Movie City News Archive for December, 2018

Greene on Hynes

This is a good time to say that there is no better writer on nonfiction film in the world than Eric Hynes. His Make It Real column for @FilmComment is the definitive doc criticism of our era. Yes he’s my pal. Doesn’t matter. His work is essential and we’re all lucky to have him. https://t.co/wBTQv8NXH5…

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Matt Zoller Seitz On Louis Székely

“We were left with a smeary self-portrait of an asshole being an asshole. Most of the set looked like what professional wrestling fans call a “heel turn“—as if he’d made a business decision to un-ironically embrace the persona that disappointed fans had ascribed to him, and peddle it to Fox News Channel/Breitbart types who embrace…

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“Four reasons 2018 was a bad year for the Khans of Bollywood: Why Aamir, Shah Rukh, Salman and Saif need to change tack”

“Four reasons 2018 was a bad year for the Khans of Bollywood: Why Aamir, Shah Rukh, Salman and Saif need to change tack”

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Irish Film Classifications

Irish Film Classifications G: GrandPG: Mostly grand but sure you know yourself 12: Might be a bit of shifting15: Shifting, implied riding, lads getting a box in the mouth, a few bad words18: Riding, young wans in the nip, heads blew clean off, and the LANGUAGE out of them — Damien Owens (@OwensDamien) December 31,…

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“Robert De Niro is, famously, a man of few words. In the past two years, those words have included “punk,” “dog,” “pig,” “con,” “bullshit artist,” “mutt,” “idiot,” “national disaster,” “embarrassment,” “disgrace,” “fool,” “bozo,” and “Jerkoff-in-Chief”—all directed at Donald Trump. At seventy-five, De Niro has turned political pundit, often in terms that you’d expect to find in a Martin Scorsese movie. In return, Trump has called him ‘a very Low IQ individual.'”

“Robert De Niro is, famously, a man of few words. In the past two years, those words have included “punk,” “dog,” “pig,” “con,” “bullshit artist,” “mutt,” “idiot,” “national disaster,” “embarrassment,” “disgrace,” “fool,” “bozo,” and “Jerkoff-in-Chief”—all directed at Donald Trump. At seventy-five, De Niro has turned political pundit, often in terms that you’d expect to find…

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Vulture Funds

Turns out it wasn’t “we’re all streaming now” or “the high street is dying” but good old-fashioned asset-stripping. Just like the death of EMI a few years ago. https://t.co/K1SrzMXydq — Robert Rotifer (@robertrotifer) December 30, 2018

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Canada Film’s 2018 Local Heroes

Canada Film’s 2018 Local Heroes Chicago’s 2018 Film 50

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“I like specialist and second-hand record shops, but these weren’t the sorts of shops I went to as a kid. I spent vast amounts of my time rifling through record browsers in Debenhams, Boots and WHSmiths, and going to high-street shops that sold a broad selection of records for a wide variety of tastes — including, of course, whatever was in the charts. These are the shops I feel most nostalgic about, a nostalgia heightened by the fact that there are hardly any left.”

“I like specialist and second-hand record shops, but these weren’t the sorts of shops I went to as a kid. I spent vast amounts of my time rifling through record browsers in Debenhams, Boots and WHSmiths, and going to high-street shops that sold a broad selection of records for a wide variety of tastes — including, of…

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Cameron Bailey on Mrinal Sen

Thread 👇🏾 Rest in Power, Mrinal Sen. More power to filmmakers pushing ahead on the ground he broke. https://t.co/mfcpstZ2hc — Cameron Bailey (@cameron_tiff) December 30, 2018

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Bilge Ebiri Cites His Ten Favoirte 2018 Film Scores

Bilge Ebiri Cites His Ten Favorite 2018 Film Scores

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Manohla Dargis

“What I know from a life of watching and reviewing movies is that outrage is tedious, and exhausting. Sometimes it is just easier to go with the flow, though much depends on what’s happening onscreen and off. Sometimes, I don’t want to let a movie’s banal, casual sexism ruin my good time. I make expedient…

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Peter Morgan

“They have an uncomplicated mandate to entertain, and that that has led to charges of them being like a Walmart because they have so much of everything, and they don’t have a particular line or objective or goal in the way that FX does or HBO. But I don’t understand this talk of talent drains….

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Mrinal Sen

The great Bengali director Mrinal Sen has died. https://t.co/ch0eV10CEq Tried to do retrospective of his films, but prints were not in good shape. Wonderful filmmaker. — mark cousins (@markcousinsfilm) December 30, 2018

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Agnes Varda, Keanu Reeves

Keanu Reeves and Agnès Varda. By Patrick Swirc. pic.twitter.com/MVuVqoDXgD — TATJANA SL (@TATJANASL) December 28, 2018

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JCVD on Ringo Lam

I’m deeply saddened by the news of the passing of Ringo Lam. We worked together on Maximum Risk, In Hell and Replicant. My heart goes out to his family, friends and loved ones. Jean-Claude#JCVD #RIP pic.twitter.com/JMs3rSVcl2 — JCVD Official (@JCVD) December 29, 2018

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It’s Time to Retire the Phrase “Diversity Is Good for Business”

“It’s Time to Retire the Phrase ‘Diversity Is Good for Business’”

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The Great Ringo Lam Was 63

The Great Ringo Lam Was 63

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The DVD Wrapup: 2018’s Most Memorable Titles, Hobbyhorses, Martyr, CMA Live, Tailspin Tommy, Gilda, Miracle Worker … More

In Martyr, Hassane (Hamza Mekdad) is one of countless young Lebanese men for whom a college degree is no more useful than a medal earned in a long-ago war.

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“The psychology behind Hallmark Christmas movies”

“The psychology behind Hallmark Christmas movies”

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Voice Media Film Firings

NO. No no no no. This news makes me heartsick. Alan is one of the best editors I have ever worked with, and anything I managed to achieve at the Voice was largely thanks to him. But then, he is also an astonishingly gifted writer. The world will be hearing more from him. https://t.co/YGc6GazxYj —…

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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