Movie City News Archive for December, 2016

William Christopher Was 84

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“But need George Michael be a dirty secret pleasure? Need any pleasure be dirty or secret? And aren’t these the questions Michael himself seemed to explore (and explode) in both his music and his life?”

“But need George Michael be a dirty secret pleasure? Need any pleasure be dirty or secret? And aren’t these the questions Michael himself seemed to explore (and explode) in both his music and his life?”

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Beat Poet David Meltzer Was 89

Beat Poet David Meltzer Was 89 With – A Survey Of His Career As “Wandering Jew, Eternal Beat” And – A Neat 2015 Interview

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At 81, Disney’s First African-American Animator Still In The Studio

At 81, Disney’s First African-American Animator Still In The Studio

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Margalit Fox’s Splendid Survey Of The Life Of Tyrus Wong, 106, Key Artist Of Bambi Among Other Achievements

“I said, ‘Gee, this is all outdoor scenery.’ I said, ‘Gee, I’m a landscape painter!’” Margalit Fox‘s Splendid Survey Of The Life Of Tyrus Wong, 106, Key Artist Of Bambi Among Other Achievements

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Tyrus Wong’s Place In American Art History

Tyrus Wong’s Place In American Art History

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Toronto Says Goodbye To Honest Ed’s, Which Was 68

“The world changed.” Toronto Says Goodbye To Honest Ed’s, Which Was 68

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VICE Chucks Comments

“Without moderators or fancy algorithms, they are prone to anarchy. Too often they devolve into racist, misogynistic maelstroms where the loudest, most offensive, and stupidest opinions get pushed to the top.” VICE Chucks Comments

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Rylance Now Sir Mark

Rylance Now Sir Mark

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“China’s Communist Party has tried to rescue the reputations of its big budget film makers, dismissing critics and in many cases censoring articles that slate Chinese films. On Wednesday the People’s Daily, the official Communist Party mouthpiece, targeted Chinese film review sites like Douban and Yanmao for ‘grossly inaccurate’ reviews.”

“China’s Communist Party has tried to rescue the reputations of its big budget film makers, dismissing critics and in many cases censoring articles that slate Chinese films. On Wednesday the People’s Daily, the official Communist Party mouthpiece, targeted Chinese film review sites like Douban and Yanmao for ‘grossly inaccurate’ reviews.”

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Wilmington On Movies: Paterson

A confession. I love Jarmusch’s movies — or most of them anyway, because, like Jerry Seinfeld‘s TV show, they’re so resolutely and unblushingly about nothing or nothing much, or, to be succinct, about the poetry of nothing.

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The Three Stallone Sisters Arrive As Collective Miss Golden Globe

The Three Stallone Sisters Arrive As Collective Miss Golden Globe

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“One wonders when the Simon & Schuster executives came courting. Was it his targeting of Leslie Jones for being black and female that made them think they had a star on their hands? Are they looking forward to the prospect of the creeps who hacked her Web site lining up at author signings?”

“One wonders when the Simon & Schuster executives came courting. Was it his targeting of Leslie Jones for being black and female that made them think they had a star on their hands? Are they looking forward to the prospect of the creeps who hacked her Web site lining up at author signings?”

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David Hudson Collates A Year Of Loss For Cinema

David Hudson Collates A Year Of Loss For Cinema

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Child Actors Bustle Into Awards Season

Child Actors Bustle Into Awards Season

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Lawrence Schiller On His Photo Of 6-Year-Old Carrie Fisher Watching Debbie Reynolds On Stage

Lawrence Schiller On His Photo Of 6-Year-Old Carrie Fisher Watching Debbie Reynolds On Stage

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Directors Guild Negotiates Incrementally Higher Residuals For Streaming

Directors Guild Negotiates Incrementally Higher Residuals For Streaming

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Will The Federal Film Tax Incentive Be Allowed To Lapse In New Admin?

Will The Federal Film Tax Incentive Be Allowed To Lapse In New Admin?

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“Leia Organa, the politician and revolutionary who led the defeat of the Galactic Empire, was 60. Her life was laced with controversy from tactics to her very ancestry, but her intelligence, commitment to the cause, and place at the heart of the Rebellion remains the indisputable core of her legacy.”

“Leia Organa, the politician and revolutionary who led the defeat of the Galactic Empire, was 60. Her life was laced with controversy from tactics to her very ancestry, but her intelligence, commitment to the cause, and place at the heart of the Rebellion remains the indisputable core of her legacy.”

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Joe Dante On Working With Carrie Fisher

Joe Dante On Working With Carrie Fisher

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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