Movie City News Archive for August, 2016

Art Of The Title Credits David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers

Art Of The Title Credits David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers

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Chicago Tribune Tower Sold Off To Redeveloper

“Monetizing the significant assets of Tribune Media’s real estate portfolio is a strategic priority for the company and we are extremely pleased with the outcome of this sales process.” Chicago Tribune Tower Sold Off To Redeveloper

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DVD Geek: A Taste of Honey, Miles Ahead, Love & Mercy, The Comeback, Miss Sadie Thompson 3D

Between the appeal of listening to the problems of a troubled friend, and creating a captivating replication of real dialogue and emotions in condensed dramatic form, The Taste Of Honey is consistently engrossing.

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Dauman Exits Viacom

Dauman Exits Viacom

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Composer Justin Hurwitz On Writing Six Original Songs For La La Land

Composer Justin Hurwitz On Writing Six Original Songs For La La Land

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“Terrorize This”: Michael Pattison Revisits Team America World Police

“Terrorize This”: Michael Pattison Revisits Team America World Police

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John Bailey On Joseph Mankiewicz And All About Eve

John Bailey On Joseph Mankiewicz And All About Eve

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Twenty-Three Roald Dahl Adaptations Are In The Works

Twenty-Three Roald Dahl Adaptations Are In The Works

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And The Awards Season Commences

And The Awards Campaign Season Commences “I’m honestly crying with happiness. That film no-one makes any more? Damien Chazelle just made it.” And – “La La Land is a film you simply never want to stop watching. It has wisdom and joy and sadness and such magic, from the evocative power of music to the transportive…

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Handicapping The Oscar Producer And Host Selection

Handicapping The Oscar Producer And Host Selection

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Richard Brody On “Why Movies Still Matter”

“When, a quarter century from now, a pop-music visionary refers to Men Go to Battle or For the Plasma or Krisha or Viktoria or Kate Plays Christine or another under-the-radar low-budget film of imagination and ingenuity, woe unto the critics who were here at the time and didn’t pay attention.” Richard Brody On “Why Movies Still Matter”

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Pulitzer Winner Margo Jefferson Says “Criticism Demands Authority”

Pulitzer Winner Margo Jefferson Says “Criticism Demands Authority”

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Oscar Stays At ABC Until At Least 2028

ABC and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that they have expanded their agreement for eight more years, in which the Network will remain home to the Oscars®, Hollywood’s biggest entertainment ceremony of the year, through 2028. The new agreement for the domestic network of the Academy Awards® adds eight years…

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Manhattan AMC Theaters Go All Reserved Seating

Manhattan AMC Theaters Go All Reserved Seating

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Reginald Hudlin Looks Back At House Party

Reginald Hudlin Looks Back At House Party

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Wesley Morris On Gene Wilder’s “Understated Nuttiness”

Wesley Morris On Gene Wilder’s “Understated Nuttiness”

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Dauman Offloads Remainder Of His Viacom Stock

Dauman Offloads Remainder Of His Viacom Stock

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“Hollywood at large is reluctant to embrace the low-budget horror strategy, instead rolling the dice on more mediocre big-budget productions. Ultimately, despite these eye-popping returns on investment, horror’s overall slice of the pie isn’t big enough.”

“Hollywood at large is reluctant to embrace the low-budget horror strategy, instead rolling the dice on more mediocre big-budget productions. Ultimately, despite these eye-popping returns on investment, horror’s overall slice of the pie isn’t big enough.”

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Mike Birbiglia Offers Six Tips For Keeping It Small

Mike Birbiglia Offers Six Tips For Keeping It Small

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“Movies Don’t Owe Anybody A Living”

“Movies Don’t Owe Anybody A Living”

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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