Movie City News Archive for June, 2019

New Frames In Greek Trailer For OUATIH-QT9

New Frames In Greek Trailer For OUAT … IH-QT9

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someone tell hollywood that the inner lives of white supremacists aren’t that interesting https://t.co/3Boy3Mw8hC — b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) June 20, 2019

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Australia’s mister movies

It wasn’t just that classic movies once aired in prime time — it was the fact that they were introduced by someone with a clear passion who was able to engage our enthusiasm in a way that turned each film into an important event. Vale Bill. https://t.co/Z0zpfQ0usG — Lee Zachariah (@leezachariah) June 21, 2019

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Australia’s mystery movies

Bill Collins, known to generations of Australians as Mr Movies, has died at the age of 84 https://t.co/G6FtWKLyo9 — Ashleigh Wilson (@ashleighbwilson) June 21, 2019

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“Besson gets even the most basic period details wrong: ordinary Muscovites have IBM ThinkPads and WiFi, CIA situation rooms have flat-screen displays and everyone’s mobile phones are considerably smaller than they would have been. A USB drive becomes a major MacGuffin in the final act (USB drives weren’t in use until 1999). I wondered if all the tech was a stylistic choice – a way of suggesting Anna takes place in some alternate super-cool spyverse like the Bond movies; eventually I realized the answer was much more prosaic: nobody gave a shit.”

“Besson gets even the most basic period details wrong: ordinary Muscovites have IBM ThinkPads and WiFi, CIA situation rooms have flat-screen displays and everyone’s mobile phones are considerably smaller than they would have been. A USB drive becomes a major MacGuffin in the final act (USB drives weren’t in use until 1999). I wondered if…

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Yesterday

I am only going to see "Yesterday" if it addresses what Kate Hudson's character in "Almost Famous" is called in a world without the Beatles. — Joe Reid (@joereid) June 20, 2019

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No printer merger now

Well this is unexpected good news for publishers. The DOJ is suing to block the merger of the only two printers of catalogues, books, and magazines, Quad/Graphics attempted purchase of LSC. Nice job @makandelrahim! https://t.co/JVgDoNPdbm — Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) June 20, 2019

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Thousands petition Netflix to cancel Amazon Prime’s Good Omens

“Thousands Petition Netflix to Cancel Amazon Prime’s ‘Good Omens’”

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“I don’t want to sound like an old idiot, because I try to keep up with what’s happening on YouTube, and it’s a lot of people talking to camera, very personality-driven,” Kumail Nanjani said. ” I grew up watching Ghostbusters and Gremlins and Indiana Jones. If I had grown up watching YouTube, I don’t know if I would like movies.”

“I don’t want to sound like an old idiot, because I try to keep up with what’s happening on YouTube, and it’s a lot of people talking to camera, very personality-driven,” Kumail Nanjani said. ” I grew up watching Ghostbusters and Gremlins and Indiana Jones. If I had grown up watching YouTube, I don’t know…

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“In a world where everything is on demand, I think that’s what makes movies special: Exactly because it’s harder is why it’s a more significant leisure choice,” says Tom Rothman. “Guess what? You can’t see Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood on your phone right now! If you want to see Leo and Brad together on the screen — the biggest star pairing since Butch and Sundance! — you gotta get a babysitter.”

“In a world where everything is on demand, I think that’s what makes movies special: Exactly because it’s harder is why it’s a more significant leisure choice,” says Tom Rothman. “Guess what? You can’t see Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood on your phone right now! If you want to see Leo and Brad together on…

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There were 350 more movies released theatrically in the United States last year than there were when “Avatar” came out in 2009. The same thing’s happening on television. There just used to be fewer of everything — fewer movie stars, too — and when the numbers start to get up this high, you start to lose the trees for the forest.

“There were 350 more movies released theatrically in the United States last year than there were when Avatar came out in 2009,” Joe Russo said. “The same thing’s happening on television. There just used to be fewer of everything — fewer movie stars, too — and when the numbers start to get up this high,…

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Blumen whiplash box office versus screaming

“Get Out,” was a box office hit for producer @jason_blum, but his Oscar-winning movie “Whiplash” was “a disaster theatrically.” He thinks “Whiplash” would have worked better on streaming services. https://t.co/JjolSHTTBG pic.twitter.com/L5gikMJGlP — New York Times Arts (@nytimesarts) June 20, 2019

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With Stillman on the Paris

Would greatly lament the Paris cinema where both Metropolitan and @LandFMovie had great runs – @AmazonStudios @TedHope should buy it! https://t.co/s4zTjYlNHf — Whit Stillman (@WhitStillman) June 20, 2019

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UK Porn Verification

Huge if true: "The United Kingdom will likely delay its controversial age-verification system for online pornography ‘indefinitely'"https://t.co/eaccoRNGsE — Eliza Sorensen (@Zemmiph0bia) June 20, 2019

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Whitehead

RIP #PeterWhitehead, 1937–2019: William Fowler pays tribute to the underground legend – counter-cultural documentarian, novelist, pop-video director, falconer, metaphysician… ☞ https://t.co/1OmI00tmVh pic.twitter.com/22YxGkNxyh — Sight & Sound (@SightSoundmag) June 19, 2019

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The DVD Wrapup: Slaughterhouse Rulez, Silver Lake, Dark Sense, Swing Kids, Cherry Grove, Karloff/Lugosi, Running Man, Between the Lines, Crypto … More

What begins as a darkish teen comedy, set in an elite British boarding school, makes an abrupt midcourse correction by adding monsters, a corrupt dean and fracking, of all things.

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Save The paris

Please share your memories of the Paris Theater & tag @CityCinemasNYC to show them this venue matters to NYers (& to those who visit as well!). It should be a cultural landmark, not another %#^&%*@! flagship luxury store. — Dana Stevens (@thehighsign) June 19, 2019

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Keanu Marvel

Hear me out: Multiple Man https://t.co/8eF0mb0e3i — TZE CHUN (@thetzechun) June 19, 2019

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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?

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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