MCN Curated Headlines Archive for April, 2016

indie wire

Weaponizing Helen Mirren

On The Fifteen Split-Diopter Shots In DePalma’s Blow Out

“They’ve achieved a goal, they got out, and then shit hits the fan again. So it’s all about utilizing the environment to keep pulling the rug from under the audience and what they expect to be the next logical step in the film ends up being an even deeper pile of shit.”
Green Room‘s Jeremy Saulnier’s Five Tips For Creating Tension

No John Wayne Day In California: Racist Remarks And Embrace Of HUAC Cited

NY Times

NYT On NY Tours Of “Speed” Levitch Neglects Mention Of 20th-Century Doc, The Cruise

Christgau On Prince

“If your goal in life is to direct films, direct documentaries, it’s good if you have another craft within the field that you master enough that people hire you to do it, whether it’s to shoot or edit or do sound, or produce for other people.”
Steve James On Sustaining A Doc-Making Career

indie wire

“Find yourself a billionaire who would prefer to own a movie rather than owning a politician, because it’s come to that.”
How Can Filmmakers Who Aren’t Already Rich Make A Living?

Michael Koresky Criterion-Notes Petzold’s Phoenix

Ian Crouch On “The Towering Narcissism Of Jerry Maguire”
As – Cameron Crowe Publishes “The Things We Think But Do Not Say,” The Unseen 25-Page Mission Statement He Wrote For The Character
With – Its Inspiration, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s 28-Page, 1991 “Some Thoughts On Our Business”

NY Times

Favorite Summer Movies As Cited By Jorma Taccone, Olivia Munn, Yo-Yo Ma, Emilia Clarke, Penélope Cruz, Bill Pullman, Paul Feig, Roland Emmerich, Anna Kendrick, Seth Rogen, David Copperfield

hollywoodreporter.com

Universal Film Topper Jeff Shell Confesses “Disney Envy”

NY Times

Dargis And Scott Consider Status Of Streaming And Cinema At Just This Moment

Drew McWeeny Ends His “Film Nerd 2.0 Column”

Marissa Meyer Will Get $55 Million To Leave Yahoo!

indie wire

Tom Brueggeman On How Bryan Cranston’s Ten-Screen Palme D’Or Arthouse Was Saved And What That Means For Small Distributors

“The good news is Canadian audiences love docs and they want to watch more. They’re willing to pay. The issue is discoverability and curation.”

variety

Indie Producers On Why It’s Nearly Impossible To Finance Features With Women

LA Times

A Few Good Reasons Why “Lemonade” Proves Beyoncé Doesn’t Need H’wd

“He battled so, so hard, was so brave, so loving, such a good man throughout. His brain was still fighting, but his body couldn’t go any further.”
Until The Light Takes Us And 99% Filmmaker Aaron Aites
And – A Taste Of His Music: “Can I Feel What?”
“We are all mourning something, or someone. We have all lost. So let’s find each other. And let’s walk each other home. Aaron loved you all.”
With – The GoFundMe For His Medical Expenses

wsj

Reese Witherspoon: Literary Power Broker

NYT CEO Sues Over Alleged Ageist, Racist, Sexist Hiring Practices

NY Times

When All That’s Left Of The Relationship Is The Shared Netflix Password

Cinematographer Donald Thorin, 81, Shot Thief, Purple Rain, Scent Of A Woman, Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls

Will Ferrell Pulls Out Of “Reagan”

Wall Street Journal Celebrates 20 Years With Online Paywall

“A little funny” when people say it’s “inadvertently gay, as if it were made by a frat boy who has no idea. I’ve been around a long time. Not inadvertent.”
Richard Linklater On Gay Subtext Of Everybody Wants Some!!

variety

Variety Sneak-Peeks Star Wars VIII Sneak Peeks

hollywoodreporter.com

ComcastNBCUniversal Paying $3.8 Billion For DreamWorks Animation And – What’s Next For Katzenberg?
Plus – Katzenberg’s Takeaway Could Be $430 Million

A Multi-Essay Deep Dive Into The Work Of Late Euro-Master Theo Angelopoulos

Bret Easton Ellis Criterion Top-Tens

New Republic Republishes Otis Ferguson‘s Extensive Original Release Citizen Kane Review

indie wire

Sam Adams On The Sustainability Of Criticism As Practice And Career

telegraph.co.uk

“What an Outrag….Alzheimers is not joke…It kills..You should be ashamed all of you.”
Reagan’s Eldest Son Objects To Will Farrell Movie In Crunchy Tweets

Original Sketches Of The Fashion From Purple Rain

indie wire

Movie Writers In Motion
Indiewire Sheds The Playlist
Earlier – Indiewire Ends Criticwire
And – Oscilloscope Hires Scott Tobias As Editor Of “Musings”

indie wire

Kate Erbland On Tribeca Fest’s Support Of Women Filmmakers

LA Times

Key, Peale, Keanu And Keanu
And – Ray Pride Banters With Key & Peale

Maryland Librarian Building Comprehensive Information Resources Site For Beyoncé’s “Lemonade”
And – “Is the new Beyoncé video a tribute to Pipilotti Rist?”

“Zack Snyder’s film was stylized to a fault, with its slo-mo shots and pirouetting camera moves; the Russo Brothers’ is functional, un-showy—maybe even a little drab. Batman v Superman was larded with ominous aphorisms and loaded dialogue about power and humanity and guilt and loyalty and duty; Civil War is…well, OK, it’s got a ton of those, too.”

indie wire

“The plotting here is at once both agonizingly predictable and profoundly demented. There isn’t a single line in this movie that sounds as if it was written by a human, but far too few flow with the inbred poetry of The Room or Birdemic (the dialogue cleaves closer to the “Navajo English” of Godard’s Film Socialisme). The movie’s most natural reaction shot belongs to a llama.”

“Jason Sudeikis demonstrates his character’s emotional growth by singing “The Humpty Dance.” Jennifer Aniston sulks through the entire film until a clown (yes, a clown) inspires her to turn her life around by comparing his bottomless hanky to “the bottomless love a mother feels for her children.” No, really.”

the wrap

Fox Pulls Out Of ComicCon Presentation Over Leaks

A Hw’d Prince Tale By Tom Hollander

Emirati Cinema Emerges

Picturing Ten Abandoned Moviehouses In New York And New Jersey

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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