Movie City News Archive for January, 2016

Former Exec David Kirkpatrick Joins The THR Chorus Of Oscar Voters

“For those in the Board of Governors who may not know who Gene Kelly was, he was a pathfinder in the American film musical. ‘I am not exactly hirable as a dancer or a director these days. My legs are shot,’ he said, with his legendary twinkle in his eye, ‘but I am still a…

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Québec Actor Takes On The Revenant For Portrayal Of French-Canadian Fur Traders Known As Coureurs des Bois

“They were the ones who embraced their culture, who learned their language, who had children and married.” Québec Actor Takes On The Revenant For Portrayal Of French-Canadian Fur Traders

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Eugene Hernandez On The Sundance Birth Of A Nation Moment

“On Sunday afternoon, at a reception hosted by the Academy at the Festival, filmmakers and insiders chatted with each other and questioned AMPAS reps about the new initiative.” Eugene Hernandez On The Sundance Birth Of A Nation Moment

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Ira Deutchman, Anne Thompson And Sam Adams Talk Representation And Film Critics At Arthouse Convergence

“Having a social media presence: The critics who survived are the ones that created online numbers. [An editor at EW told me that] they moved out senior critics like Ken Tucker and Lisa Schwarzbaum not because of their expense, but because they didn’t have a social media presence.” Ira Deutchman, Anne Thompson And Sam Adams Talk…

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Santa Barbara Film Festival Names All Five Best Director Nominees As Directors Of The Year

[PR] The Santa Barbara International Film Festival announced today that Lenny Abrahamson, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Tom McCarthy, Adam McKay and George Miller will receive the 2016 Outstanding Directors of the Year award. They will each be celebrated individually for their films ROOM, THE REVENANT, SPOTLIGHT, THE BIG SHORT and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, respectively.  The individual…

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Universal Music Group Gets Behind Lee Daniels Apollo Theatre Doc

[PR] Oscar-nominated director Lee Daniels (LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER, PRECIOUS and creator and producer of the Fox hit series EMPIRE) will direct the documentary feature film THE APOLLO THEATER FILM PROJECT – the authorized history of New York’s famed Apollo Theater, it was announced today by White Horse Pictures’ Nigel Sinclair and Jeanne Elfant Festa….

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Cara Buckley Editorializes What Matters Is Representation Behind The Scenes, Not “The End Of The Sausage-Making Machine,” i.e., Oscar

“Few of the roughly 300 features eligible for best picture last year told stories from the points of view of women or minorities. Besides, we’ve been fed narratives from an overwhelmingly white male perspective since Hollywood began. Isn’t it high time for some alternate narratives, at the very least? Isn’t the purpose of art to…

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The DVD Wrapup: Burnt, Assassin, New Girlfriend, Patels, Mr. Robot and more

As mouth-watering as Burnt is, I would discourage anyone from assuming that all foodie movies taste the same. The cranky-perfectionist conceit works better in Daniel Cohen’s Le Chef, Jon Favreau’s Chef, Lasse Hallström’s The Hundred-Foot Journey, Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci’s Big Night and Brittany Murphy’s largely undiscovered gem, The Ramen Girl. Also tempting are Mostly Martha and its Hollywood remake No Reservations, Woman on Top. Tampopo, Ratatouille, Julie and Julia and, of course, Babette’s Feast and Like Water for Chocolate.

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Lou Lumenick Reports Employee Out Front Says Last Show Of Force Awakens Tonight Will Be Curtains For NYC’s Ziegfeld

Lumenick Reports Employee Out Front Says Last Show Of Force Awakens Tonight Will Be Curtains For NYC’s Ziegfeld

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Mentor-Director-Oscar Voter Sam Weisman Joins THR Open-Letter Section

“Being a voting member of the Academy is an important way for me to affirm my life experience.” Mentor-Director-Oscar Voter Sam Weisman Joins THR Open-Letter Section

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Jonathan Rosenbaum Four-Stars Son Of Saul

“Saul smiles, beatifically, out of the simple pleasure of seeing a living child.” Jonathan Rosenbaum Four-Stars Son Of Saul

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President Obama Weighs In On Oscar

“I think when everybody’s story is told, then that makes for better art. That makes for better entertainment. It makes everybody feel part of one American family.” President Obama Weighs In On Oscar autoplay

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Says Candidate Clinton

“Just think of the great films that not only display the diversity of America, but the diversity of the human experience.” Says Candidate Clinton

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Murdoch Says Brit “Posh Boy” Politicos Cut Google An “Easy” Tax Deal

Murdoch Says Brit “Posh Boy” Politicos Cut Google An “Easy” Tax Deal

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Jada Yuan Cherrypicks 17 Lowlights From Weiner

Jada Yuan Cherrypicks 17 Lowlights From Weiner

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Is Streaming Beating Digital Pirates?

Is Streaming Beating Digital Pirates?

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Why Aren’t Modern Movie Posters Any Good?

Why Aren’t Modern British Movie Posters Any Good?

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Veteran Female Animator (And Oscar Voter) Open-Letters Academy

Veteran Female Animator (And Oscar Voter) Open-Letters Academy

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Chang-Debruge-Lodge Approve Of Sundance 2016 Diversity

“The good news is that these movies somehow managed to get made in a system that so seldom entrusts anyone but white guys to tell its stories—though it should be said that even the white guys run into trouble when they try to color outside the lines.” Chang–Debruge–Lodge Approve Of Sundance 2016 Diversity

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Hw’d, According To Stephanie Allain, Alan Yang And Justin Simien

“It’s also about critics: the male gaze on things, the white gaze on things. It’s about, ‘I value that which I understand and which I relate to.’ It’s really systemic. It’s throughout the culture.” Hw’d, According To Stephanie Allain, Alan Yang And Justin Simien

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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