Movie City News Archive for April, 2017

William M. Hoffman, 78, Playwright And Librettist; Wrote “As Is” (1985), First Play About AIDS Crisis On B’way

William M. Hoffman, 78, Playwright And Librettist; Wrote “As Is” (1985), First Play About AIDS Crisis On B’way

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Alexandra Heller-Nichols And Josh Nelson On “White Violence And The Horror Of Representation” In Get Out

Alexandra Heller-Nichols And Josh Nelson On “White Violence And The Horror Of Representation” In Get Out

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EIC Of National Enquirer Tells Anne Helen Petersen About Future Of Us Weekly And Supermarket Tabloids Under Trump

EIC Of National Enquirer Tells Anne Helen Petersen About Future Of Us Weekly And Supermarket Tabloids Under Trump

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Signs Of Progress In Writer-Studio Talks

Signs Of Progress In Writer-Studio Talks

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Albania Looks To Ban Its 200 Communist-Era Movies

Albania Looks To Ban Its 200 Communist-Era Movies

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“Since our members are funding these films, they should be the first to see them. But we are also open to supporting the large theater chains, such as AMC and Regal in the US, if they want to offer our films, such as our upcoming Will Smith film Bright, in theaters simultaneous to Netflix. Let consumers choose.”

“Since our members are funding these films, they should be the first to see them. But we are also open to supporting the large theater chains, such as AMC and Regal in the US, if they want to offer our films, such as our upcoming Will Smith film Bright, in theaters simultaneous to Netflix. Let consumers…

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Murdoch British TV Deal Hinges On The Three Words “Fit And Proper”

“Owning Sky outright would give the Murdochs an important new cash generator to feed the rapacious appetite for growth and conquest that has made their family business the most influential media conglomerate in the world — one that helped hasten Britain’s ‘Brexit’ from the European Union and helped deliver Donald J. Trump to the White House.”…

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So How Did Netflix License Its Content To China?

So How Did Netflix License Its Content To China?

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Sir Ridley Says It Will Be Unwise To Challenge Aliens

“When you see a big thing in the sky, run for it, because they are a lot smarter than we are, and if you are stupid enough to challenge them, you will be taken out in three seconds.” Sir Ridley Says It Will Be Unwise To Challenge Incoming Aliens

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On Michael Wadleigh’s 1981 Wolfen As One Of The First Pictures To Capture Trump

On Michael Wadleigh’s 1981 Wolfen As One Of The First Pictures To Capture Trump

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Coppola & Co. At Radio City Music Hall

“The first Godfather cost $6.5 million, the second Godfather cost $11-12 million, which if you convert that, it would take a major studio. But it would never get through the process of getting a greenlight. Nothing will get a greenlight today unless it’s a movie where they can have a whole series and a Marvel…

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Fox And Blackstone Move To Buy Tribune Media And Its Stations And WGN America

Fox And Blackstone Move To Buy Tribune Media And Its Stations And WGN America

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Lede Of The Weekend

“There is no denying that much of the new Canadian film Below Her Mouth qualifies as unmitigated smut.” Lede Of The Weekend

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Fanciful Recollections Of Reservoir Dogs By QT And Cast At Tribeca

Fanciful Recollections Of Reservoir Dogs By QT And Cast At Tribeca

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“Period movies and sci-fi movies step outside of the contemporary moment and you can say things in the past and in the future that you can’t say now. Or you could say now but people would just be like ‘ugh, that feels like a bit preachy’ or ‘it’s too close to what’s happening in this moment.’ I’ve done three period movies in a row now and I think the next one we’ll do will be a sci-fi.”

“Period movies and sci-fi movies step outside of the contemporary moment and you can say things in the past and in the future that you can’t say now. Or you could say now but people would just be like ‘ugh, that feels like a bit preachy’ or ‘it’s too close to what’s happening in this…

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Profiling Former NYPost Film Critic Rod Dreher As Prophet Of “Modern Monasticism”

Profiling Former NYPost Film Critic Rod Dreher As Prophet Of “Modern Monasticism”

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It’s Not Charlie Kaufman: Film Blogger Retails Story Of Reluctant Russian Bride

It’s Not Charlie Kaufman: Film Blogger Retails Story Of Reluctant Russian Bride

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How Reaction To Silence Of The Lambs Challenged (and Changed) Jonathan Demme

How Reaction To Silence Of The Lambs Challenged (and Changed) Jonathan Demme

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The Weekend Report

The third weekend of The Fate of the Furious again led weekend viewing with an estimated $19.4 million and a global gross that crossed into the rarified realm of $1 billion box office. The session had but one wide national release but it was international day-and-date newcomers that stole the thunder. The storm came from the Hispanic comedy How to Be a Latin Lover that ranked second with $11.8 million and highly-anticipated Indian historic epic Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, which smashed global records, including a U.S. debut of $10.3 million.

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H’wd Experience Of Incoming MPAA Head Includes Ten Years At Jim Henson Productions

H’wd Experience Of Incoming MPAA Head Includes Ten Years At Jim Henson Productions

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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