Movie City News Archive for October, 2019

ELAINE MAY LAFCA

LAFCA is very pleased to announce that Elaine May will be the recipient of this year's Career Achievement award. We will be honoring this legendary actress/writer/director at our annual awards dinner on Jan. 11, 2020. pic.twitter.com/IFsMaxtHj2 — LA Film Critics (@LAFilmCritics) October 31, 2019

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Rafat Ali on Deadpsin Death

Having been in media — and building media — longer than any of these media writers of today, I’d say this is an easy conclusion to make, but the wrong one. Don’t confuse the incompetence of entitled men with structural malaise. https://t.co/966OXOrwsn — Rafat Ali, Media Operator (@rafat) October 31, 2019

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New Rules Introduced To Streamline Best International Film Category

New Rules Introduced To Streamline Best International Film Category

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Blade Runner

Fucking 2019. All the dystopia, none of the offworld colonies. https://t.co/JFZiRLdD1W — Nick Harkaway (@Harkaway) October 30, 2019

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Blogging Serendipity

there's almost no space for writing anymore that's joyful or an attempt to be creative. hardly anyone is playing around with form or even just trying to entertain. so much of the joy has been sucked out of the internet unless its crowdsourced by platforms from ppl who aren't paid https://t.co/2hnx2IpLXw — Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel)…

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Larry on Ford v Ferrari

Ford V Ferrari does a number of intricate complicated things with its traditional-seeming format. Easily Mangold’s best work. https://t.co/EvuffmQKrN — larryagross (@larryagross) October 31, 2019

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Anil Dash on Facebook’s admission

I don't think "we don't even need the money, we just love watching the world burn!" is as good a defense as FB apparently seems to think it is. https://t.co/XOpIQPSqCP — Anil Dash is… Dark Mode (@anildash) October 31, 2019

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Term limits

Anything that remotely brushes the zeitgeist is red meat for some. Easier than actual analysis. https://t.co/ac7TooDMi8 — Kris Tapley (@kristapley) October 31, 2019

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“Star Wars directors must feel like the Hollywood equivalent of all those unfortunate Imperial admirals in the original trilogy. One misplaced Rebel fleet and it’s instant death by studio chokehold.”

“Star Wars directors must feel like the Hollywood equivalent of all those unfortunate Imperial admirals in the original trilogy. One misplaced Rebel fleet and it’s instant death by studio chokehold.” “One underlying problem Benioff and Weiss’ exit illustrates is that there is still no consensus as to what Star Wars is and what Star Wars should be.”

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AppleTV+ Lands…

So, tomorrow is arrival day for AppleTV+. And Apple is doing everything right… except for delivering on content. “The Morning Show” has been the stalking horse, with TV superstar Jennifer Aniston, Oscar-winning movie star Reese Witherspoon, and the well-loved crossover star, Steve Carell. And they should have thrown away the first two episodes and started…

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Sorkin Bennet

In Opinion “This can’t possibly be the outcome you and I want, to have crazy lies pumped into the water supply that corrupt the most important decisions we make together,” writes Aaron Sorkin in an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg https://t.co/5Gx4kNLJkj — The New York Times (@nytimes) October 31, 2019

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Bay Weekly Newspapers To Close by End of Year

Maryland’s Bay Weekly To Close After Twenty-Six Years

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Ajit

“Ajit Pai repeatedly *claimed* that banishing net neutrality would lead to significant increases in investment by the nation’s top telecom companies. In fact, the opposite has happened.” https://t.co/xYsygfEwkU — Craig Aaron (@notaaroncraig) October 31, 2019

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David SImon vs MZS

Didn't know it was you. Saw Halloween anonymity and rank trollery and you were fully camouflaged. But as to your grand accusation of a moral compromise, Matt. We lived with every detail of for two years, examining all, listening, talking to many. Our stance is ethical and fair. https://t.co/BfiiJ9vx6M — David Simon (@AoDespair) October 31,…

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Paul Williams Phantom at 45

https://t.co/7mRTxedkNP 45 years ago today Phantom of the Paradise was released. Almost no one noticed. To steal a Sam Goldwyn quote … “They stayed away in droves!” Many thanks to Katherine Turman and Billboard For this kindness. ❤️🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/tJrDw3oIKN — Paul Williams (@IMPaulWilliams) October 31, 2019

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Redbox Coma

Imagine getting into a serious accident with a Redbox in the car. You wake up from a coma a month later and now you have to live the rest of your life knowing you paid $40 for a DVD copy of Smurfs 2 without a case. Horrific. — octopus/caveman (@OctopusCaveman) October 31, 2019

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STV hopeful

Sincerely, the media industry is the only industry I am optimistic about. It’s not vanishing; it’s catching up. https://t.co/xQVMtU94QP — Stu VanAirsdale (@StuVanAirsdale) October 31, 2019

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G/O owns

just a reminder, G/O Media owns:DeadspinGizmodoThe RootJezebelGizmodoKotakuThe OnionThe A.V. ClubClickholeThe Takeout JalopnikLifehacker a lot of properties we all love are at risk of going the Deadspin route, so pay attention to how Jim Spanfeller handles this 🤷🏽‍♀️ — ashes-to-ashes ray (@arayyay) October 30, 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?

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