Wenders’ Borders And Open Roads

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Joanne Harris Tracks Loki From Icelandic Mythology To Present-Day Popularity

Joanne Harris Tracks Loki From Icelandic Mythology To Present-Day Popularity

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What Peter Bradshaw Learned At Cannes: “Scoping”

What Peter Bradshaw Learned At Cannes: “Scoping”

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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