MCN Curated Headlines Archive for May, 2011

David Thomson Sez You’re Wrong, It’s Dismal, And Asks, Wasn’t Midnight In Paris Better In 1988, When It Was Called The Moderns?

Crashing Back To ’86, When Hal Ashby Added One More To 8 Million Ways To Die

guardian

On The Boards With Kristin Scott Thomas

Andrew Sarris’ 5 Essential Film Books

NY Times

Apple To Introduce iCloud, Located At A Billion-Dollar Data Center In North Carolina

“Gone With The Wind” Is 75

Cloud Atlas Is “really exciting because all the actors will be playing more than one role,” Weaving says. “I actually have six characters in the same film and they are all different people in six different stories.”

filmlinc

SPC’s Michael Barker On Norman Jewison

the wrap

Which Flacking Hack Do YOU Love?!?!
Sharon Waxman Press Releases EXCLUSIVE On Ryan Kavanaugh #Winning! (as dictated by Ryan Kananaugh)
OR – Nikki Finke Presses Her Theme Of Rage Against Kavanagh & Waxman (as dictated by Elliott Associates)

la observed

Variety Writer Gets The Burps After Sunday LAT Piece On Movie Men With Muskles

indie wire

Filmmaker And Bard Prof Adolfas Mekas Was 85
With – His Website

On The “Groovy” Set Design For X-Men: First Class

variety

Anderson Revving Up His Religion Drama

Trailering The Beautiful And Mysterious General Orders No. 9

Rosefelt On “The Art Of Adrienne Shelly”

NY Times

MSNBC Asserts: “Fake Dragon Tattoo Trailer Is Fake”
But – NYT: Sony Sez Probably Pirated Off U.S. Screen, Using Same Evidence
Oh, Wait – Salon Has Precisely The Same Conclusions!
While – THR Quotes A Buncha Bloggers And Cites Unnamed Sony Spokesperson With No Direct Quotes
Plus – “From a media perspective, it’s dealing in bad faith. Web sites and studios have an implicit agreement to work on the latter’s schedules; we withhold obviously pirated or leaked material until an authorized, theoretically superior version is available. It basically reduces us to another Hollywood marketing arm, but at least we have the prerogative to tell you if the campaign is stinky or ineffective.”
Vanairsdale On The Implications If It’s All A Salander-Fashioned “Hack”

NY Times

Papaya King Goes H’wd

Can Mayor Emanuel Make Chicago A Rahm With A Filmmaking View Once More?

hollywoodreporter.com

Former Manager Jeff Wald On His “Gritty” “Grisly” “Harrowing” Life As A H’wd Drug Addict

NY Times

PBS Will Add Commercials Inside Programs, Breaking In Every 15 Minutes

Cinematographer John Bailey On Joseph Nicéphore Niépce And “The World’s First Photograph”

guardian

“Timeless Taboos: Why 19th-Century Novels Appeal To Filmmakers”

Hobbit Double Feature Gets Entitled

Maya Lin On Making The Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Jon Blake, 52, Australian Star Disabled After Role In The Lighthorsemen

LA Times

Slideshow: What Was The Summer Movie Season Like Before Bruce? Ba-bum. Ba-bum…

guardian

Filmmaker Adam Curtis‘ Latest Woolly Surmise Is On Warring Philosophies Of “Ecosystems”

Was Ingmar Bergman Switched At Birth?

NY Times

Florida GOP Gov Vetoes Public Broadcasting Funding
Earlier – Kansas GOP Gov Veto Obliterates Arts Commission

NY Times

“There is something flattering and exciting about the permanence of paper, and we committed to doing serious journalism at a time when there has been this onslaught of hit-and-run bloggers.”
Carr Media-Equates Janice Min’s H’wd Reporter

NPR Goes Long On What It Calls The “Fa” Word

Yup, Allen’s Hangover II Yellow Lab T-Shirt, Yours For $18.99

LA Times

“Raiders was the first movie where I actually shot the movie without thinking. I like to say that the line that most typifies the production of that movie was when Harrison says, ‘I’m making this up as I go along.'”
Spielberg On Raiders At 30

“He plays the role of the dedicated artist convincingly. This makes it extremely difficult for critics to believe that a man so devoted to his creations, so uninterested in grosses or the trappings of fame, could actually be quite an inept filmmaker. But such is the case. It has to be said: There is something mulish about his sophomorism, something stupefying about his work.”
Schickel Takes To Outlet Less Known Than Time To Point Pop Gun At Tree Of Life; Invokes, Yes, Preston Sturges’ 70-Year-Old Gag About The “Deep-Dish Movie”

GQ’s Epic Oral History Of The Making Of Badlands Includes The One About Terrence Malick Texas-Thumping A Producer

GameStop To Honor Duke Nukem Preorders, Even Those Reaching Back To Another Century

NY Times

“Audiences are very smart. When they smell something aspiring to be more than it is, they catch on very quickly.”
3D! We Hardly Knew Ye!

Alex Ross On The Music, Especially Brahms, In The Tree Of Life

Why Pop Will Never Go “Bang!”

NY Times

Dumber And Dumbest: Who Amid The Times’ Readership Required “Decoding” Of 1920s Paris References In Woody Allen’s Latest Feuilleton?

Tapes Show JFK Feared Moon Shoot Would’ve Been Seen As A “Stunt”

NY Times

Serious-Funny x 2
“I’m a terrible actor,” he said, eating scrambled eggs. “I’m too self-conscious. I’m not a fan of me,” Mr. Ayoade said, “and I can’t become one.”
Richard Ayoade, The Quietly Self-Deprecating Mind Behind The Beguiling Submarine
And – Mike Mills On The Start Of Beginners

BBC

Roger Waters On Recurring Dreams Of Murder

NY Times

Scott On The Presently Ascendant Funnywoman

indie wire

Xfinity TV Tubthumps “On Demand Awards”; Top Titles All Good Things, Centurion, The Killer Inside Me

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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.”

The DVD Wrapup: Cold War, Betty Blue, Official Secrets, Demons, Olivia, American Dreamer, Land of Yik Yak

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?

WEEKEND READS ON MEDIAQUAKE

Tribune Trolley Problem

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