Movie City News Archive for May, 2019

Itz

Oh my God. How awful. He was a treasure. I'll miss him. https://t.co/17TLnPamRb — Lou Lumenick (@LouLumenick) May 16, 2019

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Breakout

I haven't seen ROCKETMAN yet but can we please refrain from using terms like "breakout performance" for Egerton, whose spy franchise has grossed over $825 million? Isn't KINGSMAN a serious job for actors? Or does having a franchise disqualify people from being serious actors? — Boyd van Hoeij (@filmboyd) May 16, 2019

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Likable

When you get one of those reviews that say your characters are unlikable, what's really mind-blowing about it is, you start to look around you and realize everyone you've ever met is unlikable. — Sandra Newman (@sannewman) May 16, 2019

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Called her on Paramount

Troubled studios should use their resources to empower audience-focused filmmakers who know how to make reasonably budgeted movies with marketable hooks, because it’s literally the ONLY THING that has ever helped turn around troubled studios in the entire history of film. — Keith Calder (@keithcalder) May 16, 2019

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The DVD Wrapup: Cold Pursuit, Valentine, Bosch, Nina, Shape of Now, Big Clock, Yakuza Law, Donna Reed, Unforgotten, Moses, Korea … More

The grieving father tips over the first domino, by killing a few small-time dealers, who, before they die, give up the names of their suppliers. At the top of the ladders are “Viking” and White Bull, who suspect each other of ordering the hits.

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MacArthur Foundation Names Sixteen Next Doc Fellows For 2019

MacArthur Foundation Names Sixteen Next Doc Fellows For 2019

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Kartemquin Films Hires Jolene Pinder as New Executive Director

Kartemquin Films Hires Jolene Pinder as New Executive Director

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Arms And The Man: A Review Of JOHN WICK 3

Tossed, torn, noosed, dragged, stabbed, shot, shot, crotch-bit, machine-gunned, hand-axed, saber-sliced, face-crushed, shot, burnt, bullied, horse-kicked, catapulted, subjected to sustained knife fracas and shot.

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Layoffs

“The layoffs are the human toll of the merger designed to fortify Disney and help it stay competitive in the fast-changing media and entertainment marketplace of the future. Disney has pledged to achieve $2 billion in synergy savings by 2021. There is no question that a great deal of that will come from job cuts.”

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Alibaba

Alibaba is Able to Withstand Mounting Media Losses as Profits hit $12 Billion https://t.co/7AHWlN6F8h — Variety Asia (@VarietyAsia) May 15, 2019

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Kiarostami

The restored 4K version of the Koker trilogy box-set is being released by the @Criterion, and they have done a fantastic job for the cover design. So excited about it! — Ahmad Kiarostami (@akiarostami) May 14, 2019

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Cord Taped

time to tape up that cut cable – never forget the mantra of digital capitalism: last year's disruption is this year's monopoly https://t.co/PsnPuVVUPF — Tim Maughan (@timmaughan) May 14, 2019

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Harold Itz

Deeply sorry to hear this. A film fan, arts lover, and a funny and friendly guy. RIP @HaroldItz https://t.co/9KZpHiPJWM — Farran Nehme (@selfstyledsiren) May 14, 2019

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Unkrich on Conway

Tim Conway and I grew up in the same little town in northeast Ohio, Chagrin Falls. As a kid, I looked up to him as a local who had “made it.” He gave me hope. I regret I never got to meet him and thank him. https://t.co/Vas78tZnRV — Lee Unkrich (@leeunkrich) May 14, 2019

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“‘The business is changing, but I don’t feel like the festival’s moving along with it,’ says one industry source. ‘Streaming services are so much of the industry now. I’m not seeing the same presence with the brands. It feels very quiet.'”

“‘The business is changing, but I don’t feel like the festival’s moving along with it,’ says one industry source. ‘Streaming services are so much of the industry now. I’m not seeing the same presence with the brands. It feels very quiet.’”

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Elitist

My target audience doesn't care about Cannes, Sundance, etc, nor do they necessarily want to spend $ and time going to the movies when rent is due and they've spent all week dodging draining micro aggressions. Elitist cinephiles are out of touch with reality and it shows. https://t.co/eDxYH89AKI — Octavia Butler knew… (@Nikyatu) May 14,…

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Mel

Mel Gibson casting in Rothchild comedy sparks outrage https://t.co/Hc8A1S3Bnq — Guardian news (@guardiannews) May 14, 2019

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Tim Conway

TIM CONWAY

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Throne Wars

It's official. The next installment of the Star Wars saga will be by David Benioff and DB Weiss. December 2022. pic.twitter.com/PcRHELc3l8 — Star Wars Legacy (@starwarsIegacy) May 14, 2019

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Academy Announces Three New At-Large Governors

The Academy Board of Governors has confirmed the appointment of three new governors-at-large, DeVon Franklin (Executives Branch), Rodrigo García (Directors Branch) and Janet Yang (Producers Branch). They will each serve a three-year term, beginning July 1. This furthers the Academy’s A2020 initiative, which seeks to support inclusion and increase representation within its membership and the greater film community. “The Board looks…

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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