Movie City News Archive for September, 2019

“I Love Gwyneth Paltrow. There. I Said It,” Headlines Wesley Morris

By Ray Pride - Monday, September 30th, 2019

“I am some other kind of person, the kind of who believes that Paltrow was, for a while, the best young American actor in Hollywood. She’s still among the very last generation of movie performers — including Cotillard and Cate Blanchett, Winslet and Nicole Kidman — for whom stardom and skill seem scarily, thrillingly natural….

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Vidiots

By Ray Pride - Monday, September 30th, 2019

“Starting later this year and into 2020, Vidiots will also feature programming partnerships with The Black List, The Bob Baker Marionette Theater and Cinema Eye Honors. Vidiots is looking to partner with Art House Convergence, Film Independent, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Outfest, Oxy Arts and the Occidental Media Arts & Culture Department, Sundance Institute,…

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Brody Jessye

By Ray Pride - Monday, September 30th, 2019

In memory of Jessye Norman, whose performance in The Makropulos Case, at the Met in 1996, is the most powerful, sonically and dramatically, that I've ever experienced; when she sang in my direction, I literally felt my eardrums shiver; not volume—intensity. — Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow) October 1, 2019

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Jessye norman

By Ray Pride - Monday, September 30th, 2019

The Met mourns the loss of Jessye Norman (1945–2019), one of the great sopranos of the past half-century, who sang more than 80 unforgettable performances with the company. We extend our condolences to Ms. Norman’s family and friends. https://t.co/38WXiHkKPgPhoto: Met Archives pic.twitter.com/DXzWKl8o7U — Metropolitan Opera (@MetOpera) September 30, 2019

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Illinois and Chicago film offices

By Ray Pride - Monday, September 30th, 2019

Film Leaders of the Moment: Kwame Amoaku and Peter Hawley "It’s about making Chicago and Illinois a great place to make films." The new heads of @ChiFilmOffice and @ILFilmOffice speak with @RayPride about permits, perceptions, and Chicago vs. Toronto.https://t.co/DreZhJWiHC — Newcity Chicago (@newcity) September 25, 2019

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Wayne Fitzgerald

By Ray Pride - Monday, September 30th, 2019

Wayne Fitzgerald, who designed main titles for films as diverse as THE GRADUATE, PILLOW TALK, TOTAL RECALL, THE CONVERSATION, and CHINATOWN, has died. He was 89.@DEADLINE — https://t.co/J0rIIrwGFh Watch his work @ArtoftheTitle — https://t.co/DKsR5AWxpD pic.twitter.com/64vJ9oifvu — The Daily (@CriterionDaily) September 30, 2019

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Santos on Variety on Irishman

By Ray Pride - Sunday, September 29th, 2019

I really don’t know what an article like this accomplishes especially when it doesn’t really address why the film wasn’t financed by the studios for a theatrical release in the first place. https://t.co/w2RMEa5Dds — Steven Santos (@stevensantos) September 29, 2019

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Variety on Irishman

By Ray Pride - Sunday, September 29th, 2019

“The Irishman was made as a work of cinema to be shared in the secular temple that the movie theater still is. Yes, even with all those trailers, with the $10 Cokes and the idiots on their cellphones. I think a great many people will want to experience it that way. I would argue that…

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IRISHMAN press conference

By Ray Pride - Sunday, September 29th, 2019
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Hustlers

By Ray Pride - Sunday, September 29th, 2019

Jennifer Lopez is perfect and Hustlers is the punchline to Gwyneth Paltrow’s comment that Ben Affleck’s perfect woman is a stripper in a bikini at Scores bringing him a cold beer — Molly Lambert (@mollylambert) September 15, 2019 J. Lo really is as good as you’ve heard in HUSTLERS. It’s one of those full-throttle holy-shit…

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“Mikey & Nicky isn’t the story of two men attempting to escape the mob, nor two men reckoning with themselves—it’s the story of two boys wholly unequipped to mediate the complex emotions of male adulthood.”

By Ray Pride - Sunday, September 29th, 2019

“Mikey & Nicky isn’t the story of two men attempting to escape the mob, nor two men reckoning with themselves—it’s the story of two boys wholly unequipped to mediate the complex emotions of male adulthood.”

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Michael Chabon: “What’s The Point?”

By Ray Pride - Sunday, September 29th, 2019

Michael Chabon: “What’s The Point?”

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PHILLIPS

By Ray Pride - Sunday, September 29th, 2019

TODD PHILLIPS: RAW

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Not the Joker

By Ray Pride - Sunday, September 29th, 2019

as the utterly delightful “joker” discourse ramps up even more in the next week, a reminder that james holmes never dressed as the joker or said he was the joker https://t.co/D6t0UZmCRK — your pal andy (@andylevy) September 29, 2019

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ad astra

By Ray Pride - Sunday, September 29th, 2019

Ad Astra: James Gray and his crew built a movie about men who avoid vulnerability and responsibility by becoming professional adventurers and workaholics. Anti-colonialist, pro-vulnerability. The personal becomes, quite literally, the universal. — Aleš Kot (@ales_kot) September 29, 2019

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Rob Cohen Again Accused Of Sexual Assault

By Ray Pride - Sunday, September 29th, 2019

Rob Cohen Again Accused Of Sexual Assault

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Momoa

By Ray Pride - Sunday, September 29th, 2019

I hadn’t expected to be crying thie moring, but here we are. I wish all these news outlet would acknowledge that Momoa is Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) and that indigenous people have been at the forefront of this fight. https://t.co/1rAMjQCo7I — Jeanne (@fangirlJeanne) September 28, 2019

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Joker Oz

By Ray Pride - Saturday, September 28th, 2019

So there are security guards with metal detectors checking every individual bag at the Australian Joker press screening which is … unheard of, honestly. And I’ve been doing this job for 15yrs. — Maria Lewis (@moviemazz) September 26, 2019

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Apple Plans to Bring Feature-Length Films to Theaters

By Ray Pride - Saturday, September 28th, 2019

Apple Plans to Bring Feature-Length Films to Theaters

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Amazon Studios Strategizes

By Ray Pride - Saturday, September 28th, 2019

“We don’t pretend to think we would suddenly have 30 million people watching our movie in a theater, it’s just a portion of what our strategy is… stunt theatrical… event-izing… We’re really pivoting to a goal of getting these movies to the global customers as quickly as possible.” Amazon Studios Strategizes

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“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