MCN Curated Headlines Archive for November, 2012

All Comedy Central writers step forward.
Not so fast, WGAw members!
WGAw Issues “Stop Work Order” Against Comedy Central

LA Times

“I’m interested in having a relationship with the iconic because people then come into the movie already with an engagement with the subject matter and I find that an interesting place to be as a filmmaker.”
“Tom Hooper Reveals His Song-And-Dance”

variety

Branagh On Knightley

Gambling Site Intrade, Fond Of Making Book On Oscar Hopefuls, Shuts Portals To U. S. Users

Virginia Uses Lincoln To Peddle Tourism

A Condensed Life Of Snopes

Lincoln’s Favorite Poetry

NY Times

“I thought, before I wrote this script, that I should burn myself in a public square to let the American people and the people of the world know this message that I believe in.”
Maker Of Anti-Muslim YouTube Skit Unregenerate

LA Times

Hailing Hitchock‘s Home-Making

NY Times

Rohter Seeks Gloom In Foreign Language Oscar Submissions

NY Times

Lidz On Documenting Ginger Baker, Wild Man Of Rock

“I am dead against critics as generalists. There is absolutely no point in a critic seeing a production he or she knows they will not like. Do you really want to know what anyone thinks of a show when they go in asking themselves, ‘Why are they doing this piece of s—?'”

NY Times

“Curious, But Probably Of No Cultural Significance”: Cieply Foresees “A Manly Month For Movies”

LA Times

“We wanted to build a movie you could not anticipate, you wouldn’t know what would be next.
Olson Indie-Focuses Rust And Bone

David Lynch And Keanu Open Camerimage

NY Times

“The press tried to cut me off at the knees. I don’t care what the form is. I care about what the message is. I’m not interested in, you know, bleeding money.”
Oprah Tries To Deal With Failure

variety

“Like Bigelow herself, Maya realizes that actions—or action movies, in the director’s case—are the surest way to combat a tradition in which society doesn’t believe women to be capable of getting the job done, and Zero Dark Thirty follows the character through every significant step along her 10-year journey to hold bin Laden accountable for 9/11.”

“Larry Hagman was right. Life is so much more interesting when you can keep other people just a little off-balance.”
Then There’s The Fantastic Larry Hagman-And-“Pink Lady”-And-Cowboy Hat Story

“Lessons From The ‘Future Of StoryTelling’ Summit”

guardian

“How The Dogme Manifesto Reinvented Denmark”

Good Dr. Bordwell Talks Craft With Director Tim Hunter, A “Classic Sarrisian Cinephile”

variety

Spanish Filmmaker José Luis Borau Moradell Was 83

guardian

Whatever Became Of Capitol Films And Its Movies By David O. Russell And Tony Kaye?

“Alex Gibney On What The Pope Knew (And Why He Did Nothing)”

guardian

Judd Apatow And Stephenie Meyer’s Ideal Bookshelves

wsj

Matthias Schoenaerts Fond Of “Crazy” Jacques Audiard

“Feel-Good Films About Disabilities Need To Also Make You Feel Bad”

Bollywood Films Boost Flights To India

Putting Bond On The Couch With “Mum”
And – Tucking Into “Gender Politics” In Skyfall

NY Times

Building Sound For Killing Them Softly

LA Times

Second-Generation Film Editor Dann Cahn, 89, Pioneer Of Multi-Camera Cutting On “I Love Lucy”; Assistant Editor On Welles’ Macbeth; Cut Meyer’s Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls

guardian

Grace Coddington, Star Of The September Issue, Pictures A Memoir

hollywoodreporter.com

“Films touching on 9/11, such as United 93, World Trade Center, and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, have proven commercially toxic, and while this one has a ‘happy’ ending, its rigorous, unsparing approach will inspire genuine enthusiasm among the serious, hardcore film crowd more than with the wider public.”
McCarthy Plies Trade Trade In Zero Dark Assay

“This is movie journalism that snaps and stings, that purifies a decade’s clamor and clutter into narrative clarity, with a salutary kick.”
Corliss First-Reviews Zero Dark Thirty spoilers

A World Bank Economist On Which Bond Villains Had The Best Plots

ny post

Zack Snyder Tub-Thumps 215-Minute Watchmen Blu-Ray Cut

NY Times

“There are a thousand ticks between the greatest and the worst and a great critic is unerringly accurate in picking the right place on that scale.”
Public Editor On NYT Critics Coming Out With Guns Blazing

Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards Include Beijing Blues, Yang Chung’s China Heavyweight, Johnny To Directing Life Without Principle 

“Hagman claims that his first acid trip took away his fear of death. The eureka moment came when he stared at his face in the mirror and saw his own molecular structure. ‘Some cells were dying, some were being reborn. I realized we don’t disappear when we “die.” We are always a part of a curtain of energy.'”
A Life Of Larry Hagman In 6,900 Words, By Harry Hurt III

“Kiwi director casts mum as film’s femme fatale”

Case-Studying Two Viewings Of The Master, In 70mm, Then DCP

NY Times

Blue Sky Studios Galleries 187 Pieces Of Art From Ice Age And Other Animations

wsj

“How Red Dawn Could Have Been Remade Without Xenophobia”
And – Foreign Policy Experts React
Plus – C. Thomas Howell Sez 2010-12 Red Dawn “Stupid”

NY Times

“The title is a military term for 30 minutes past midnight, but is also meant to evoke the gloominess of the past decade.”
Just The Facts Ma’am: Cieply And Barnes Have Zero Dark Thirty All Figured Out super-spoilers

“Chita Rivera, Almost 80, Can’t Sit Still”

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

MCN Curated Headlines

Archives Comments Most Recent

“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