MCN Curated Headlines Archive for October, 2015

Chicago Bears Delay George Lucas Museum Over Loss Of 1,000 Tailgating-Boozing Slots

indie wire

Anne Thompson Sees Gotham Noms As First Waystation Toward Oscar

BBC Radio Scotland Doc Seeks 007’s Scots Roots In “James Bond: Licence To Kilt”

Amazon Cloud Computing Pays The Freight, Not The Shipping Of Goods

“His 10-year first-look deal with Universal empowers Blum to green-light any movie budgeted at less than $5 million as long as it’s horror, thriller or sci-fi. If Universal believes the finished film is worth the jumbo marketing costs, the studio releases it on 3,000 screens. If not, between VOD rentals and overseas deals, it will at least recoup its money.”
Amy Nicholson On The Ways And Means Of Micro-Movie Mega-Macher Jason Blum

Sample A Spooky Track From David Lynch And Marek Zebrowski’s Reissued “Polish Night Music”

hollywoodreporter.com

THR Cover-Stories Rupert Murdoch’s Sons As They Take Joint Reins At Fox

Why Streaming Companies Often Aren’t Properly Licensing Songs Or Paying Songwriters And Musicians Royalties

“500 Star Wars Stormtroopers March On Great Wall Of China In Epic Disney Event”

Getting Sleazy And Sexploitative With Nic Refn

96 Drag Queens Sought For AbFab Pic

Laurie Anderson On Why She Made A Film About Her Dog

NY Times

Tis The Season For Tea Leaves To Turn Redstone
“But for a moment, let’s stay focused on the control issue.”
A Viacom Explainer Much Like Earlier Viacom Explainers
And – William Cohan Gossips For Vanity Fair

Screenwriter Karen Walton On Why Repulsion Rules

daily beast

A Few Days Before His Failed Trump Joke, Anthony Mackie Talks GOP And Its Politics

Art Of The Title Credits Zombieland

variety

Carol, Tangerine, Diary Of A Teenage Girl Gotham Bigs

hollywoodreporter.com

Comedian Marty Ingels Was 79

“Melancholy is a state that I very much enjoy being in, actually. It’s not the same as feeling sad. It’s a more complex emotion; it derives from a tragic view of the world, a tragic view of art.”
Jóhann Jóhannsson On The “Melancholy” Of His Film Scores

Chris Rock To Host Oscar 77

“His opening monologue roused plenty of laughter and applause from the audience, which leads one to believe that the critical drubbing may just have been the result of reviewers looking for something to complain about.”

Hou Hsiao-hsien On The Films That Changed His Life

“Both sides have pull, but despite the visual splendor and obvious earnest intentions of The Force Awakens, my own prospects for joy in it seem mostly doomed. Star Wars is for kids.”

NY Times

Vincent Canby, 1977: “The story of Star Wars could be written on the head of a pin and still leave room for the Bible”

George Lucas Museum Of Narrative Art Faces Final Chicago City Council Vote On Wednesday

indie wire

Kindle Adopts Leonard Maltin

BBC Cuts Transit, Lunch Expenses For London Workers
While – “The body representing independent TV production has raised “serious concerns” about the regulation and transparency of a proposed spin-off of the BBC’s studio business”

BBC

David Byrne: “The internet will suck all creative content out of the world”
Plus – “We are now in the age of the schemer and the plan is always big, big, big, but it’s the nature of the technology created in the service of the various schemes that the pond, while wide, is very shallow.”
Iggy Pop’s BBC Music John Peel Lecture
And – “As I listened to his enthusiastic stoner Midwestern drawl, I thought: If Iggy Pop can’t make it, what message does that send to all the baby Iggys out there? In a society where worth is judged by price, for better or worse, what are you saying to someone when you won’t pay for the thing he’s crafted?”

Amazon Objects To NYT Critique From August

Amazon “Senior Vice President Of Global Corporate Affairs” Jay Carney Offers His Say On Medium

“Of course, plenty of conversations and interactions occur in workplaces that are not documented in personnel files.”
NYT Editor Dean Baquet Sez “Phooey”

the wrap

“Project Greenlight” Would Like To Recall That “Hot Ghetto Mess” Episode Title

“Job Description: The Star Wars Social Engagement Strategist is responsible for social media strategy, content planning, story ideation, content curation, and direct fan communication for the Star Wars franchise social channels: Manage the day-to-day messaging, monitoring and moderation of all Star Wars social media channels.”

How Much 2015 Food Did Back To The Future Get Right?

Cristina Álvarez López On The Wind In Béla Tarr’s Turin Horse

Cinémathèque Française Google-Maps Every Martin Scorsese NYC Location

variety

Chris Rock Rumored To Oscar Host

NY Times

Cosby Dismisses Marty Singer

Grady Hendrix Surveys Ongoing Pan-Asian Film Industry Shakeups

Bilge Ebiri Charts Spielberg’s Path From Popcorn To Politics

“Jerry Lewis Look-A-Likes Of The Nutty Professor Monastery To Visit Garden State”

“This is the only film I’ve done that is completely based on my own crazy mind.”
Vogue Cover-Stories Angelia Jolie Pitt On Looking Forward To 50 And “Her Most Personal Film With Brad Yet”

NY Times

“Rose McGowan, the actress turned filmmaker and, seemingly, self-appointed women’s rights watchdog and social conscience… McGowan stirred a minor tempest when she called out Hollywood for its sexism… Ms. McGowan, who has raised her visibility…”
NYTimes Fashionista Ruth La Perla Slants Coverage As If Rose McGowan Were Occupy Itself

Brit Media Roils On
Trinity Mirror Sets $340Million Deal To Control Local World, 100-Paper Publisher Of Regional Rags
And – Withering Attacks On BBC Creative Director Alan Yentob Join Clamor Against The Institution
Plus – $154 Million Takeover Of Irish TV Channel Marks First Time Out Of Local Hands Since 1958

NY Times

“We have found a way to feed off other people’s energies as well, by being somewhat selfless. We both love being in the center of the tornado. When you’re in the center you’re not touched.”
The Flourishing Of Filmmaker Jonas Mekas At A Young 92

Sounding The Prestige With Good Dr. Bordwell et al

Eddie Murphy Returns To Stand-Up For Just A Few Minutes

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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