MCN Curated Headlines Archive for August, 2015

Nancy Meyers Is Obsessed With Fish Tacos

In Ongoing “Happy Birthday” Song Copyright Saga, A Jolly Good Fellow Unearths Its 1922 Publication, Adds To Detailed History

A Manifesto For All Filmmakers To Make A $7,000 Film On The Backs Of Those They Know

Women Talk About “The Persistent Boys’ Club Of Animation”

Retro-Perspective: Wim Wenders Looks Back At Looking Back

NY Times

Walk In The Woods‘ Bill Bryson Fears Humans More Than Bears

variety

“If you’re a birder, you’ll know that the birds are right.”
A Walk In The Woods Works The Details

Autobiography Of Imprisoned Ukrainian Director Flies Off Shelves

NY Times

NYT Anoints Jason Sudeikis

102-Year-Old Douglas Slocombe Looks Back At Ealing Studios 

LA Times

From 2014, Wes Craven Expands On His 10 Scariest Movies
And – Craven Describes The Origins Of His Meta-Horror New Nightmare
And – “My goal is to die in my 90s on the set”

hollywoodreporter.com

WES CRAVEN WAS 76
And – “Get Rid Of The Assholes”: A Scream-Time Interview

Michael Wolff Sees Murdoch Set To Sue Facebook And Google

variety

Netflix Loses Movies As Epix Deal Ends, Moves To Hulu

NY Times

OLIVER SACKS WAS 82

Film Scholar Tag Gallagher Says He Doesn’t Know What A “Classic Film” Is

NY Times

Mekado Murphy On White Male Directors Who Jump To Franchise Films After Their Debut Indie Film

“He begs forgiveness, prays and even gives stolen drugs back to his bosses (who don’t press charges, because he seems so sad.) There is a recurring gag that Elizabeth’s feet stink, and the movie ends with Tony washing them in a nice genderbent Mary Magdalene moment.”
Jordan Hoffman Spoilers The Rigors Of War Room; Commenters, Pray, Disagree: “It Stirs Up The Prayer Warrior Inside Of You”

Mad Max: Fury Road Retold In Hieroglyphics

An Oral History Of Longtime Companion At 25

Judge Suggests Arlington, Texas E-Publisher Owed $10.7 Million In Fifty Shades Royalties

Italo Calvino On “The Movies Of My Youth”

indie wire

Robert Richardson On Hateful Eight‘s SuperPanavision 70

“If you’re doing something that terrifies you, most likely you’re doing the right thing.”
Amber Tamblyn Talks Directing, Writing, Living

NY Daily News

“We’ve encouraged Walt Disney, ‘Put your characters out on Broadway free of charge so people don’t have to worry about their kids being groped,'” the police commissioner said.”
Disney, Marvel Shun Times Square Superhero-Shill Shutout

hollywoodreporter.com

Joel Silver Sued Over Loans For Real Estate And Art

A Look At The Studio-Like “Cold Opening” Of Harper Lee’s “Go Set A Watchman”

“If we only allow ourselves to enjoy stuff that’s somehow ideologically pure, we’d be denied most entertainment. I don’t want to be boring about this stuff, because I want people to listen when something is really egregious.”
Film Critic Helen O’Hara On Enjoying Art That’s Against One’s Principles

Oz Pics Exist Even If No One Sees Them, Sez Hugo Weaving

Margot Robbie Says Every Actor Has A Price Tag

Nielsen Figuring Out How To Measure Netflix Auds

“When people are [called] brave in regards to playing LGBTQ people, that’s borderline offensive. I’m never going to be considered brave for playing a straight person, and nor should I be. Honestly, if I played gay characters for the rest of my career, I’d be thrilled. I wish I could, honestly!”
Ellen Page On “Brave” Actors

Dustin Lance Black Turns To Commercials, Both Anti-Bullying And With LGBT Themes

Former NYT Journo On Playing Herself In DeNiro Madoff Movie

hollywoodreporter.com

Hw’d Shrinks Analyze The Biz

For His 117th, Here’s Douglas McGrath‘s 2010 Preston Sturges Appreciation

And For Your Weekend Re-Viewing… Steven Soderbergh Tinkers With Blow-Up 93m

NY Times

Stephen King Asks If A Novelist Can Be Too Productive; Looks To Joyce Carol Oates For Self-Inducement

“You can go make a great looking movie for nothing. I just tell them, ‘Just go make something.’ The only aspect of film making that I haven’t been able to exert total control over is marketing.”
Soderbergh Sips Singani 63

Tom Courtenay On Different Sorts Of Stardom

Poet-Critic Clive James On Dying, Still

Annie Leibovitz On Cecil Beaton, “Artist Of The Portrait”

“We literally asked God, ‘What do you want us to do next?’ And the Lord started prompting us to call people back to prayer and to learn how to fight in prayer. He gave us the analogy of the war room. Just like the military uses a war room to strategize against the enemy.”
Fifth Christian Pic By Kendrick Brothers, War Room, Esteems Power Of Prayer

Banned Filmmaker Jafar Panahi Speaks In Favor Of Iran Deal with 1’07” vid

hollywoodreporter.com

We Are Your Friends Could Be Worst Wide Opening

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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