MCN Curated Headlines Archive for October, 2015

indie wire

“What brought Grantland down was not the lack of an audience but internal politics: It existed in part because ESPN wanted to keep Simmons happy, and once they stopped caring about that, its fate was sealed. That’s not to say its ending isn’t equally as depressing, but it’s harder to spin this into some kind of death knell for culture writing in general.”
Sam Adams On Why Closing Of The Dissolve And Grantland Aren’t The Same

NY Daily News

“Quentin is a phenomenal talent, a filmmaking genius. So when he or someone like him gets up and makes a statement like that, it’s felt the world around. It’s an injustice to call New York cops murderers. That is so wrong. They don’t deserve that kind of talk.”
NYDN Seeks Quentin Tarantino’s Father For Comment

NY Times

“I try to submit—I’m Muslim-like when I’m making a film. I am there to serve the film and submit to it. I don’t feel I’m God, actually. I’m merely the hand that writes.”
A Few Witticisms From Terry Gilliam

deadline

“There is no place for inflammatory rhetoric that makes police officers even bigger targets than we already are.”
“Questioning everything we do threatens public safety by discouraging officers from putting themselves in positions where their legitimate actions could be falsely portrayed as thuggery.”
Police Unions Asserting Opposition To Political Opinions Of Quentin Tarantino Now Include Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Houston, Chicago, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Las Vegas

NY Times

“I love doing stop-motion for no reason except that it’s stop-motion,” Mr. Stamatopoulos said. “My favorite thing is a puppet not moving, just sitting there and being depressed.”
One More Major Lovely Downbeat Tale About Anomalisa spoilers, natch

NY Times

“It is aimed at sending a message, not just to Tarantino, but to anyone whose voice carries great weight in society.”
Three U. S. Metro Police Unions Advocate Boycott Over Tarantino Speech

“The Thing is now recognized as a morbid masterpiece of wretched existential horror.”
Now? Only Now? Where Have You Been All These Years?

“The public broadcaster belongs to the people: that is why the BBC is trusted in the UK and around the world. The BBC is a great legacy from past generations. It must be passed on even stronger into the future.”
The FT’s Martin Wolf Talks Common Sense About British Broadcasting

“He is a combo of cinematic architect and interior designer.”
Howard Feinstein Goes Down, Down In The Basement With Ulrich Seidl

wsj

“Alphabet’s Google To Fold Chrome Into Android”
Headlines That Would Have Been Sci-Fi Until Pretty Recently

hollywoodreporter.com

“It’s the Pauline Kael thing—’Nobody I know voted for Nixon.’ People in Hollywood are smart, but they’re bubble-dumb. They don’t know anyone who disagrees with them, and so they saw Carson as this black apostate and figured everyone feels the same way. What Rogen didn’t think, because he’s bubble-dumb, is that there’s a whole world out there, and Ben Carson is more popular than Hillary Clinton.”
THR Provides Breitbart Blogger Platform For Why He Believes H’wd Will Feel The Burn

MCN Curated Headlines

“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