Movie City News Archive for August, 2017

Here Comes Everybody’s “Transcendental Style In Film,” With Extensive New Introduction

Here Comes Everybody’s “Transcendental Style In Film,” With Schrader’s Extensive New Introduction And – Fresh Air Rebroadcasts Its 1988 Interview With The Director Of First Reformed

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Richard Anderson Of “Six Million Dollar Man” And “Bionic Woman” Was 91

Richard Anderson Of “Six Million Dollar Man” And “Bionic Woman” Was 91

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Toronto Int’l Asks, “What Can Straight White Guys Do To Help Women In Film?”

Toronto Int’l Asks, “What Can Straight White Guys Do To Help Women In Film?”

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GdT’s The Shape Of Water

“There is unmistakable, idiosyncratic care poured into every frame, saturated with del Toro’s offbeat compassion and looping, pattern-recognition intelligence.” “A ravishing 60s-set romance, sweet, sad and sexy.” GdT’s The Shape Of Water

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“The greatest of The Shape of Water’s many surprises is how extravagantly romantic it is, driven throughout by an all-conquering belief in soulmates as lifelines. This is del Toro’s second straight film to smuggle a swooning, lovestruck heart beneath pulpier genre clothing, though this time, there’s nothing arch about its romanticism: It’s as purehearted and simple a girl-meets-Amazonian-water-creature-who-might-just-be-a-god story as any ever made.”

“The greatest of The Shape of Water’s many surprises is how extravagantly romantic it is, driven throughout by an all-conquering belief in soulmates as lifelines. This is del Toro’s second straight film to smuggle a swooning, lovestruck heart beneath pulpier genre clothing, though this time, there’s nothing arch about its romanticism: It’s as purehearted and…

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“Elisa is the kind of role that comes along just once a lifetime. Hawkins meets it with the performance of one. The London-born actress’s keen observational eye, technical control and puckish comic touch have been evident in films from Happy-Go-Lucky to Maudie. But here they’re wed to an emotional intensity and shivery eroticism that make you wriggle with delight.”

“Elisa is the kind of role that comes along just once a lifetime. Hawkins meets it with the performance of one. The London-born actress’s keen observational eye, technical control and puckish comic touch have been evident in films from Happy-Go-Lucky to Maudie. But here they’re wed to an emotional intensity and shivery eroticism that make…

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Close Encounters Reissue Is Re-Edit Of The “Final 1997 Director’s Cut”

“When Metrocolor closed, we were collecting our material and I came across some of the original missing footage. That was really fortunate. We printed it in a different section and put it together to get the director’s cut. We scanned the disparate parts in 4K resolution and put it back together — the original negative and…

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Alex Cox Talks Walker

“The studios blacklisted me for making Walker. Roger Ebert and his fellow creep critics working for the man, as usual. I won’t feel the least vindicated until Universal and MGM and Fox pay me all the money they owe me for Repo Man, Sid and Nancy and Walker.” Alex Cox Talks Walker

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Gillian Wallace Horvat On The “Nightmarish Meanings Of David Lynch’s Hw’d Star Casting”

Gillian Wallace Horvat On The “Nightmarish Meanings Of David Lynch’s Hw’d Star Casting”

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Sam Roberts On Former Variety Owner Syd Silverman’s Final Ankling At 85

Sam Roberts On Former Variety Heir-Owner-Publisher Syd Silverman’s Final Ankling At 85

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Village Voice To Fire 13 Of 17 Union Employees

“It’s really turning into a wake. To throw out almost all of the union members goes against the grain of the Voice we love and cherish.” Village Voice To Fire 13 Of 17 Union Employees After Final Print Edition Third Week Of September

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An Oral History Of Superbad Ten Years Along

An Oral History Of Superbad Ten Years Along

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Colin Geddes Farewells TIFF’s Midnight Madness

Colin Geddes Farewells TIFF’s Midnight Madness

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A Clutch Of Theories About Dancing Audrey Horne

A Clutch Of Theories About Dancing Audrey Horne

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“Try to count the instances of deformity in David Lynch’s work, or of people being deformed on camera, and you’ll lose count pretty quickly.”

“Try to count the instances of deformity in David Lynch’s work, or of people being deformed on camera, and you’ll lose count pretty quickly.”

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Nicholas Rombes On Keywords In “Twin Peaks: The Return”

Nicholas Rombes On Keywords In “Twin Peaks: The Return”

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Andréa Picard On Programming TIFF’s Wavelengths Section

Andréa Picard On Programming TIFF’s Wavelengths Section

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Ben Fritz Surmises The Age Of A Thousand Streaming Services Is Gonna Get Ugly Quickly

Ben Fritz Surmises The Age Of A Thousand Streaming Services Is Gonna Get Ugly Quickly

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China Alibaba Pictures Dunks An Additional $84 Million In Past Six Months

China Alibaba Pictures Dunks An Additional $84 Million In Past Six Months

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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