MCN Curated Headlines Archive for December, 2014

wsj

Steve Dollar Has Words With Top Five‘s Rosario Dawson

variety

Tim Gray Says These Are The 10 Things Academy Members Need To Know

Tim League’s Statement About Alamo Drafthouse And That Now-Arthouse Sony Picture

LA Times

In Los Angeles, Laemmle And Regency Mini-Chains Say Yes To Last-Second Booking Of The Interview; Landmark A Definitive “No,” With Downtown Independent And Cinefamily Expressing Interest

Chicago Suburban “Hw’d Blvd” Theater Books Beleagured BroCom

Los Feliz 3 Added In L.A.; Salt Lake City Gets A Booking

“The President applauds Sony’s decision to authorize screenings of The Interview. As the president made clear, we’re a country that believes in free speech and the right of artistic expression. The decision made by Sony and participating theaters allows people to make their own choices about the film and we welcome that outcome.”

indie wire

Roman Coppola And Jason Schwartzman On Taking Their First Series To Amazon

One Of Largest Troves Of Vivian Maier Negatives Sold To Leading Toronto Gallery

indie wire

Some Of The Season’s Major Cinematographers Rate Digital Vs. Film

What Does Pyongyang’s Internet Look Like?

“Arthouse theaters love to support important films, films that have a little bit of edginess to them, there’s some controversy to them. That’s the bread and butter of what arthouse cinemas do. So lo and behold, a butt-and-dick-joke, Seth Rogen and James Franco movie becomes an art film.”

“We have never given up on releasing The Interview and we’re excited our movie will be in a number of theaters on Christmas Day. While we hope this is only the first step of the film’s release, we are proud to make it available to the public and to have stood up to those who attempted to suppress free speech.”

“Sony is going to make the movie available to theaters at a reduced rental rate, as well as put it on a streaming service (not yet named) and video on demand by no later than Christmas.”
The Interview Will Open On Christmas Day, Tweets Alamo Drafthouse’s Tim League
And – “As a sign of my commitment, if you agree to show this movie, I will send a note to the Republican Party’s millions of donors and supporters urging them to buy a ticket—not to support one movie or Hollywood, but to show North Korea we cannot be bullied into giving up our freedom.”
Plus – Plaza Atlanta Also Sets Showtimes

Teju Cole On Watching And Rewatching Kieslowski’s Final Masterpiece, Red

Digital Sales Way Up In UK, Says Fox

hollywoodreporter.com

Suit Against Michael Keaton By Merry Gentlemen Producers Dismissed

variety

Brandon Stoddard, 77, ABC Exec Who Oversaw “Twin Peaks,” “Roots,” “Schoolhouse Rock,””Roseanne,” “thirtysomething”

The Most Improbable Movie Professions Of Mark Wahlberg

“I don’t really like the Hollywood blockbuster bandwagon that exists right now. The industry and the advent of all the technology, has kind of lost its way. It’s become very franchise-driven and superhero-driven. I’ve never read a comic book in my life so I’m immediately at a disadvantage and I have no interest in that.”
Guess The Filmmaker

variety

“You can quickly lose $40 million on a $10 million film these days.” 
Gregg Goldstein On The Impact Of Arthouse Shrinkage On Oscar

“Twitter has turned a generation of writers, journalists, and pundits into the sort of hack humorists who once upon a time would have ridden upon Bob Hope’s conveyor belt, feeding his monologue stale peanuts.”
James Wolcott Rises Above The Interview (And Twitter)

ArcLight Projectionists Protest For “Living Wage”

Birdman Composer Questions Academy’s Math Skills

variety

Emmy-Winning Joseph Sargent, 89, Directed The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, “Playing For Time,” And The Pilot For “Kojak”

hollywoodreporter.com

Unpaid Intern Lawsuit Settled By ICM

Sony Says It Will Sue Twitter If Tweets Containing Hacked Emails Are Not Squelched
With – Sony’s Letter To Twitter

