Movie City News Archive for March, 2016

Sherlock Holmes Actor Douglas Wilmer Was 96

Sherlock Holmes Actor Douglas Wilmer Was 96

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#OscarsSoWhite Invoked In Court By Former NWA Manager

“An older, white man with extensive experience in the music business is contrasted with young black men who feel underpaid, undervalued and exploited. [These issues] ermeate our society, including the entertainment sector, as shown by the recent #OscarsSoWhite controversy, which itself arose in part because of the film.” #OscarsSoWhite Invoked In Court By Former NWA Manager

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Three Comics That Get Batman v Superman Better Than Zack Snyder,” By Benjy Sarlin

“Three Comics That Get Batman v Superman Better Than Zack Snyder,” By Benjy Sarlin

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A Look Inside Chicago’s Largest Prop House

A Look Inside Chicago’s Largest Prop House

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Fox Ends “Clearances” For Exclusive Exhibition Rights

“The concepts of clearances are antiquated and don’t apply to modern-day society.” “This business has changed an awful lot. This is a legacy practice and the time has come to move on.” Fox Ends “Clearances” For Exclusive Exhibition Rights

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Soderbergh-Seimetz-Kerrigan “The Girlfriend Experience” Scored By Shane Carruth

Soderbergh-Seimetz-Kerrigan “The Girlfriend Experience” Scored By Shane Carruth

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Art Of The Title Credits Deadpool

Art Of The Title Credits Deadpool

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ESPN’s Seven-And-A-Half Hour O. J. Simpson Doc Gets Oscar-Qualifying Run

ESPN’s Seven-And-A-Half Hour O. J. Simpson Doc Gets Oscar-Qualifying Run 

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Joe Swanberg Keynotes SxSW 73m vid

“I want you to be forced to just exist in the moment that we’re filming, and I’m casting you because I want you to be you. I like you, I like how you talk, I like the kinds of jokes you make, do those in my movie; don’t go create a character that’s something else.”…

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Tina Hassania Says Small Video Labels Aren’t Distributing Enough Films Directed By Women… But It’s Complicated

“Considering these frustrations, the fact that DVDs of such films come out at all is sometimes a small miracle.” Tina Hassania Says Small Video Labels Aren’t Distributing Enough Films Directed By Women… But It’s Complicated “But if you really want to highlight women’s historical contributions to film,  you also have to look past the director’s chair. Our producers…

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Nobelist-Novelist-Holocaust Survivor Imre Kertesz Was 86; Wrote Fateless

Nobelist-Novelist-Holocaust Survivor Imre Kertesz Was 86; Wrote Fateless

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Anti-Vaccination Polemic Pulled From Tribeca Gets Angelika Berth; Whether It’s A Four-Wall Theater Rental Unanswered By Times

”Censorship is denying a voice. That film has been denied a platform, but it certainly hasn’t been denied a voice.” Anti-Vaccination Polemic Pulled From Tribeca Gets Angelika Berth; Whether It’s A Four-Wall Theater Rental Unanswered By Times And – Distributor Cinema Libre Offers Their Side

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Hans Zimmer Says No More Superhero Films For Him

Hans Zimmer Says No More Superhero Films For Him

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Visionary Architect Zaha Hadid Was 65

Visionary Architect Zaha Hadid Was 65

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THR Cover-Stories The Survival And Ambitions Of WME-IMG Agency

THR Cover-Stories The Survival And Ambitions Of WME-IMG Agency

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Terrence Malick’s Composer Got His Gig Through A Want Ad

Terrence Malick’s Composer Got His Gig Through A Want Ad

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The Star Of Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan On The Road From Sri Lanka To The Cinema

The Star Of Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan On The Road From Sri Lanka To The Cinema

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Review: Miles from Home and I Saw the Light

Film biographies date to the dawn of cinema with the lives of politicians, entertainers and sports players providing a treasure trove of drama and entertainment. But the rearview mirror hasn’t been kind to the genre. We know that many bygone favorites printed the legend and skirted over or ignored the subject’s flaws. It didn’t seem to matter to the audiences that flocked to The Pride of the Yankeesor The Jolson Story but today’s moviegoer is not as forgiving about blurred lines.

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Guy Maddin On His Seances, Plus Isabella Rossellini And The Slobbery Labrador Retriever

Guy Maddin On His Seances, Plus Isabella Rossellini And The Slobbery Labrador Retriever

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Terry Gilliam To Mount “Quixote” Once More In September

Terry Gilliam To Mount “Quixote” Once More In September

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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