Movie City News Archive for November, 2018

IsaBéla

By MCN Editor - Tuesday, November 27th, 2018

“Une soirée avec Béla Tarr.” Isabelle Huppert: https://t.co/58bGkAFcnr pic.twitter.com/2FqWf7VIxc — The Daily (@CriterionDaily) November 27, 2018 IsaBéla

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Ava Ethan

By MCN Editor - Tuesday, November 27th, 2018

“We are living in a time void of political and spiritual leadership. In that kind of time period, a heavy burden falls upon the arts. We must not give in to tribal thinking. We are the great generators of empathy and compassion.” – #EthanHawke — Ava DuVernay (@ava) November 27, 2018

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The Mysterious Old Board Of Review

By MCN Editor - Tuesday, November 27th, 2018

The Mysterious Old Board Of Review And Its Mystery Crew Say: Green Book Best Director: Bradley Cooper Best Actor: Viggo Mortensen Best Actress: Lady Gaga Best Supporting Actor: Sam Elliott Best Supporting Actress: Regina King Best Original Screenplay: Paul Schrader Best Adapted Screenplay: Barry Jenkins Best Animated: Incredibles 2 Best Directorial Debut: Bo Burnham Best…

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Shoot First

By MCN Editor - Tuesday, November 27th, 2018
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Why Pencils Are Yellow

By MCN Editor - Tuesday, November 27th, 2018

Why Pencils Are Yellow

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Jonathan Lethem Asks: “Does Ambersons Exist?”

By MCN Editor - Tuesday, November 27th, 2018

Jonathan Lethem Asks “Does The Magnificent Ambersons Exist?”

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Gothams 2018

By MCN Editor - Monday, November 26th, 2018

GOTHAMS The Rider Doc: Hale County This Morning This Evening Toni Colette; Ethan Hawke Screenplay: Paul Schrader “This is really just another award for Elsie Fisher.” Breakthrough Director: Bo Burnham Breakthrough Actor: Elsie Fisher Ensemble Special Prize: The Favourite Audience Award: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

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“Bertolucci was not a director who responded to the #MeToo movement with strategic silence or contrition or self-questioning, still less an emollient attempt to reconcile the liberal intentions of his work with interpretations of sexism and arrogance in his career. He clearly felt that as an old soldier of the movie business, he didn’t have to explain himself. Yet none of this expunges the memory of his brilliance and his audacious creativity.”

By MCN Editor - Monday, November 26th, 2018

“Bertolucci was not a director who responded to the ‘Me Too’ movement with strategic silence or contrition or self-questioning, still less an emollient attempt to reconcile the liberal intentions of his work with interpretations of sexism and arrogance in his career. He clearly felt that as an old soldier of the movie business, he didn’t…

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Gurus o’ Gold Tap Best Picture, Director, Cinematographer

By MCN Editor - Monday, November 26th, 2018

Gurus o’ Gold Tap Best Picture, Director, Cinematographer

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Bertolucci

By MCN Editor - Monday, November 26th, 2018

When the late great Bertolucci visited MoMA in the late 60’s the 1 film he was eager 2 finally C was his poet-father’s favorite American film, the effervescent NY comedy, Easy Living (1937, Mitchell Leisen ) which NY’s Film Forum has already scheduled for a New Year’s week run. — Laurence Kardish (@laurencekardish) November 26,…

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MPAA

By MCN Editor - Monday, November 26th, 2018

ICYMI: Joan Graves helped decide movie ratings for 30 years. @nytimes shares some of her perspective. https://t.co/6jBuqg9OLb — MPAA (@MPAA) November 26, 2018

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Roeg

By MCN Editor - Sunday, November 25th, 2018

“What an extraordinary film-maker Nic Roeg was, a man whose imagination and technique could not be confined to conventional genres. He should be remembered for a clutch of masterly films, but perhaps especially for his classic Don’t Look Now, not merely the best scary movie in history, but one infused with compassion and love.”

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Roeg

By MCN Editor - Sunday, November 25th, 2018
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Ed Solomon

By MCN Editor - Saturday, November 24th, 2018

This is truly another golden age in narrative fiction. The opportunities to tell imaginative, inventive, original, artful, odd, multi-faceted, ambiguous, weird, dark, quirky, amazingly PERSONAL stories are abundant. And guess what? THE FORMULAIC APPROACH AIN’T GONNA HELP YOU. — Ed Solomon (@ed_solomon) November 24, 2018

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Gurus o’ Gold Go Best Picture, Director, Cinematographer

By The Guru Keeper - Friday, November 23rd, 2018

Post-Thanksgiving, the Gurus shake up the Best Picture field on a couple of pictures that have just opened, reflecting critical and financial reception, as well as bright-and-sunny early previews for Mary Poppins Returns.

The Gurus also look upon best director and best cinematographer for the first time in 2018, with much love for one big black-and-white picture: Alfonso Cuarón’s cinematography on Roma makes a rare Gurus sweep.

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GdT Night of the Hunter

By MCN Editor - Wednesday, November 21st, 2018

Guillermo del Toro Introduces The Night Of The Hunter

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What Makes A Roadside Attraction?

By MCN Editor - Wednesday, November 21st, 2018

“I reject the whole notion that the only reason people go to the movies is to see spectacle. There’s something magical about a shared experience. A specialty movie that has something on its mind, that has artistic intent, is best seen in the theater, especially in 2018. Watching a movie in a movie theater is…

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DVD Gift Guide II: Bergman@100, 2001 4K, Rambo 4K, Dances With Wolves, Robin Williams, Ernie Kovacs, Detectorists, Frosty, Elf … More

By Gary Dretzka - Wednesday, November 21st, 2018

“In honor of Ingmar Bergman’s 100th birthday, the Criterion Collection is proud to present the most comprehensive collection of his films ever released on home video. … Arranged as a curated film festival, with ‘opening’ and ‘closing’ nights bookending double features and ‘centerpiece’ programs …”

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Amazon Sports

By MCN Editor - Tuesday, November 20th, 2018

BREAKING: Amazon bids for 22 regional sports networks Walt Disney must divest in Fox deal; Amazon, Blackstone also join Yankees with bids for YES Network; 2nd round bids expected before year-end – sources https://t.co/JQRAEQLQkp — CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) November 20, 2018

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Manohla a Roma

By MCN Editor - Tuesday, November 20th, 2018

“Cuarón uses one household on one street to open up a world, working on a panoramic scale often reserved for war stories, but with the sensibility of a personal diarist. It’s an expansive, emotional portrait of life buffeted by violent forces, and a masterpiece.” Dargis On Cuarón

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“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