MCN Curated Headlines Archive for June, 2014

Chicago Rahm Will Go To Court To Give Lakefront Property To George Lucas Imperial Museum; “Contaminated Soil” And “Permanent De-Watering” Among Issues

Shone Sez Brando “Broke The Movies”

Labuza Pictures Louis CK, Hong Sang-Soo And “The End Of Men”

What’s The Best Chicago-Chicago Film Of 2014?

indie wire

Kohn Has A Problem (Or Three) With The Transformers Franchise

Nayman Essays Robert Greene And His Actress

nymag

Google, The Populist?

indie wire

Tracklisting Boyhood, Which No Longer Has “Get Lucky” Or “Hey Ya” In Rotation

Anthropologist-Filmmaker Robert Gardner Was 88

“I don’t want to spoil Third Person’s egregious plot turns for you should you choose to subject yourself to the film, but suffice it to say…”

variety

“The issue is not that there are Jews in Hollywood. Of course there are, but they don’t act as Jews. They’re producers, directors, actors and financial people who happen to be Jewish. It just continue this myth of Jewish control and this concept that they all get together at Katz’s Deli and decide what Hollywood’s message should be.”
ADL Foxman Says Oldman Apology Reinforces Stereotypes

The Geek Tragedy Of The Internet’s Own Boy, Aaron Swartz

variety

An Anatomy Of The Cross-Platform Moneymaking Of The Transformers Series

“Screeners may include closed captioning and simple menus that allow viewers to select different starting points (chapter stops) and audio formats, although the chapter stop headings in the menu may not include captions.”
Academy’s Very Specific 87th Oscars Rule Changes On Promotion Fall Largely On Music Branch

LA Times

B&N Splits With Nook

Cloud Storage Conundrum: Arguments Broadcasters Made Against Aereo Could Be Made Against Google Music And Dropbox

wsj

Google Launches Set-Top Android TV

“Today’s decision by the United States Supreme Court is a massive setback for the American consumer. We’ve said all along that Aereo worked diligently to create a technology that complies with the law, but today’s decision clearly states that how the technology works does not matter. This sends a chilling message to the technology industry.”

Father Of Net Neutrality, Tim Wu, Returns To Battle Comcast

“If you say you want to support the new generation, you have to put your money where your mouth is. The only way you can support them is to stand beside them and say, ‘Let’s do this. Let’s find the right financiers. With some help we can get it made,'” Sez Michelle Yeoh

variety

Richard Linklater Talks About Life With Bernie

“Cities have nurtured generations of filmmakers, art houses, cinephiles, and film students, yet the metropolis of yesteryear is fast disappearing into the maw of gentrified homogeneity.”
B. Ruby Rich Takes A Film Scene Snapshot

indie wire

Happy Birthday, Adrienne Shelly

“This Apes movie poster is a failure, clearly made by people whose knowledge of combustibility is inferior only to their knowledge of Bay Area geography.”

hollywoodreporter.com

THR Surveys 2,120 Members Of Industry To Arrive At “Hw’d’s 100 Favorite Films” List

indie wire

But – Sam Adams Dubs It “Insidiously Dull”

Art Of The Title Credits Snatch

Sight Unseen, Minions Of North Korea Dictator Say “Gangster Filmmaker” Seth Rogen’s Kim Jong-un Assassination Comedy Constitutes “Act Of War”

Inside A Lost And Forgotten Spanish Baroque Chicago Movie Palace

NY Times

ELI WALLACH WAS 98
“I have ridden the elevator in that prewar building more times than I can count, been a guest at some of the parties whose relics litter the end tables, and heard most of the stories that echo through the rooms and hallways. Including the one about how my parents exchanged their wedding vows in the living room.”
With – A Lovely 2010 Appreciation By His Great-Nephew, A. O. Scott

“Building in Chicago is the right decision for the museum, but the Bay Area will always be my home. I grew up here, made all my films here and raised my family in the Bay Area.”
George Lucas Feels Equally Strongly About Chicago And San Francisco, But His Museum Heads To The Midwest

indie wire

Snowpiercer Vs. Transformers: Is This Any Way To Treat The “Smaller” Blockbuster?

Gay Underground Filmmaking Pioneer Peter De Rome Was 89 mnsfw

Supremes Snap Aereo’s Aerials

hollywoodreporter.com

It’s A Thelma & Louise Reunion

A Double Date With Leatherface

“If you want to start a knife fight with a film nerd, casually suggest that Crash 100 percent deserved its Best Picture Oscar for its profound examination of contemporary race relations.”

News Of The World Phone Hacking Case Ends In Acquittal Of One Editor, Conviction Of Another

A Live Tribute To They Live In Downtown L. A.

Stuntman Terry Richards, 81, Was “Cairo Swordsman” In Raiders, Nine 007 Movies In 50-Year Career; Doubled For Tom Selleck, Christopher Lee, Donald Sutherland

deadline

Gary Oldman: “I hope you will know that this apology is heartfelt, genuine, and that I have an enormous personal affinity for the Jewish people in general, and those specifically in my life. The Jewish People, persecuted thorough the ages, are the first to hear God’s voice, and surely are the chosen people.”

“Reinventing the rites of cinema under the sign of repression”
Film Folklore In Iran

hollywoodreporter.com

The Unusual Backstory On Shane Black Taking Over The Predator Franchise

“An article in The New Yorker misreporting my ‘Master Class’ conversation about censorship in our schools a couple of weeks ago has created some false impressions about my collaboration with the Disney Studio on the film version of Into the Woods. Despite what the New Yorker article may convey, the collaboration was genuinely collaborative and always productive.”
Any Moment With Stephen Sondheim

Chicago Gets George Lucas Imperial Museum

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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