Movie City News Archive for July, 2019

Gawkrr

BDG postpones Gawker relaunch, lays off entire staff https://t.co/bagUGH7T2k pic.twitter.com/uensCVz3MD — New York Post (@nypost) July 31, 2019

Read the full article »

Gawker

Prediction: this Bustle strategy of buying dying media properties, while getting lotsa press right now, won’t move the needle for the company and will be abandoned in a year or so. And parent company would be better for it. https://t.co/ycbB75qw8U — Rafat Ali, Media Operator (@rafat) July 31, 2019

Read the full article »

“Jeffrey Katzenberg’s mobile-only streaming video service Quibi is asking media companies and production studios to produce up to twice the amount of content for each episode of the programs they are creating for the platform so that viewers can choose between horizontal and vertical versions of a show. While that increases the workload for these companies, entertainment executives largely are not balking at Quibi’s so-called dual asset demand, though some worry that offering vertical and horizontal versions of videos will overcomplicate the viewing experience and turn off audiences.”

“Jeffrey Katzenberg’s mobile-only streaming video service Quibi is asking media companies and production studios to produce up to twice the amount of content for each episode of the programs they are creating for the platform so that viewers can choose between horizontal and vertical versions of a show. While that increases the workload for these companies, entertainment…

Read the full article »

Sharon Lee

I saw ‘Once Upon A Time…’ this past weekend so I could comment intelligently to the press that is asking to speak with me about the portrayal of my Dad in Tarantino’s new film, here are my thoughts:https://t.co/vbk6Uz0hev — Bruce Lee (@brucelee) July 30, 2019

Read the full article »

Evans

Damn RIP to the office where I interned in 2010 https://t.co/SysP9vdgt8 — Dan Schindel (@DanSchindel) July 30, 2019

Read the full article »

Bruce Lee

I don’t say this in pursuit of gainsaying Shannon Lee, but I didn’t see Bruce/Cliff bout, which ends in a draw, as belittling to Lee (who’s shown as kind and considerate when coaching Tate). Just a shit-talking episode between bored idle fight performers that got out of hand. — Glenn Kenny (@Glenn__Kenny) July 30, 2019

Read the full article »

“Leitch’s gift for inventive hand-to-hand brawling and weapon skirmishes is once again on full display in his steroidal buddy comedy. Yet what distinguishes it from the genre pack is the director’s deft ability to meld his distinctive style with the over-the-top cartoonishness of its Fast & Furious predecessors.”

“Leitch’s gift for inventive hand-to-hand brawling and weapon skirmishes is once again on full display in his steroidal buddy comedy. Yet what distinguishes it from the genre pack is the director’s deft ability to meld his distinctive style with the over-the-top cartoonishness of its Fast & Furious predecessors.”

Read the full article »

Record-breaking Opening Weekend of ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD 
on 70mm at the Music Box Theatre

[pr] JULY 30, 2019 (Chicago) — As one of five theaters in North America screening Sony Pictures’ ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD on 70mm, the Music Box Theatre saw its three-day (July  26–28) weekend estimated grosses top $122,000 – the venue earning the second-highest per-screen average in the country, the highest gross in Chicago…

Read the full article »

Seinfeld Hates Goldthwaite?

“I don’t like him. At all,” Jerry Seinfeld says of Bobcat Goldthwaite. “I had kind of forgotten about him and then there was a little article about him in the paper and even in that there was a veiled reference to his dislike of what I did. It didn’t have my name, of course. He used…

Read the full article »

Rocking The Rock Movies

How Hiram Garcia Keeps The Rock’s Blockbuster Movies on Track https://t.co/j6iXGbuSrx pic.twitter.com/tDS886EfrJ — Variety_Film (@Variety_Film) July 30, 2019

Read the full article »

Linklater

#HBD, Richard Linklater! “More than most filmmakers, Linklater takes quite literally Andrei Tarkovsky’s concept of cinema as sculpting in time.” Dennis Lim: https://t.co/7VmZsF4XpD pic.twitter.com/TdGeKdeaPC — The Daily (@CriterionDaily) July 30, 2019

Read the full article »

HOLLYWOOD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE TO HONOR FILMMAKER GUILLERMO DEL TORO WITH STAR ON THE HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME

WHO:        Honoree: Guillermo del Toro Emcee: Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, President/CEO Rana Ghadban Guest Speakers: Director J.J. Abrams and singer/songwriter Lana Del Rey WHAT:      Dedication of the 2,669th Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the Category of Motion Pictures WHERE:   6918 Hollywood Boulevard in front of The Line Store WHEN:     Tuesday, August 6, 2019 at 11:30 A.M. PST…

Read the full article »

Plan B

Brad PItt and his partners in Plan B have exceptional taste. Even more important? THEY GET FILMS MADE. https://t.co/Kjc5GLNbJj — Ray Pride (@RayPride) July 30, 2019

Read the full article »

Jack Davis

R.I.P. Jack Davis, illustrator for MAD magazine and Tales From The Crypt https://t.co/Y3kdl4Vsv1 — Malice Intended (@Renaissance1977) July 29, 2019

Read the full article »

“More than a year after imposing a controversial four month “test” embargo on new release e-books in libraries from its Tor imprint, Macmillan announced that it will impose a two-month embargo on library e-books across all of the company’s imprints.”

“More than a year after imposing a controversial four month “test” embargo on new release e-books in libraries from its Tor imprint, Macmillan announced that it will impose a two-month embargo on library e-books across all of the company’s imprints.”

Read the full article »

Irishman

Scorsese's #TheIrishman to premiere at New York Film Fest https://t.co/z6LDWlAZ7W @netflix @filmlinc — Thelma Adams (@thelmadams) July 29, 2019

Read the full article »

Award Winners of 2019 Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival

OUTFEST LOS ANGELES LGBTQ FILM  FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES 2019 AWARD WINNERS Los Angeles, July 29, 2019 – Outfest – the Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization promoting equality by creating, sharing, and protecting LGBTQ stories on the screen – has announced the award winners of its 2019 Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival, presented by HBO. The nation’s…

Read the full article »

Kyoto murders

#KyotoAnimation arson attack: Death toll rises to 35, reports that the attack was carefully planned https://t.co/KmVBWoC7vO #KyoAni pic.twitter.com/jTTz33cS6z — THR International (@THRGlobal) July 29, 2019

Read the full article »

Garlic les Blank

"Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers" Looking just at the titles of Les Blank's filmography, one sees the America one wants to live in. RIP. — Glenn Kenny (@Glenn__Kenny) April 7, 2013

Read the full article »

How Yesterday Became The Hit Of Today

How Yesterday Became The Hit Of Today “You’ll never get the fucking rights for that. It’s not an obvious one – it would either work well or wouldn’t work at all. Three things needed to happen for Richard Curtis to write it: the historic side with the previous writers needed to be sorted out in an…

Read the full article »

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