Movie City News Archive for April, 2019

$$ changes everything

Family wealth is a key factor in the likelihood of uptaking and sustaining an artistic profession. https://t.co/TftDQeAbHN — hyperallergic (@hyperallergic) April 28, 2019

Read the full article »

Spike on Singleton

View this post on Instagram I Will Forever Miss My Brother John Singleton. We Met While He Was A Film Student At USC. Over Many Years People Have Told Me “I’m Going To Be A Filmmaker”, When John Said That To Me The 1st Time We Met, I Believed Him Right Away. It Was No…

Read the full article »

John Singleton

Thank you John. — Gina Prince-Bythewood (@GPBmadeit) April 29, 2019

Read the full article »

When Kenny Apocalypse now

Okay it’s 9 and I can say it: “Apocalypse Now: Final Cut” is a remarkable experience. See it in the most up-to-date movie house you can when it comes out in August. — Glenn Kenny (@Glenn__Kenny) April 29, 2019

Read the full article »

Singleton

A brilliant man, so creative, loving and kind. This is a sad, sad day… https://t.co/35YQv1vgXJ — Frank Marshall (@LeDoctor) April 29, 2019

Read the full article »

Cannes jury 2019

Discover the Jury of the 72nd Festival de Cannes! Under the first ever presidence of a Latino-American filmmaker, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, #Cannes2019 Jury welcomes this year 4 women and 4 men, from 4 continents and from 7 different nationalities: https://t.co/z63j5JvkRq pic.twitter.com/RWHZFcNjR5 — Festival de Cannes (@Festival_Cannes) April 29, 2019

Read the full article »

Singleton

“It is with heavy hearts we announce that our beloved son, father and friend, John Daniel Singleton will be taken off of life support today,” a spokesperson for the family said in a statement to Deadline https://t.co/Xcy5fsrxrV — Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) April 29, 2019

Read the full article »

NY Film

As it celebrates its 50th anniversary, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is changing its name to Film at Lincoln Center https://t.co/1lKGMgInSL — New York Times Arts (@nytimesarts) April 28, 2019

Read the full article »

Mike Nussbaum on Being The Oldest Performer In Actors Equity At The Age Of 95

Mike Nussbaum on Being The Oldest Performer In Actors Equity At The Age Of 95

Read the full article »

Wamp Wamp

I see the Debbie Downering over ENDGAME’s box office success has begun. Maybe just let people who live within a constant nightmare enjoy a thing they really liked and are therefore kinda rooting for, even if it’s just for a day or two, I don’t know — Scott Wampler™ (@ScottWamplerBMD) April 28, 2019

Read the full article »

“The push toward buying out ownership and backend may ultimately be not a great thing for the community longterm, The downside, of course, is if you create ‘Friends’ and sell it to Netflix and never have the opportunity to sell it into syndication. Those few precious home runs have been replaced with a bevy of singles, doubles and triples.”

“The push toward buying out ownership and backend may ultimately be not a great thing for the community longterm, The downside, of course, is if you create ‘Friends’ and sell it to Netflix and never have the opportunity to sell it into syndication. Those few precious home runs have been replaced with a bevy of singles,…

Read the full article »

Libresco

After 18 years working with #Sundance, Caroline Libresco has left the organisation, @C21Media understands. Libresco was @SundanceFest’s senior programmer and director of the @SundanceOrg’s Catalyst and Women’s initiatives: https://t.co/oVIgu4TlON — Adam Benzine (@adambenzine) April 26, 2019

Read the full article »

Theatrical originals

I just learned that WAR OF THE ROSES, a black comedy about divorce with a savagely bleak ending, cost $26 million to make and grossed $160 million. No way it could be released to theaters today. The entertainment industry has trained audiences not to leave their homes for that. — MZS (@mattzollerseitz) April 26, 2019

Read the full article »

Harvey postponed

Harvey Weinstein: judge postpones sex crimes trial of disgraced movie mogul https://t.co/bHUA2RVoX5 — The Guardian (@guardian) April 27, 2019

Read the full article »

No Spoilers: Thinking About AVENGERS: ENDGAME

A consideration of the weight of Avengers: Endgame with no plot details whatsoever.

Read the full article »

Ratio

(Excluding The Walt Disney Co. & Fox Corp. which have not yet reported the figures.) — Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) April 26, 2019

Read the full article »

Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick: film's obsessive genius rendered more human https://t.co/Bniq0xlOSQ — The Guardian (@guardian) April 26, 2019

Read the full article »

Jack

becoming emotional while watching jack nicholson cry while talking about everything roger corman did for him pic.twitter.com/9yArsIzaJK — Nick Usen (@nickusen) April 26, 2019

Read the full article »

“Fox News transformed American politics, shaping and motivating the voters that Trump stepped in to claim. Creating distance from Trump may be the necessary first step in a larger strategy. Some believe it’s inevitable that the Murdochs will sell Fox News. ‘Everyone thinks they’re going to sell it. It’s too small to be independent,’ an anchor told me.”

“Fox News transformed American politics, shaping and motivating the voters that Trump stepped in to claim. Creating distance from Trump may be the necessary first step in a larger strategy. Some believe it’s inevitable that the Murdochs will sell Fox News. ‘Everyone thinks they’re going to sell it. It’s too small to be independent,’ an…

Read the full article »

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