MCN Curated Headlines Archive for November, 2015

deadline

Sumner Redstone Wins First Round In Competency Challenge

Salon

“If you generously assume 20% of all films receive theatrical distribution, about 7,500 films were made last year. On average, people go to the movies only about six times a year, and watch fewer than 100 movies a year (90% coming from studios). Knowing this, many still advocate for more indie films. Why? Why do so many in the industry ignore demand?”
Beanie Barnes Says There Are Too Many Indie Films

indie wire

“Making feature films almost feels like an anachronism to me. It’s an extremely difficult undertaking. It was always difficult, and now it just feels monumentally difficult. So maybe the Gothams are more relevant.”
Muses Former IFP Executive Director Catherine Tait

Martian Cutter Pietro Scalia On “The Intimate Space Between The Director And The Editor”

A Few Thousand Words With Vittorio Storaro At Camerimage

“Each of them had a kind of point. Anchorman was clearly, like, what the f— happened to the television media, what a joke it’s become.Talladega Nights was about this weird stubborn pride that was showing up in America, kind of the corporate takeover of southern pride. Stepbrothers was about how consumerism turns grown-ups into little kids.”
Jessica Pressler‘s Six-Part Vulture “Cover Story” On The Miracle That Is The Big Short

After Three Volumes In 25 Years, Simon Callow’s Still Not Done With Orson Welles

timeout.com

Tauntaun Soup Dumplings, Jar Jar Bisque, Obi-Wan Pierogi
Chicago’s Table, Donkey, Stick Resto Mounts A Star Wars I-VI Dinner

A Rambling But Heartfelt “Eulogy For A Film Repertory Program”

ew

Spotlight, Tangerine Get Gotham Goods

70mm Fansite Goes Deep On Hateful Eight Tech

LA Times

“Last year, my agent and I went to Sundance with script in hand for Chi-Raq. Everybody said no except Amazon. And even after Amazon said yes, we had to stage two readings for them. I tell my class that that’s another example that it only takes one yes.”

Slamdance Announces Competition Features And Docs

“Claiming that sex-strikes can stop rape  is premised on the idea that rapists are somehow concerned with the thoughts and opinions of their potential victims. There is very little evidence support this contention.”
Ta-Nehisi-Coates Disputes Spike Lee Comments About Chi-raq And Campus Rape

From Before Creed, Andrew Bujalski‘s “Unified Theory Of The Rocky Movies”

Thailand’s Leading Chain To Add 100 Cinemas Next Year, As Well As Expanding With Partners In Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos And Cambodia

“Something has happened in the movie world since the late 90s. Box-office speculation has a serious case of hypertension.”

“He was a subversive populist, a celebrity avant-gardist. He was also, frequently, a political artist, one who came of age during the heyday of the Popular Front and never ceased to roil the culture industry.”
Alex Ross On A Century Of Orson Welles

variety

WeinsteinCo To Follow Slow, Steady Release Pattern Of The Artist And The King’s Speech For Carol

Bruce Robinson On His Epic New Jack The Ripper Book That Might Have Been A Movie

NY Times

“The novelist Shusaku Endo once wrote, of seeing a Setsuko Hara film, ‘We would sigh or let out a great breath from the depths of our hearts, for what we felt was precisely this: Can it be possible that there is such a woman in this world?'”

“It may appear to be a fleeting gesture, yet there’s nothing simple or even wholly chaste about it: Carol’s touch pulsates with erotic possibility and terror.”

Trumbo Prompts Shinan Govani to Muse Upon Hedda Hopper

“Rahm Emanuel is giving a billionaire filmmaker priceless parkland for $10.”
John King On The $400 Million Private Museum of George Lucas’ Miscellaneous Art On Chicago’s Lakefront

LA Times

“It also complained about the use of a slang word for testicles, ordering the term be changed to ‘cats.'”
India Move Toward Harsher Censorship Takes Toll On SPECTRE: Language, Kissing At Issue

variety

Martian A $50 Million Man In China

hollywoodreporter.com

Ron Howard On Turning Down Phantom Menace And Superhero Films

“They’re all aware of the news. They’re very aware of why Mommy gets in a plane. Pax recently came to Burma with me. But I’m trying not to push it. If you push it, it’s like I want to make them humanitarians–which I don’t. I’m just trying to make them all aware of the world. I want them to take the time to go out of their borders and comfort zones–to live a bolder life, do things they might not have thought to try. As a parent that’s the best gift you can give.”

Oh Dearie: Here Come The Manic Pixie Dream Grans

NY Times

Brit Murdoch Tabs Clean Up Their Act

deadline

Carey Mulligan On Suffragetteing For Her Work

“As long as they let me. It’s the only thing I really enjoy.”
Peter Hartlaub On The Living Legacy Of Satirist Mort Sahl, Still Performing At 88

Armond White Mingles Praise And Cultural Petulance On Creed

“We made sure that in every scene the characters had an eye light, just like a live-action film would. A specific light that was set to reflect and give that twinkle in the eye. Trying to get them to move in sync with one another and allow for the animators to see what they were doing was definitely a challenge.”
A Strong Backgrounder On The Origins And Production Of Anomalisa spoilers

“Most of the people in the world of distribution are straight white men and they’re distributing messages that make them the heroes, that make people empathize with them, and allow them to ‘otherise’ women, people of color and queer people. But we were raised to be objects and trophies in their storylines.”
“Transparent” Director Jill Soloway Talks Gender

“I once lived with a woman for two years because her face and her energy reminded me of Setsuko Hara. There was the promise of beautiful dignity. The potential of sensual morality. And then of course the Setsuko illusion shattered when the woman threw a plate at my head.”

NY Times

Postering Al Pacino And David Mamet

Peanuts’ Charles Schulz On The Necessity Of Loserdom

John Cusack, Dan Ellsberg And Arundhati Roy Drop In On Edward Snowden

“I see her the same instant she sees me, and instantly, I love her. Instantly, I am terrified, because I know she knows I am terrified and that I love her. Though there are seven girls between us, I know, she knows, she will come to me and have me wait on her.”
The Passions Behind Patricia Highsmith’s “Carol” Novel

Salon

“Carol is such a moving film and such a beautiful film, which demonstrates in a thousand ways why cinema (however moribund or irrelevant it may appear) is not television, that I am reluctant to privilege any particular element of its construction. It is one of the greatest American screen romances of any era, period–and perhaps that serves as the ultimate vindication of Haynes’ outspoken commitment to ‘queer cinema.'”
Andrew O’Hehir Definitely On Team Todd

Charting James Bond’s Deadly Relationship With Women

Behind The Restoration Of Don’t Look Back

Craig Keller and Vincent-Paul Boncour Of Carlotta Films On The Restoration of Rivette’s OUT 1
And – On Larger Questions Of Digital Restoration And Distribution

“Why Mockingjay can help marketers understand Generation K”

« Older Entries

MCN Curated Headlines

Archives Comments Most Recent

“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