Movie City News Archive for December, 2015

Phil Rosenthal On When Pitchmen Like Cosby Go Bad

Phil Rosenthal On When Pitchmen Like Cosby Go Bad

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So How Does An American Movie, Even Star Wars, Make Money From China With Its Market Manipulations?

“Are we going to see them meddle with results or let it make the money it should make?” So How Does An American Movie, Even Star Wars, Make Money From China With Its Market Manipulations?

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Tarantino Talks Family

“This is Harvey’s studio, and the buck stops with him, and he still works from a gut. He has that old mogul aspect about him that is romantic because you are dealing with somebody. It’s a double-edged sword, you know. He can get the wrong thing in his mind and just be on the wrong…

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Michael Bay Benghazi Movie Sets Group Sales

Michael Bay Benghazi Movie Sets Group Sales

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Newly-Elected Polish Gov’t Cracks Down On Public Media

“We must now hurry. If the media criticizes our changes, we have to stop it. Public media are not involved in party political disputes, they should just accurately inform the public.” Newly-Elected Polish Gov’t Cracks Down On Public Media

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Smithsonian Cosby Connection Gets Worse

Smithsonian Cosby Connection Gets Worse

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David O. Russell Furthers Argument That Joy Is Veiled Indie Film Self-Portrait

“I relate to her deeply. She manages a lot of bare-knuckled commerce that’s unforgiving and nasty. You will lose it in the blink of an eye. It will be taken from you. You gotta be able to roll off it and move on. I just dig that in her.” David O. Russell Furthers Argument That Joy Is…

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Ex Machina’s Alex Garland On Books About Artjificial Intelligence

Ex Machina‘s Alex Garland On Books About Artjificial Intelligence

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Media Burn’s Tom Weinberg Remembers Haskell Wexler (With Wexler’s 3’37” Eulogy For Studs Terkel)

Media Burn’s Tom Weinberg Remembers Haskell Wexler (With Wexler’s 3’37” Eulogy For Studs Terkel)

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Disney Issues Statement From George Lucas Regarding “White Slavers”

“I misspoke and used a very inappropriate analogy and for that I apologize. I have been working with Disney for 40 years and chose them as the custodians of Star Wars because of my great respect for the company and Bob Iger’s leadership. Disney is doing an incredible job of taking care of and expanding the franchise. I…

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Spielberg Puts $50 Million Of Own Money Into New Amblin

Spielberg Puts $50 Million Of Own Money Into New Amblin

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China Box Office Notches $6.78 Billion, A 48.7% Increase Over 2014

China Box Office Notches $6.78 Billion, 48.7% Boost Over 2014

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Tina Hassannia On The Trauma Of 2015 Music Movies

Tina Hassannia On The Trauma Of 2015 Music Movies

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Six Variety Critics Ding Their Least Favorite Of 2015

“For Oscar-humping banality and excruciating politesse, this film was hard to beat.” Six Variety Critics Ding Their Least Favorite Of 2015

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Jason Segel Takes Awards Talk As An Opportunity To Talk About Awards Talk

“When I focus too much on the awards talk, I find myself stifled, creatively. To be nominated for an Oscar would be the most wonderful thing in the world, but if you hinge your self-esteem on that, you’re really setting yourself up to feel bad about something you shouldn’t feel bad about it.” Jason Segel…

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How Big Short Extra Jeffry Griffin Wound Up Sharing Scenes With Ryan Gosling

How Big Short Extra Jeffry Griffin Wound Up Sharing Scenes With Ryan Gosling

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8 Weeks To Oscar: Pretending We Know

Expect surprises on nomination morning… even if the biggest surprise ends up being that there are no surprises at all.

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Dennis Lim On Trying To “Crack” David Lynch

Dennis Lim On Trying To “Crack” David Lynch

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Decent NYT Profile On Adam McKay And Absurdity Of The Big Short Can’t Resist Adding Naysaying Academic In Penultimate Graf Who Says Art Changes Nothing

Decent NYT Profile On Adam McKay And Absurdity Of The Big Short Can’t Resist Adding Naysaying Academic In Penultimate Graf Who Says Art Changes Nothing

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D. A. Opposes Early Release For “Midnight Rider” Director: “Further Evidence” Of “Failure To Accept Responsibility In The Death Of Sarah Jones”

D. A. Opposes Early Release For “Midnight Rider” Director: “Further Evidence” Of “Failure To Accept Responsibility In The Death Of Sarah Jones”

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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