MCN Curated Headlines Archive for October, 2011

“Is Indie Premium VOD Getting A Pass?”

Bankruptcy Judge Refuses Dueling TribCo Bankruptcy Reorg Plans

Stream David Lynch’s Entire “Crazy Clown Time” Album

Walter Hill, The Warriors And The Driver, Oh My

Julie Andrews, Target And Disney Christen “National Princess Week”

daily beast

NewsBeast Channels My Week With Marilyn, With Brigitte Lacombe Glam Shots

LA Times

Chair Begins At Home: The Design That Gave Like Crazy Its Name

Getting Inside Sigur Rós’ Inni Concert Film

The Struggle For “The World’s Most Dangerous Film Festival” In Chicago’s Englewood

“This is not a bill that targets ‘rogue foreign sites.’ Rather, it allows patent and copyright trolls, and any holder of any intellectual property right to target lawful U.S. websites and technology companies.”
NetCoalition, CEA, and CCIA Respond To Members Of Congress On “Stop Online Piracy Act”

A History Of Horror In Australian Cinema

Rights Activists Question A Studio’s Chinese Locations For Buddy Comedy

From The Paris Review: “William Gibson, The Art of Fiction No. 211”

Sundance 2012 Announces New Frontiers Projects

LA Times

Olsen Ponders Actresses’ Nudity In Shame And Martha Marcy May Marlene

NY Times

“What if the price of having a vital, well-financed string of newspapers included rare, but inevitable, sexual predation of minors?”
David Carr Takes A Swing With His Backpages.Com Lede

LA Times

“There’s this impression of Joe going around that he tricks girls into engaging in these sexual situations in his movies, and I feel like that’s just not giving the girls much credit.”
Indie-Focusing The Prolific Joe Swanberg, With 3 Films At AFI Fest

NY Times

Cieply Licks The Mane Of Academy Exec Director Dawn Hudson, Sez She Has A “Balancing Act”

Malick‘s Cryptic Script Notes For The Never-Made “Q,” Predecessor To The Tree Of Life

hollywoodreporter.com

Kilday Infringes On Finke’s Autopsy Spew, Expresses Surprise At Rum Diary‘s Box Of Rocks

Deeper Into Moodiness: The “Wrongest” Pauline Kael Reviews

“Make a few demands/ I’m able to fulfill.”
Rhymin’ Steve Sondheim On His Memoiristic Reticence

wsj

Drake Doremus Has Another Like Busy Year

LA Times

Lim On That Rara Avis, American Political Filmmaking

“In the beginning, there were certain things I missed. In Hollywood, there’s the connection with the people who finance the films because you lunch or dine with them, whereas here, you never see them. Other than that, I miss friends. I miss Nate ‘n Al Delicatessen.”
Roman Polanski Waxes Nostalgic

Creditor Moves To Dismantle Copyright-Trawling Scheme

NY Times

Spurlock To Help Other Documentarians Sell Product Placement

wsj

What Stephen King’s New Publishing Deal Might Mean To The Future Of Entertainment

“Most of the big films now are either end-of-the-world epics, comics or action sequels. Most of the work for real cameras is in second unit, and the rest is done with CGI. It’s not great work for filmmakers.”
Cinematographer John Seale Waxes Nostalgic

Chicago Couple Buy The Field Of Dreams Site; They Will Build It; You Will Come

NY Times

“Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.”
A Eulogy For Steve Jobs, By His Sister, Novelist Mona Simpson

“Why We Love Zombies,” By Kathleen Murphy

“Steve Jobs Had Charisma. What Does That Mean?”

telegraph.co.uk

“Putting it very simply, Saul was a great film-maker.”
Scorsese On Saul Bass

Thompson Talks To James Cameron, Juggling Savant

When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother,
what will I be
Will I be pretty, will I be rich
Here’s what she said to me:
LA Film Critics Ass’n 2011 Life Achievement Award To Doris Day

“You don’t have to put on the red light”
 The Epic End As Library Of Congress Dims Its Darkrooms

daily beast

Director Chris Weitz On GOP War On “Illegals”

Kodak Addresses Some Filmy Rumors

Swank Sacks Staff Over Chechen Gaffe

guardian

Is Carrie Fisher’s Life “Like Sunset Boulevard, But With A Happy Ending”?

Walter Murch Talks Final Cut, Wonders Where’s The Pro? (12:15 vid)

NY Times

Holiday Movies Ahoy!
Woody Harrelson Afoot In Amsterdam With David Carr
And – Cartoonist Lynda Barry Wants You To Believe In Yourself
Plus – Kelsey Grammer Talks Class
And – Designing Gary Hustwit
With – McGrath On Theron Playing The Heavy
And – Rozen On Cameron Crowe
Plus – Spielberg E-Mails Cieply
And – Going Immortals With Tarsem And A Slideshow Of Images
And – Itzkoff Meets “The Rat”
And – Holiday Favorites Picked By Branagh, Berney, Stillman, More

hollywoodreporter.com

Notes On Emmerich Low-Budgeting Anonymous

LA Times

Daughter Tingles To Talk Of Father, Schlockmeister William Castle

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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