Movie City News Archive for May, 2019

Stacey Abrams

Market Warnings: Major studios haven’t boycotted GA yet, but laid out conditions for departure. GA isn’t the only state w film tax credit, but we’re the major one potentially hostile to women. Want to change market conditions? 2020 state elections are a good start. #Consequences — Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) May 31, 2019

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American gangster death

Frank Lucas, druglord portrayed by Denzel Washington in ‘American Gangster,’ dies https://t.co/lvDwuyhYwC via @SunTimes — Evan F Moore (@evanFmoore) June 1, 2019

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Roky

Roky Erickson, founding member of The 13th Floor Elevators and a pioneer of the psychedelic rock genre, has died: https://t.co/AO1HP1gs8f #RokyErickson pic.twitter.com/d6nPneRlrd — Consequence of Sound (@consequence) May 31, 2019

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Bryan Wendorf On Heading The World’s Longest-Running Underground Film Festival

Bryan Wendorf On Running The World’s Longest-Lasting Underground Film Festival

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Friday Movies: ROCKETMAN, THE SOUVENIR, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD,THE BRINK

Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir is as mysterious as it is specific, tracing the drift of Julie, an intensely ambitious film student who is distracted by a first true love affair, with a man who appears to take her seriously indeed. Set in the 1980s artistic era in which the writer-director grew up, Hogg’s fourth feature describes how a film narrative can flow around the range of thoughts and emotions that a shy young woman holds as she hopes to make art. Places and faces are equally expressive realms. Can imagination be mere delusion? What are her dreams? Hogg dreamt them, dreams them, again, as distanced onscreen memoir, and the dream is furthered by Byrne’s mesmerizing, fleeting performance.

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“‘Deadwood: The Movie’ feels like the best TV episode of 1997.”

“‘Deadwood: The Movie’ feels like the best TV episode of 1997.”

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Booksmart

https://twitter.com/girlsontopstees/status/1133420267278086144?s=21

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Campion

We are so excited to bring The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion's first feature film in over a decade, to Netflix and select theaters in 2021. Adapted from the 1967 Thomas Savage novel, the film will star Benedict Cumberbatch and Elisabeth Moss. pic.twitter.com/8weqRYqfpv — Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) May 30, 2019

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4. Weddings

https://twitter.com/donaldclarke63/status/1134220671393902593?s=21

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Sphinx, The Property Used By John Boorman In Hope and Glory and Queen And Country, On A Private Island On The Thames Near Shepperton Lock, Surrey, Which Belonged To Admiral Lord Nelson, Yours For $2.83 Million

Sphinx, The Property Used By John Boorman In Hope and Glory and Queen And Country, On A Private Island On The Thames Near Shepperton Lock, Surrey, Which Belonged To Admiral Lord Nelson, Yours For $2.83 Million

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Bigmouth

Bigmouth strikes again and again: why Morrissey fans feel so betrayed https://t.co/5Wo7iUrliB — The Guardian (@guardian) May 30, 2019

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Mr. De Niro Addresses Mr. Mueller

“As I prepared for my role on the show, I got to know you a lot better. I read about your lifetime devotion to public service and your respect for the rule of law. I watched how you presided over the special counsel’s office apparently without leaks. And you never wavered, even in the face…

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Brody opined

by turning critics into connoisseurs of shit. — Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow) May 29, 2019

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Deadwood Marsh

“This brisk two-hour feature is the culmination not only of ‘Deadwood’’s three seasons and the years it languished in seemingly permanent hiatus, but also a lifetime of turbulent, star-crossed brilliance.”

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Critics hated

I say this with all seriousness: Critics should just lean into the fact that everyone hates them. https://t.co/jG4MmgEAv8 — Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) May 29, 2019

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Caridi

"Godfather" actor Carmine Caridi dies at 85 https://t.co/V4qncvC1yA pic.twitter.com/rR7YelTgKC — Variety (@Variety) May 29, 2019

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The DVD Wrapup: Eleven, Genesis 2.0, Climax, Sweet Murder, Let Sunshine In, One Sings, Eugenie, JCVDx2, Boom!, Velvet … More

Someone had to be the last one to die and typically it was because of a mistake made by an overzealous officer or a soldier who wasn’t on the need-to-know list.

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Godard, Agnès Godard

#HBD, Agnès Godard! On working with Claire Denis on LET THE SUNSHINE IN: “‘Mellow, smooth, voluptuous,’ that was the kind of adjective she was using.”https://t.co/lEAlHV41sd pic.twitter.com/RpkNHfbtAv — The Daily (@CriterionDaily) May 28, 2019

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Bezos

jeff bezos only following his ex-wife is some of the best online wife content you can buy pic.twitter.com/StsHarLovr — Alana Hope Levinson (@alanalevinson) May 28, 2019

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Gleibs on Cannes

“The audacity of the Fox Searchlight deal — $12 million for a three-hour Terrence Malick art film — is that it felt like more than just a deal. It felt like an act of faith, a vote for nothing less than the unique transcendent appeal of movies.”

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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