Movie City News Archive for July, 2019

One Minute For Hal Prince

To commemorate Harold "Hal" Prince's life and work, the Committee of Theatre Owners will dim the lights of #Broadway theaters in New York for one minute tonight https://t.co/mBG4Vyzofh — Hollywood Reporter (@THR) July 31, 2019

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Bruce Lee Protege

Bruce Lee’s Protégé Recalls His Humility Amid ‘Once Upon a Time’ Criticism https://t.co/cRvf2mpZdS pic.twitter.com/Jrc32OZNRP — Variety_Film (@Variety_Film) July 31, 2019

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Lexi Alexander

While I’m not a fan of QT, nor am I happy about the fact that he portrayed Bruce Lee in a manner that hurt his daughter Shannon, I’m a huge fan of ⁦@mangiotto⁩’s writing and this one is a particularly personal piece: Film Freak Central https://t.co/5kCnX5HHQ0 — Lexi Alexander (@Lexialex) July 31, 2019

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Robert Richardson

“In terms of director and cinematographer, he can tell me what he wants or show me examples and then I try to create what’s in his head. The highest level of praise I can get is when he sees a scene and says to me that’s exactly what I had in my brain.” Robert Richardson

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Hal

Farewell Hal Not just the prince of musicals, the crowned head who directed two of the greatest productions of my career, Evita and Phantom. This wonderful man taught me so much and his mastery of musical theatre was without equal. – ALW pic.twitter.com/CJomXUFUyp — Andrew Lloyd Webber (@OfficialALW) July 31, 2019

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Hal

RIP Hal Prince💔 What a sad day — Bernadette Peters (@OfficialBPeters) July 31, 2019

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Hal

Thank you, Hal. — Sondheim Lyrics (@sondheimlyrics) July 31, 2019

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Hal

Hal Prince was one of the fucking gods of musical theatre. If you haven’t seen the recorded version of his 1979 Sweeney Todd production, fix that immediately!!! — Ira thee Third (@ira) July 31, 2019

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Hal

Beyond heartbroken to find out that #HalPrince has passed away💔Working with Hal was one of the greatest honors of my artistic life-I'll never forget his kindness,generosity& brilliance as an artist & as a human.Sending love & condolences to Judy,Daisy,Charlie &all loved ones💖💫 — Donna Murphy (@DMurphyOfficial) July 31, 2019

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hal

RIP our dear Hal Prince. You inspired. You will ALWAYS inspire. — Kristin Chenoweth (@KChenoweth) July 31, 2019

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hal

Whether your consider yourself a Sondheim person, or an Andrew Lloyd Webber person, or a Kander and Ebb person, you're a Hal Prince person. He bestrode all of 20th-Century Broadway like a Colossus in a Dance Belt. — Glen Weldon (@ghweldon) July 31, 2019

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HAL

A common thread running through all of the beautiful eulogies of Hal is the fact that he wrote kind and supportive letters to so many young theatre artists. Including me, when I greatly needed the encouragement. Who does that anymore? I could go on – we all could go on. A giant. — Robert Falls…

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Amazon changes

Amazon S-Team member Jeff Blackburn, who heads up Entertainment, Prime Video, Business Development and Advertising, is taking a year-long sabbatical. Story coming to WSJ — Dana Mattioli (@DanaMattioli) July 31, 2019

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Hal

Whether your consider yourself a Sondheim person, or an Andrew Lloyd Webber person, or a Kander and Ebb person, you're a Hal Prince person. He bestrode all of 20th-Century Broadway like a Colossus in a Dance Belt. — Glen Weldon (@ghweldon) July 31, 2019

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“The film has problems, all of which could’ve been solved with Quentin Quentin-ing less. Give us a Sharon Tate with comparable depth to that of your fictional/composite male characters, so we’re not left thinking that, ultimately, Quentin Tarantino movies are made by, for, and about, Quentin Tarantino: a cultural fetishest (and foot—-er) who has black friends.”

“The film has problems, all of which could’ve been solved with Quentin Quentin-ing less. Give us a Sharon Tate with comparable depth to that of your fictional/composite male characters, so we’re not left thinking that, ultimately, Quentin Tarantino movies are made by, for, and about, Quentin Tarantino: a cultural fetishist (and foot—-er) who has black friends.”

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Revisiting A 2009 Conversation With Duncan Jones About Moon

“Films like Silent Running and Outland and Ridley Scott’s Alien, they were telling stories about people. The science fiction was really the environment these people were contrasted against. It’s how people were affected by, or how they were able to protect themselves from these future environments, or alien environments in science fiction settings. It was always…

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Twenty-Five Years of Chicago’s Black Harvest Film Festival

Twenty-Five Years of Chicago’s Black Harvest Film Festival

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I Paint Houses

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“Netflix’s licensing strategy is becoming more focused on smaller international territories such as the Netherlands, Argentina and Colombia.”

“Netflix’s licensing strategy is becoming more focused on smaller international territories such as the Netherlands, Argentina and Colombia.”

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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