Movie City News Archive for May, 2019

Calder on Gersh

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

Are Gersh really saying that it is agency policy to call studios and cancel any meetings that were set for any client who fires them? — Keith Calder (@keithcalder) May 21, 2019

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“Gersh set these meetings several months ago before the strike when Mr. Reyes was a Gersh client. When the client signed with another agency, the meetings were removed from the books as is normal protocol. We wish Mr. Reyes the best,” The Gersh Agency related in a statement.

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

“Gersh set these meetings several months ago before the strike when Mr. Reyes was a Gersh client. When the client signed with another agency, the meetings were removed from the books as is normal protocol. We wish Mr. Reyes the best,” The Gersh Agency related in a statement.

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Parasite yay

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

The way that PARASITE morphs itself from one thing to another so seamlessly and yet startlingly is the kind of patient and thoughtful filmmaking I wish another major director had exemplified today, ahem. — Richard Lawson (@rilaws) May 21, 2019

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Manohla Dargis

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

“Not especially urgent, with lots of yammer, walls hung with exploitation-film posters and amusingly foregrounded shots of bare female feet. Then abruptly the mood and tone shift…the ache of a requiem.” Manohla Dargis

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Charley Goes To heaven

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

So: the bit of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD we're not about to talk about is gross, and the rest is kind of lovely, with a looser energy than anything he's managed since JACKIE BROWN. I was thoroughly enjoying it, then recoiled? — Tim Robey (@trim_obey) May 21, 2019

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Geoff Andrew on QT shameful

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

Much shameful queue-jumping for press show of Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD today, but was it worth it? So much of the film is inconsequential, even tedious pastiche; teasing have-one's-cake-and-eat-it use of Manson murders is ethically dubious. Return to form? Partly — Geoff Andrew (@Geoff_Andrew) May 21, 2019

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On Video: LET THE SUNSHINE IN, Voilà l’enchaînement and GLORIA BELL

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

Two of our greatest actresses at their boldest and warmest and most open.

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Dirty feet

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

#OnceUponATimeInHollywood is a beautiful, brash rumination on the grime and beauty of Hollywood. It is a dirty, sensually realized feat, with many, many shots of dirty, sensualized feet.#QuentinTarantino #Cannes2019 — Jason Gorber – at #Cannes2019 (@filmfest_ca) May 21, 2019

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2/3 hwd

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

First 2/3rds bristle with wit, imagination and an in-jokery that, this time, is really brisk and joyous… And DiCaprio and Pitt exude absolute relish. — Jonathan Romney (@JonathanRomney) May 21, 2019

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By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

Cinemath: the mise-en-scène of zero is zero. — Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow) May 21, 2019

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Amazon swagging

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

Eight years ago at SXSW I spoke about our hideous gamified future: “You wouldn't work at Wal-Mart. You’d be part of the Wal-Mart Challenge! And the prize, would be what used to be called your salary”, I said. Turns out it’s even worse than I imagined https://t.co/uVx6FOCK3z — Molly Crabapple (@mollycrabapple) May 21, 2019

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By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood is so gloriously, wickedly indulgent, compelling and hilarious. The film QT was born to make. The world is a more colourful place in Quentin Tarantino’s twilight zone. Round two, please. #Cannes2019 — Joe Utichi (@joeutichi) May 21, 2019

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Aurora

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

Keep in mind this is Aurora, Colorado, where a mass shooting took place inside a movie theater in 2012. #coleg https://t.co/8nGUsuU0k6 — Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) May 21, 2019

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QT feet

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

MEDIUM FOOT CLOSEUP IN THE QT TRAILER — Jim Gabriel (@flipyourface) May 21, 2019

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As if Qt

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

Here! pic.twitter.com/8HNfR3WfLI — asifkapadia (@asifkapadia) May 21, 2019

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Lazy Cannes

By Ray Pride - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

My favorite tweets are the “I’m paid to be at Cannes but I’m over it and want to go home” ones — Seth Abramovitch (@SethAbramovitch) May 21, 2019

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Turban Agrees QT

By Ray Pride - Monday, May 20th, 2019

QT and me are not always on the same page, but I agree here: just do not believe in spoilers. Ever. https://t.co/b8bPdpmiY1 — Kenneth Turan (@KennethTuran) May 20, 2019

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Qt request

By Ray Pride - Monday, May 20th, 2019

This is from Quentin Tarantino. There’s some film critics on here tonight actually fighting about whether or not to do this. This isn’t a studio review embargo. It’s just a request. pic.twitter.com/X7pzoeUlOA — Ben Schwartz !¡!¡ (@benschwartzy) May 21, 2019

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Wick 4

By Ray Pride - Monday, May 20th, 2019

‘John Wick 4’ gets a 2021 release date from Lionsgate https://t.co/Xk71iXKIZE — LA Times Movie News (@latimesmovies) May 21, 2019

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QT Power

By Ray Pride - Monday, May 20th, 2019

The idea that he gets to make his own choices (aka the choice to screen his film at Cannes and all that comes with it) but doesn’t want anyone else to be able make their own choices is… 🙄🙄🙄 — Jordan Horowitz (@jehorowitz) May 20, 2019

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“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.”

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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