Movie City News Archive for September, 2019

Punk Leaves SF

Eight tons of punk Facing rising San Francisco rent prices, the world’s largest collection of punk records and ‘Maximum Rocknroll,’ the anti-establishment music magazine that safeguards it, must find a new home. https://t.co/moVtUxzEvV — Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) September 27, 2019

Read the full article »

“This isn’t a paranoid future nightmare,” Chris Morris Says Of The Day Shall Come

“This isn’t a paranoid future nightmare,” Chris Morris Says Of The Day Shall Come

Read the full article »

A Reader-Abusive Interview With Rian Johnson

“Oh, my god, of course. I mean, what the fuck – am I not gonna ask Don Johnson about Miami Vice?” A Reader-Abusive Interview With Rian Johnson

Read the full article »

Kickstarter

Kickstarter's CEO has confirmed that the company is anti-union and will remain so. They will continue to fight against unionization and stand by the firings. His message to pro-union @kickstarter users is: drop dead, we don't need you. https://t.co/fwT4DclTTO — Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) September 28, 2019

Read the full article »

“For much of The Irishman, the women are at the margins — wives and daughters, always around, rarely saying anything. This isn’t atypical in Scorsese’s work, which rarely centers on women. The worlds he makes movies about are built by men, for men. They see women as beloved and beautiful accessories, maybe tangentially helpful, sometimes irrational irritations. But The Irishman uses Frank’s perspective on the women in his life to remind us that his myopia has blinded him to the truth about himself.”

“For much of The Irishman, the women are at the margins — wives and daughters, always around, rarely saying anything. This isn’t atypical in Scorsese’s work, which rarely centers on women. The worlds he makes movies about are built by men, for men. They see women as beloved and beautiful accessories, maybe tangentially helpful, sometimes irrational…

Read the full article »

“There were notions Scorsese mentioned as we start3d to prep the movie. One very early on was wanting to have a feeling of the photographic memory of the past. He mentioned Super 8 or 16mm home movies, and asked me in the general sense how I thought we could achieve that feeling without literally shooting with grainy, handheld film. So I got more into emulating the still photography look of the different decades, in particular the ’50s, and then the ’60s, and then of course a lot of the story happens in the ’70s. I decided to separate those decades with those looks, emulating those emulsions: Kodachrome in the ’50s, and toward the ’60s we transition to Ektachrome (also saturated in color, but more a blue-green tendency, and the shadow). Then for the ’70s, I transitioned into a whole different look, which is not still photography: ENR, a process that was developed in Technicolor by Vittorio Storaro, in which the silver is retained on the print of film for motion pictures, and the result is high contrast and desaturation of color. I started applying levels of this ENR look, so that basically the film starts getting drained of color in the later decades. That gives a feel of nostalgia, maybe, for the past, even though the events that are happening are not necessarily the prettiest.”

“One very early notion Scorsese mentioned as we prepped was wanting to have a feeling of the photographic memory of the past. He mentioned Super 8 or 16mm home movies, and asked me in the general sense how I thought we could achieve that feeling without literally shooting with grainy, handheld film. So I got more into…

Read the full article »

Luis Ospina

We are gutted to learn of the death of Colombian filmmaker Luis Ospina, who graciously let us show his films in a near-complete retro back in 2016. You can watch Luis’ 1982 masterpiece PURA SANGRE free of charge on his Vimeo, among many other works: https://t.co/OvBQUUqyu0 pic.twitter.com/u3Q0Jeg8HC — Spectacle Theater (@SpectacleNYC) September 27, 2019

Read the full article »

Sony, Disney To Collaborate On Third Spider-Man Property

Sony, Disney To Collaborate On Third Spider-Man Property

Read the full article »

Eccleston

"Many times I've wanted to reveal that I'm a lifelong anorexic & dysmorphic. I never have. I thought of it as a filthy secret, because I'm northern, I'm male and working class." Christopher Ecclestone shows that mental health problems affect men too 🙌https://t.co/A3aDwo4eIH — Time to Change (@TimetoChange) September 24, 2019

Read the full article »

Godard

“He had jeeps stick long sharp steel fingers into the eyes of wrecked cars and toss them on their backs.” From the @guardianfilm archives, Peter Lennon’s 1967 report from the set of Godard’s WEEKEND: https://t.co/ZSSegNPZgt — The Daily (@CriterionDaily) September 28, 2019

Read the full article »

Behlmer

Rudy Behlmer, Bruce Eder, Peter Cowie, the holy trinity of early Criterion laserdisc commentary tracks. — Darrell Bratz (@DarrellBratz) September 28, 2019

Read the full article »

The DVD Wrapup: The Circus, J.C.’s Vampires, Bucket of Blood, Tracker, Black String, Major/Minor, Find Me Guilty, Pitching In … More

It not only represents the last film Charles Chaplin made during the silent era, but also the least heralded and most troubled of his masterpieces. Its production was so traumatic, in fact, that Chaplin left it out of his autobiography.

Read the full article »

Movie Crazy

I grew up in NY in a movie-crazed home and went to movies all the time (neighborhood theater pictured). But my parents didn’t go to the NYFF and neither did I because it was uptown and seemed too fancy and pricey @FilmLinc pic.twitter.com/5YRvDwMUBV — Manohla Darkness (@ManohlaDargis) September 26, 2019

Read the full article »

Behind The Chicago Film Scene in Fifty Entries And 23,000 Words

Behind The Chicago Film Scene in Fifty Entries, Dozens Of Portraits And 23,000 Words

Read the full article »

Bela Tarr

Hello, Béla Tarr! https://t.co/a09HRipLc5 pic.twitter.com/hATdxFal1O — Ray Pride (@RayPride) September 26, 2019

Read the full article »

A. O. Scott

A city so nice, they shot it a million times https://t.co/Xa1PFDLqGn — 32 across (@aoscott) September 26, 2019

Read the full article »

“In a September 18 email, the U. S. Army instructed service members to remain aware of their surroundings and “identify two escape routes” when entering theaters showing Joker. In the event of a shooting, they were instructed to “run, hide, fight.” “Run if you can,” the safety notice said. “If you’re stuck, hide (also known as ‘sheltering in place’), and stay quiet. If a shooter finds you, fight with whatever you can.”

“In a September 18 email, the U. S. Army instructed service members to remain aware of their surroundings and “identify two escape routes” when entering theaters showing Joker. In the event of a shooting, they were instructed to “run, hide, fight.” “Run if you can,” the safety notice said. “If you’re stuck, hide (also known…

Read the full article »

I-Land

The I-Land is a landmark series. Most bad shows are forgettable mediocrities. This is the first true travesty of steaming services which means it’s downhill from here. The final episode has the production values of a 90s FMV Cd-Rom and the acting of The Room. — Aaron Stewart-Ahn (@somebadideas) September 18, 2019

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