Movie City News Archive for June, 2019

Ken Russell

Altered States (1980) directed by Ken Russell pic.twitter.com/6TXB3P9oCF — 41 Strange (@41Strange) July 1, 2019

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Ben Sachs on Pans

I think the best criticism is born out of curiosity and humility, and it’s hard to promote either when you’re saying you don’t like something. — Ben Sachs (@1bsachs) July 1, 2019 I realized some time ago that there’s little money to be made in the kind of film criticism I want to write. I’m…

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Dogshit on the Road

It is often best to step aside when there’s dogshit on the road. https://t.co/xS7VVtzxzE — Ray Pride (@RayPride) July 1, 2019

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How Harvey Weinstein Beat George Lucas to Digital Distribution, Just Because

“It was a race for bragging rights. Miramax just edged out Phantom Menace by an hour or a couple hours.” How Harvey Weinstein Beat George Lucas to Digital Distribution, Just Because

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Joker Joked

Straight up chortling imagining Lucrecia Martel watching this in horror, mouth agape, vowing never to set foot on American soil again https://t.co/FuGXJX93uC — Charles Bramesco (@intothecrevasse) June 30, 2019

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Fast color

you really shouldn't be tagging me in these. It's a story I made up so it's actually my story to tell & I decided to cast people who didn't look like me. It's fine if you don't like that but I believe in telling stories together. — Julia Hart (@juliahartowitz) June 29, 2019 again if…

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Possessed doll

Possessed doll tired of being typecast by Hollywoodhttps://t.co/jDtWG5hd7r — The Beaverton (@TheBeaverton) June 29, 2019

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End the Vindicator

This tells you how dire the state of local news is. No “digital only” fallback strategy. No three-days-a-week print schedule. A daily newspaper just shuts it all down after more than 100 years: https://t.co/hnKzvenQWw — Paul Farhi (@farhip) June 28, 2019

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Friday Movies: LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO; DO THE RIGHT THING; ROLLING THUNDER REVUE; DEAD DON’T DIE; GARRY WINOGRAND; IN THE AISLES

Some movies you walk into knowing nothing and upon leaving, you feel in at least some way you know everything. Joe Talbot’s luminous, mesmeric The Last Black Man In San Francisco is a temporal-topographical dreamspace of sweet hallucination.

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Riz Visa

Riz Ahmed's Star Wars Celebration Chicago Appearance Was Canceled Because Homeland Security Wouldn't Let Him Board His Flight https://t.co/XZbiC06ckA via @io9 — Deanna ديانا (@deannaothman) June 28, 2019

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China censorship

Epic Chinese war film premiere cancelled in apparent censorship https://t.co/8xDavPvnga — The Guardian (@guardian) June 28, 2019

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AMC artisan

Film News Roundup: AMC Theatres Launching Artisan Films for Non-Blockbusters https://t.co/ZrUQzL8xAa — Variety (@Variety) June 28, 2019

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Sir Jony Ankling Apple; First Client: Apple

Sir Jony Ankling Apple; First Client: Apple

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Barrnholtz

Barenholtz only had 16 producing credits but they included Martin, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, and Requiem for a Dream and played a zombie in Dawn of the Dead https://t.co/oRmblwbMcA — don (@donswaynos) June 27, 2019

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Kieslowski

"That's the greatest sin a director can commit; to make a film simply because he wants to make a film." — Krzysztof Kieślowski Happy birthday to one of the greatest film directors of all time, Krzysztof Kieślowski. pic.twitter.com/bS85DwS7V5 — Art Film Art (@ArtFilmCinema) June 27, 2019

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Ben Barentholz

You know what they say… pic.twitter.com/ArfsPo1ZNT — ben barenholtz (@bearben) July 22, 2016

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Malick gets date

 Terrence Malick Gets A Date 

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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