Movie City News Archive for July, 2016

“Netflix Of Nigeria” Turns To Production

“Netflix Of Nigeria” Turns To Production

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Bilge Ebiri Listens To James Schamus Unfurl The Centerpiece Of Indignation

Bilge Ebiri Listens To James Schamus Unfurl The Centerpiece Of Indignation

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Tom Gunning Criterion-Notes The New World

Tom Gunning Criterion-Notes The New World

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Paul Greengrass On Finding The Song That Only He Could Sing

Paul Greengrass On Finding The Song That Only He Could Sing

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HBO Firing Of Three Eldest “Sesame Street” Players Reversed

HBO Firing Of Three Eldest “Sesame Street” Players Reversed

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The Weekend Report

Jason Bourne easily led the field with an estimated $60 million debut. Also strong among national debs was the raucous comedy Bad Moms that slotted third with $23.3 million while the social media thriller Nerve opened to a more modest $8.9 million.

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Netflix Far From Chill On Another Saturday Night In U.S., Other Countries

Netflix Far From Chill On Another Saturday Night In U.S., Other Countries

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China Goes Real-Time Big Data Box Office To Stem Fraud

China Goes Real-Time Big Data Box Office To Stem Fraud

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“I have something to ask him before he goes. Does the Internet need us? Werner Herzog pauses. The silence goes on for a while, like the awkward moments in one of his own documentaries when you can watch his subjects mentally feeling around for a response. ‘It’s a beautiful question,’ he finally says. ‘I don’t think it does.'”

“I have something to ask him before he goes. Does the Internet need us? Werner Herzog pauses. The silence goes on for a while, like the awkward moments in one of his own documentaries when you can watch his subjects mentally feeling around for a response. ‘It’s a beautiful question,’ he finally says. ‘I don’t think…

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“15 Reasons Why Jason Statham Is Awesome”

“15 Reasons Why Jason Statham Is Awesome”

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HBO Signals Buyers’ Remorse And Cancels Affleck-Damon “Project Greenlight”

HBO Signals Buyers’ Remorse And Cancels Affleck-Damon “Project Greenlight”

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Rewatching The “Almost Great” Olympic Romance Of Personal Best

Rewatching The “Almost Great” Olympic Romance Of Personal Best

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Friday Box Office Estimates

The Jason Bourne Friday opening is very Bourne-like, right between the top-grossing #3 in the series ($24.7m) and the 2nd best #2 ($18.4). The audience is there… the question is how hungry America and the world is for handcrafted action filmmaking and strong silent types. Meanwhile, STX delivers its first major studio-level opening with Bad Moms grossing $2.4 million less on Friday than the nascent distributor’s best 3-day launch to date. Not doing as well is Nerve, which opened on Wednesday and hopes to crack $15m for the 5-day, unlikely to beat Bad Grandpa‘s $35.6m as Lionsgate’s top domestic grosser of the year to date.

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Graham Fuller On The Life And Films Of Ken Loach

Graham Fuller On The Life And Films Of Ken Loach

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Sony Sez Ghostbusters Does Not Endorse Hillary Clinton

Sony Sez Ghostbusters Does Not Endorse Hillary Clinton

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Behind The 18-Minute Powerhouse Centerpiece Of Indignation

“Even though it’s fun to describe the scene as two guys talking about God, I spent many sleepless nights getting the choreography down.” Behind The 18-Minute Powerhouse Centerpiece Of Indignation

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Jen Yamato On “Matt Damon Saves China!” And Other Adventures As White Savior

Jen Yamato On “Matt Damon Saves China!” And Other Adventures As White Savior

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“I cried when McKinnon pulled out her double proton guns (with that theme song playing again, oh the tears!) and in slo-mo, single-handedly defeated every ghost around her. A nerdy engineer with frizzy hair, glasses and a weird penchant for doing voices was my childhood heroine at last, in loose-fitting coveralls.”

“I cried when McKinnon pulled out her double proton guns (with that theme song playing again, oh the tears!) and in slo-mo, single-handedly defeated every ghost around her. A nerdy engineer with frizzy hair, glasses and a weird penchant for doing voices was my childhood heroine at last, in loose-fitting coveralls.”

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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