Movie City News Archive for January, 2019

4%

Bravo!!! That makes 37 individuals taking the #4percentChallenge. Who will be next? @TessaThompson_x @franklinleonard @ninajacobson @paulfeig https://t.co/CLzOLpnMTP — Annenberg Inclusion Initiative (@Inclusionists) January 27, 2019

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Has @TheAcademy considered that people at the Oscar show, backstage and in the house, can tweet the winners being taped during the commercials before they have time to edit their wins into the broadcast? — Anne Thompson (@akstanwyck) January 27, 2019

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Canter’s

Alan Canter, owner of Los Angeles landmark Canter's Deli, dies at 82 https://t.co/y720wfF5vF — L.A. Times: L.A. Now (@LANow) January 26, 2019

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Decker

So many great women-directed movies came out this year… Relieved that @sundancefest celebrates female directors! And honored that @tnyfrontrow gave #madelinesmadeline 5 Oscars!!! https://t.co/c1JmEuFUcM — Josephine Decker (@JosephineJambox) January 27, 2019

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Going To Dau

Going To Dau

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Amazon Studios Fronts $13 Million For U. S.-Only For Nisha Gantara and Mindy Kaling’s Last Night

Amazon Studios Fronts $13 Million For U. S.-Only For Nisha Gantara and Mindy Kaling’s Last Night

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Desiree Akhavan Regrets Rhinoplasty

“The nose job is a problematic Iranian rite of passage I had spent years successfully dodging, but my defenses were down. I probably would have undergone a lobotomy if someone told me it would turn me into a muse.” Desiree Akhavan Regrets Rhinoplasty

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Godard’s Only Interview For Image Book, Translated

“Every film is subtitled because the images are not interesting. And a story has to be followed. It’s always a story about a man who meets a lady and then there are problems… So, you need subtitles. And then, you read the text but if the text and the image are interesting at the same…

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“In this moment of women rising up to the challenges and the potential of claiming our power together, Roma is a must-see movie for women from all walks of life.”

“In this moment of women rising up to the challenges and the potential of claiming our power together, Roma is a must-see movie for women from all walks of life.”

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Eug On Agent Hugs

Just ran into an agent from LA. Haven’t seen him in awhile and I went in for a hug. He pushed back immediately, saying, “No hugs at Sundance!” He paused a beat and then added, “But I love you very much…” #Sundance #NoHugsAtSundance #ButILoveYouVeryMuch pic.twitter.com/QDeDmZyuwp — eugene hernandez (@eug) January 26, 2019

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Amber Tamblyn

“What we must build next has to be built together, equally, across industries and job titles. A system that will allow all of our voices to prosper and succeed.” Amber Tamblyn

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Facebook Panopticon

They will build the largest surveillance system ever conceived and will sell it under the banner of consumer encryption. — Sarah Jamie Lewis (@SarahJamieLewis) January 25, 2019

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AOC Elevates D.C. Above P.C.; Job Before Doc

AOC Elevates D.C. Above P.C.; Job Before Doc This clip was made at the very beginning of our journey – before anyone knew what was happening. It’s wild to see now. cc: @jubileefilms pic.twitter.com/Djp9Vo2Y8m — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 26, 2019

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Academy Reacts To Brit Protests Over True-Crime Short About Children Who Murder A Toddler

“Detainment was voted on by Academy members. When making their choices, each individual applies their own judgment regarding the films’ creative, artistic and technical merits. We understand that this will not alleviate the pain experienced by the family; however we hope it clarifies the Academy’s neutral role in the voting process.” Academy Reacts To Brit Protests…

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Festspeak

“I think when we’re looking at these multiverses, we have to be very careful about who is not included in those worlds.” – @scarahnellis #NewFrontier #PowerOfStory — SundanceFilmFestival (@sundancefest) January 26, 2019

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Brit Cinemas Have Best Year Since 1970

Brit Cinemas Have Best Year Since 1970

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Has Sony Stemmed Slowdown?

“Tom has been able to build franchises for the studio with the bits and pieces that Sony has and launch them out of thin air.” Has Sony Stemmed Slowdown?

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Nomo PC Fomo

Don’t have Fomo looking at all those people dressed nicely in the snow, all of that is bullshit that surrounds the real purpose, making risky and challenging film. Focus on making movies with your friends in blue jeans, everything else is silly. pic.twitter.com/xiHdcxyCLV — Jim Cummings (@jimmycthatsme) January 26, 2019

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Abbey Bender Revisits Emmanuelle: “What’s Wrong With Being Sexy?”

Abbey Bender Revisits Emmanuelle: “What’s Wrong With Being Sexy?”

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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?

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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