Movie City News Archive for January, 2019

The DVD Wrapup: Nutcracker, Always Room For Giallo, Mondo, Hunter Killer, Slice, Night Is Short, Suburbia, Masanjia and more

Disney decided that “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” had a better ring to it than “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” And, perhaps, that’s where the studio’s expectations for the holiday movie first hit a wall.

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Roma Visa

'#Roma' star's petition for US visa ahead of #Oscars gathers pace https://t.co/plEHLKSyot — The National (@TheNationalUAE) February 1, 2019

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Eric Idle on First Reformed

An excellent movie. Brilliant script, wonderful actors, directed superbly. https://t.co/bj9zt0Te5Q — Eric Idle (@EricIdle) February 1, 2019

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Peter Jackson Wrestling Fifty-Five Hours Of Unseen Footage and 140 Hours Of Audio To Make A Movie About Creating “Let It Be.”

Peter Jackson Wrestling Fifty-Five Hours Of Unseen Footage and 140 Hours Of Audio To Make A Movie About Creating “Let It Be.” 

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PAPER Is On It: “Why Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap Might Be the Most Important Doc of 2019”

PAPER Is On It: “Why Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap Might Be the Most Important Doc of 2019″

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Academy Restores Songs

To save time, all five songs will be squeezed into a two-minute medley called “The Shallow Place Where I’ll Fight All the Stars Who Trade Their Spurs for Wings.” https://t.co/9OMpbfTSel — Justin Chang (@JustinCChang) January 31, 2019

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Movie Theater Overtime

Weird labor fact of the day: Movie theater employees don’t get overtime. https://t.co/HbkZJS07YM pic.twitter.com/b9jevblR6q — Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) January 31, 2019

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“That night, a tornado rumbled through the nearby cornfields and suddenly upon the Webster, where the projected image dueled with the pressure growing in my ears and among those in the twenty or so other cars and the top of the concession stand blew and the not-so-tall screen arced lazily for only an instant and suddenly backwards onto the verge. All around, things tumbled and spun and then it was done.”

“That night, a tornado rumbled through the nearby cornfields and suddenly upon the Webster, where the projected image dueled with the pressure growing in my ears and among those in the twenty or so other cars and the top of the concession stand blew and the not-so-tall screen arced lazily for only an instant and…

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Penny Lane

.@jghorn: How do you get backers on board with your vision when your vision flies in the face of how it’s always done? @lennypane: “I feel like I’m starting over every time … My secret is that I’m a tenured college professor. I don’t need movies to be successful.” — SundanceFilmFestival (@sundancefest) January 31, 2019

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Bezos Leaker

So it seems like the Bezos leaker is Michael Sanchez, the brother of Bezos mistress Lauren Sanchez and a personal and business associate of Trumpworld figures including Roger Stone, Carter Page, and Scottie Nell Hughes. https://t.co/xSNlYhPKEp — Gary Armstrong (@vanityman) January 31, 2019

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“Google employees can no longer use their internal smartphone apps that run on Apple’s iOS, following a decision by Apple the company broke its rules”

“Google employees can no longer use their internal smartphone apps that run on Apple’s iOS, following a decision by Apple the company broke its rules”

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Bilge Ebiri On Alison Klayman’s The Brink

“How do you make a movie about a horrible person without becoming a vessel by which he can broadcast his horrible ideas?” Bilge Ebiri On Alison Klayman’s The Brink

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Composer Cliff Martinez On His Three-Decade Career

“The biggest change is just the endurance to do a 16-hour movie in the case of ‘Too Old To Die Young.’ It’s ten episodes around 90 minutes apiece. I warned Nic Winding Refn, you better drink a lot of coffee and get a lot of sleep. ‘Too Old To Die Young’ has gone on for a…

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Ultraviolet “Movie Locker” Deep-Sixed

“The marketplace for collecting entertainment content was very small when Ultraviolet started. It was siloed into walled gardens at the time.” Ultraviolet “Movie Locker” Deep-Sixed

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Stars Displeased With Distributor Failing To Put Cash Dollars Behind Serenity

“We tested and retested the film — with audiences and critics alike — and the data demonstrated that the film was not going to be able to perform at our initial expectations, so we adjusted our budget and marketing tactics accordingly. Regardless of the spend, it’s next to impossible for an adult-skewing drama to overcome…

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Cummings Queries Keaton

Dear @MichaelKeaton, I'm making my new film in Utah in March and I wrote a part for you in it. You are one of the reasons why I make movies at all, I don't think it can be played by anyone else, and I would love for you to consider it. I hope you're well,…

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Asghar Farhadi In The NYT Magazine

“I believe that art in the face of censorship is like water in the face of a stone. The water will find a way to flow around it.” Asghar Farhadi In The NYT Magazine

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Anne Thompson Tots Up The Park City Millions

Anne Thompson Tots Up The Park City Millions

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Saltz Saw

Jerry Saltz On Jake Gyllenhaal and “Velvet Buzzsaw”

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Avi Lerner Avers All Of Hollywood Gets Behind His Bryan Singer Hire

“I have got a reason why I doubt that he has done it.” Avi Lerner Avers All Of Hollywood Gets Behind His Bryan Singer Hire

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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