PBS, WNET, ITVS, Independent Lens And POV May Work Out Keeping Docs In Primetime

NY Times

“Universal is slightly concerned that the Sony attack might actually hurt Blackhat—ticket buyers could be tired of hacking stories after weeks of media attention on Sony, and a film that is too topical might strike potential viewers as less entertaining.”
Brooks Barnes And Michael Cieply Guesstimate The Fate Of Michael Mann’s Yet-To-Be-Seen Blackhat

Mark Cuban Says Another Major Hack Will Happen: It’s About “Trophies”

NY Times

NYC Theater To Present Live Read Of Early Draft Of The Interview Screenplay

“Five Years Ago, Avatar Grossed $2.7 Billion But Left No Pop Culture Footprint”

“We had a whole list of things to say when you want to say a bad word. A lot of shucks and oh boys. It brought out a different side of the actors, their own self-respect and their respect for the generation before them.”
Swearing Banned On Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken Sets

NY Times

“It should be understood that this isn’t a Snowden/Assange issue. Getting info out of the government is different because, arguably, we are the government. It is, in a sense, our info. The Sony hack is different. We are not Sony. Sony is Sony.”

“It is not necessarily the job of art to comfort or assuage; it is often its role to discomfit, as in the case of these particular musicians and their chosen moniker.”
Why The F Word Appeared On The Front Page Of Canada’s Globe & Mail

NY Times

“If the attack was American in origin—something the United States would probably never acknowledge—it would be a rare effort by the United States to attack a nation’s Internet connection.”
NK Internet Crashes

Google And Wireless Industry Contest Mariott Blocking Personal WiFi

Noel Murray On Five Other Films About Assassinating Real World Leaders

NY Times

“After seeing The Interview and the ruckus its mere existence has caused, the only sensible reaction is amazement at the huge disconnect between the innocuousness of the film and the viciousness of the response. The real threat in The Interview isn’t a wackadoodle dictator, it’s the night terrors of loneliness and inadequacy that seem to bedevil a wide slice of Hollywood’s 30- and 40-something men and that are sublimated onscreen into weepy bromance, gross-out humor, gratuitous female nudity and intimations of homosexuality.”

Stephen Dalton On Andrei Tarkovsky’s Two “Inner-Space Odysseys,” Solaris And Stalker 

“Why Scrooge Is An Anti-Capitalist Hero, Bravely Resisting The Commercialization Of Christmas”

North Korea Internet Reported To Possibly Be Under Mass Cyber-Attack

NY Times

“The president—yes, it’s that important—should convene all the players who make billions from the free and unfettered display of content and broker a deal that gives Americans the opportunity to watch the film. Put The Interview on Hulu, on iTunes, on Google Play, on Netflix, on NBC and all the broadcast networks, on Showtime and all the cable stations, put it anywhere and everywhere that people can push a button and watch at the same time. Ubiquity and the lack of a discernible target would trump censorship.”
David Carr Joins Chorus Urging Sony Pictures To Give Away Their Decamillion-Dollar Investment In The Interview, But In A Mass Media Roadblock
And – US Asks For China Help In Finding North Korean Hackers

“Her middle name also starts with an M,” says Bryan Cranston, “and so she is MMM, and when you put those together, it’s ‘Mmmmmmmm,’ and sounds like a bee buzzing in my head, and that’s what she’s like: a bee. She never stops moving.”
Matt Zoller Seitz Goes In Search Of The TV-MA Wonder Woman That Is Director Michelle MacLaren

Up Where He Belongs: Joe Cocker Was 70
And – Rolling Stone Called Him The 97th Best Singer Of All Time

NY Times

Rumor: Nikki Finke To Move Her Philosophical Musings To DC For Politico As Political Columnist

Tim Burton Sez Big Eyes Is A “Dark Rom-Com Psychological Horror Movie Comedy”

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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