MCN Curated Headlines Archive for September, 2014

Kevin Nance on “The Amazon Conflict”

Producer Gary Kurtz Debunks Some Star Wars Myths

Salon

Lessons from the Meltdown of an Accomplished Internet Nuisance
“’He didn’t care if he destroyed himself as long as he hurt you’: The sad, disturbing case of Ed Champion,” By Laura Miller
And – Katie McDonough Asks, “What to do about the men who abuse women online?”
Plus – “Why Publishing Put(s) Up With Ed Champion” 

John Favreau And Roy Choi Have A Taste For A Chef Restaurant

hollywoodreporter.com

“We will not participate in an experiment where you can see the same product on screens varying from three stories tall to three inches wide on a smart phone.”
Regal And Cinemark Reject Weinstein Co’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Sequel’s Simultaneous IMAX-Netflix Release

Christopher Borrelli Profiles Gone Girl Screenwriter Gillian Flynn

indie wire

Joe Ehrman-Dupre Sez Gillian Flynn’s View Of Traditional Marriage Is Gone Girl Is Discernibly “Queer”
And – “The Strange Thing David Fincher Does With The ‘Cool Girl’ Speech spoiler-ish

Matt Prigge On Steven Soderbergh’s Latest Experiment “For Educational Purposes,” On Raiders Of The Lost Ark

deadline

“Midnight Rider” First AD Charged With Involuntary Murder In Death Of Camera Assistant Sarah Jones

“What do Norwegians find so engrossing about programs showing real-time journeys and lengthy discussions of firewood?”

“When I have a specific reason to ask everyone to set aside their devices, it’s as if someone has let fresh air into the room. The conversation brightens, and more recently, there is a sense of relief from many of the students.”
NYU New Media Prof Clay Shirky Bans Use Of Laptops, Tables And Phones In Classroom

The Economist On Shakeups Coming At Samsung

EU Finds Ireland Gave Apple Unfair State Aid For Two Decades

NY Times

David Carr Contrasts Comcast Complaints With Yard Full Of Turkeys

Copyright Laws Permitting Parody Go Into Effect In Britain October 1

hollywoodreporter.com

Shout! Factory Acquires 400-Title Westchester Films Library, Including Stagecoach, A Woman Under The Influence And Welles’ Othello

“The greatest sustained display of directorial virtuosity in the history of American TV.”
Matt Zoller Seitz Swoons for “The Knick”

Video Essayist :: kogonada Fixes on “Eyes of Hitchcock” 1’51”

Gawker On NYT Report That Lena Dunham’s 11-City Book Tour Will Include Local Talent As Warm-Up, But They Won’t Be Paid
Later – Dunham Responds, Yes, They Will Be Paid

LA Times

“Filmmakers are pushing not just our cultural buttons but the edges of their own abilities.”
Mark Olsen Sees the “New Dangerous” at the Movies and He Likes It

hollywoodreporter.com

What Would SoftBank Be Buying With Its $3.4 Billion Bid For DreamWorks Animation?

Video Gallery, Another NYC Video Store, Vanishes

Ben Sachs on the Challenge of Representing Mental Illnesses Onscreen

66 Nations Submit For Best Foreign Language Oscar; Titles Include Ida, Leviathan, Mommy, Winter Sleep and Two Days, One Night

variety

Netflix Headed to Belgium

James Spader on “Extremity” and Compulsion

hollywoodreporter.com

David Lynch “Filled With Hope” He Can Make Another Film With Laura Dern

LA Times

Air Hollywood Airplane Soundstage Also Holds Fear Of Flying Classes

David Fincher Met With Lucasfilm About Star Wars: Episode 7; Complications Ensued

NY Times

Amazon-Publisher Dispute Heats Up With Philip Roth, Ursula K. Le Guin, Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera And The Estate Of Hunter S. Thompson

Does Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Prefers Some Writers Over Others?

Don’t Cover Up Wonder Woman’s Feminism!

Beat That Headline
“Internationally acclaimed barrister Amal Alamuddin marries an actor”

NY Times

“Don Keefer, 98, Actor Who Had Bad Thoughts on ‘Twilight Zone’”

LA Times

Jon Favreau Still Knows The Cuban Sandwich Is The Second-Best Promo For Chef

NY Times

“The Big Chill opened both the Toronto and New York Film Festivals; as a member of the New York festival selection committee that year, I can attest to how anxious the festival was to have it, even over my own metaphoric dead body.”
J. Hoberman on Criterion’s Big Chill Release; A Preference For That Era’s Ghostbusters Is Indicated

Not That Journos or Film Crickets Should Care, But Here’s “Why Academics Stink at Writing”

deadline

“I make a certain type of movie and I like my creative and financial freedom. We also want to live a life of rock stars.”
Nic Refn On His Doubts And Bravado Behind The Scenes

telegraph.co.uk

Kristin Scott Thomas Has Had Just Enough Of “Fussing About With Teacups”

Who Is Criterion’s Video Essayist ::kogonada? And What Is Bricolage Sushi?

“There’s an incredibly narcissistic function of ‘I feel I deserve this kind of person at my side and as long as you’re willing to do the work to appear like that, yeah, let’s do it.’ And five years down the line it’s like, ‘Why are we so resentful of each other just ‘cos we can’t keep it up?’ When people are documenting everything in their life and uploading it, there’s a tendency to edit. There’s not a lot of people going: ‘Got up today, was lonely, masturbated.’”
Oh, David. You Know We Love You.

Picturing George Clooney’s Venice Wedding Procession

The “Freaks And Geeks” Cast, 15 Years Along

indie wire

Anne Thompson Cites 3 Things She Worries About Gone Girl and she’s spoiler-ish

BBC Abandons Its “Television Centre”

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MCN Curated Headlines

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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