Movie City News Archive for September, 2016

Paolo Sorrentino On Shrinking His Screen

Paolo Sorrentino On Shrinking His Screen

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Is Oliver Stone Newly Vague With Snowden?

Is Oliver Stone Newly Vague With Snowden?

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The DVD Wrapup: Blood Simple, Cat People, Shallows, Neon Demon, Sirk X 2, Warcraft, Kamikaze ’89 and more

Before Blood Simple hit the festival circuit in September, 1984, at Deauville and Toronto, it’s safe to say that Joel and Ethan Coen couldn’t get arrested in this town. On the advice of Sam Raimi, they knocked on doors in Los Angeles, New York, the Twin Cities and Austin, hats in hand, trying to interest someone, anyone in checking out their two-minute teaser for the film. It’s what filmmakers did in the days before Kickstarter. Any money they raised went straight to their headquarters in Texas, where a cinema community was in its infancy and a few dollars went a long way.

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Lionsgate Sets A Dozen Releases Through End Of 2016

Lionsgate Sets A Dozen Releases Through End Of 2016

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BP Pans Deepwater Horizon

“It ignores the conclusions reached by every official investigation: that the accident was the result of multiple errors made by a number of companies.” BP Pans Deepwater Horizon “Each time the film deviates from the record, it is to show Transocean in a better light and BP in a worse one.”

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Manhattan’s Fabled Carnegie Deli To Close

Manhattan’s Fabled Carnegie Deli To Close

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Lee Daniels Planning Musical Of His Life, Inspired By 8 1/2 And All That Jazz

STOP THE WORLD I WANT TO GET ON Lee Daniels Planning Musical Of His Life, Inspired By 8 1/2 And All That Jazz

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A. O. Scott Sees A Pattern Of Movies About Human Dignity On Show At NY Film Fest

A. O. Scott Sees A Pattern Of Movies About Human Dignity On Show At NY Film Fest

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Visiting Productive Roger Corman At 90

“Some ad guru told me once the two magic words in a company name are ‘New’ and ‘Free.’ ‘’Free’ has got nothing to do with how I want to do my films, so I went with ‘New.’” Visiting Productive Roger Corman At 90

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Nate Parker On “60 Minutes”

“I was falsely accused… I went to court…I was vindicated.  I feel terrible that this woman isn’t here…her family had to deal with that, but as I sit here, an apology is – no. Nat Turner, as a hero, what he did in history, is bigger than me. It’s bigger than all of us.” Nate Parker…

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When Chandler Levack Met Jill Soloway

“I feel like I’m surfing, and we’re just in this really flowy state of play. It is called filmmaking because we have a camera there, but it feels a lot more like street theatre, improv, theater games… It’s just so much fun for me. It’s my favorite thing.” When Chandler Levack Met Jill Soloway

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How Brazilian Politics Smothered The Oscar Chances Of Amazing Aquarius, Starring Sonia Braga

How Brazilian Politics Smothered The Oscar Chances Of Amazing Aquarius, Starring Sonia Braga

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Eric Hynes Talks To Yung Chang About His Great New Short, Gatekeeper

Eric Hynes Talks To Yung Chang About His Great New Short, Gatekeeper Which – You Can Watch Here

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Meet The Film Archivist Who Collected Beatles Footage For 13 Years That’s Now In Ron Howard’s Doc

Meet The Film Archivist Who Collected Beatles Footage For 13 Years That’s Now In Ron Howard’s Doc

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How Arab Cinema Is Making A Mark At Int’l Film Festivals

How Arab Cinema Is Making A Mark At Int’l Film Festivals

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Academy Names Five Nicholl Screenwriters

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Melissa Anderson Cover-Stories “The Indomitable Isabelle Huppert”

Melissa Anderson Cover-Stories “The Indomitable Isabelle Huppert”

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Behind 10 Years Of VFX For Terrence Malick’s Voyage Of Time

Behind 10 Years Of VFX For Terrence Malick’s Voyage Of Time

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Lou Lumenick’s Last Review For NYP: Deepwater Horizon

Lou Lumenick‘s Last Review For NYP: Deepwater Horizon

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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