MCN Curated Headlines Archive for June, 2011

guardian

Iranian Filmmaker Mahnaz Mohammadi Remanded To Evin Prison

“The stories about bad WiFi service, split pants, and appropriate modulation may turn some off…”
Columbia Journalism Review Plumps The Depths Of Hollywood Elsewhere

NY Times

Gray Lady Swaddles New York Asian Film Festival
And – Co-Founder Majordomo Grady Hendrix On Its Origins

Claim-Jumping All-You-Can-Screen Moviepass Puts Their Beta Off

Bill Simmons On Why There Is Only One Movie Star Standing And His Name Is…

variety

Jimmy Roselli, 85; Italian-American Singer’s  “Mala Femmina” Was Featured In Mean Streets

AMC Joins Landmark, Camera Cinemas In Stopping All-You-Can-Screen Monthly Passes

hollywoodreporter.com

Spike On Why He Hasn’t Made A Feature Film In 3 Years

“Anticipating this, we brought a commercial real estate appraiser to the press screening.”
ChiTrib Maps The $8 Billion In Imaginary Damage Michael Bay Visited On A Few Square Blocks Of Chicago
“We’re the gateway? Well, I guess then I should go on the record as stating that we do not condone any evil robots.”
With – Handy Mappage

NY Times

Times Tallies Nationwide Walkouts On Tree Of Life, Some From Twitter, Some By Commenters

“The Zooey Deschanels of the world will dump your contrived, quirky ass if you try to pull that whimsical s—.”

hollywoodreporter.com

Stock Analysts Keen On Friday AMC Stock Spinoff?

Yahoo Study Shows Online Video-Watching Shift To Primetime

Retrospecting Jeff Bridges And Cutter’s Way At The BFI

The Big Gamble Of Larry Crowne: 1990s Stars In Warm Milk

Stuart Staples On Tindersticks’ Music For Claire Denis’ Films

Coppola Twixting Comic-Con

Cinemascope Roundtables Tree Of Life With Peranson, Franey, Charity, Sicinski, Klinger, Koehler, Möller And More

hollywoodreporter.com

Rudin Shifts Shingle To Sony

telegraph.co.uk

A Sad Telling Of Life Of Edith Fellows, 88, “Wholesomely Disagreeable Sprite” As Child Actress; Loner As 4’10” Oldster, “Teethed On Phoneys, Don’t Miss ‘Em“

LA Times

Director Of Palin Doc Sez He’s Going To Add “All Sorts Of Violence” To His Film, Including “Facebook And Twitter” “Crucifixions, Lynching And Suicides”

indie wire

“I knew François a little.  He was shy, modest yet vital, and especially charming with women. At some big foreign festival dinner in the 1970’s, my partner was Cybill Shepherd, and François flirted with her openly all through the meal.”

variety

Transformers Sock Box Opening Day Record: $37.3 Million Including Midnight Shows

guardian

“On the small screen, promoting Larry Crowne, Hanks is relaxed, worldly, sophisticated and charming. But in the film itself, he is strained, unconvincing, infantile and silly.”

Magyar Filmunió, Agency Promoting Hungarian Cinema Abroad, Suspended

guardian

Teasing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy From Tomas Alfredson

nymag

The Tough Prospects For Either Sarah Palin Doc

“You want it to help for good, but you don’t want it to look like you’re in the pocket of the U.S. government.”
Biz Stone On Twitter’s Boundaries

“There are some talented people out here who just need a shot.”
“Faith-Based” Movies: Here To Stay?

wsj

Apple Launches Final Cut Pro X FAQ Website In Attempt To Address Avalanche Of Editor Complaints
Plus – The “Not A Professional Application” Petition To Cupertino
And – A Rumor That Apple Is Refunding The More Vocal Complainants’ Purchase

Sean Means Asks If We Are A Nation That Has Forgotten How To Watch A Movie

variety

Edith Fellows, 88, Child Star In Silent Shorts, TV Actress In Later Years

Tree Of Life Sound Designers Speak Up

NY Times

“As a convicted felon and [British] foreign national, Mr. Black is ineligible for entry into Canada.”
Jailhouse Memoir Of Convicted Fraudster Lord Black Of Crossharbour Has Canadian Publisher

guardian

Ben Whishaw Talks Bad Interviews And “Barbaric” Economics

Vishnevetsky And Sachs Call Up Skolimowski In The Wild Forests Of Masuria

hollywoodreporter.com

Bridesmaids About To Best B.O. Of All Apatow Productions; Soon, Topping Sex And The City As Highest-Grossing R-Rating Femme-Centric Comedy Pic

Chinese Piracy Solution Is Product Placement: For Advertisers, All That Matters Is The Film Gets Seen

Nia Vardalos Suggets Greeks Dishonest Compared To “Hard-Working” Greek-Americans

Tribeca’s Geoff Gilmore Wants To Tell You About “Disruptive Innovation”

3D “Motion Pictures” From The Civil War

indie wire

“When you put half-baked, cheap shots out in the world and call it a movie, you shouldn’t be surprised when someone who has valued your work in the past calls you on it.”
Early Kevin Smith Supporter Amy Taubin Has Words For Latter-Day Kevin Smith
But – “I’m a good businessman.”

telegraph.co.uk

Hugh Stewart, 100, Producer Of Gentle Slapstick, Assistant Editor On Hitchcock’s 1934 The Man Who Knew Too Much; Co-Directed WW II Docs With Huston, Capra; Was One Who Urged Eisenhower  The Camps Be Filmed When Liberated

Journalism’s Scandal Of “Gate”

Trailering Spielberg’s War Horse

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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