MCN Curated Headlines Archive for August, 2016

Apocalypse Pooh And The Accidental Father Of The Mash-Up, By Jim Knipfel

hollywoodreporter.com

Surveying Little People On The Big Screen

ny post

Jerry Lewis On Dino, De Niro And His Favorite Joke

Justine Smith Asks, “Is There Still A Place For Eroticism In Cinema?”

Meryl Streep Remembers The Moment She Started Hating Critics

hollywoodreporter.com

“Ovitz called Murdoch to demand that he kill the story. Murdoch in turn phoned Susan Lyne to ask what he was talking about. She read him the item and waited nervously for the response. There was a pause, and then Murdoch said with obvious relish: “Read it to me again. I’m going to dinner, and I want to tell it right.” So that was how a real titan responded to Ovitz. And after that, we were told, Ovitz never ate at The Palm again.”
Kim Masters On Her Battles With Prickly Mike Ovitz In His CAA Reign


Beloved Stage, Film, Voice Actor Marvin Kaplan Was 89

Michael Leader, 78, “EastEnders” Milkman, Croupier In Bond Movies And Clumsy Stormtrooper In Star Wars

hollywoodreporter.com

Handicapping Jim Gianopulos’ Next Studio Move

Richard Brody On The 5-Disk Set By Oscar Micheaux, “The First Black Auteur”

hollywoodreporter.com

“I know just by the conversation that has gone on at Sundance that it’s clearly a movie that filmgoers should go and see. [There’s] one issue, that’s his personal issue. And then there’s the issue of the movie. The important thing is for people to see it and enjoy the film, be impressed by the film. And I think that is what is very important. People need to see this movie.”
Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs Tells TMZ In Airport Walk-Up

Mark Harris On The History And Hoped-For Future Of A Star Is Born

Filmmakers Lynn Hershman Leeson And Laura Poitras In Conversation

Universal Promotes New VOD Product With Numbers Of Followers Its YouTuber Co-Stars Have

ew

Screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson Says The Girl On The Train‘s Alcoholism Is Sadder Set In New York State

The Wrap Celebrates Celebrity Female Photo Hacks
“Nude Photo Hacks: From Leslie Jones to Jennifer Lawrence (Photos)” (not linked)

Legendary Jazz Recording Engineer Rudy Van Gelder, 91, Responsible For Thousands Of Sessions

Robert Greene Philosophizes Effectively About Nonfction And Kate Plays Christine

“We have 24-hour access to atrocities and violence. We have 24 hours to file all the thinkpieces and comments, lest our mourning become irrelevant. The cycle forgets the traditions of the world it attempts to reflect.”
Erica Ruth Kelly On Mourning Kiarostami

Chi Tribune Critic Michael Phillips Primetime-Hosts Turner Classic Movies in September fourth item

LA Times

Fede Alvarez On Making His Own Movies Like Don’t Breathe Instead Of Superhero Pics

hollywoodreporter.com

Friday The 13th Rights Challenged By Original Writer

David Jenkins Has An Acting Class With Isabelle Huppert

hollywoodreporter.com

“We were college students, staff and alumni who were deeply involved with countering the violently hostile racial climate that thrived in the Penn State community.”
Four Penn State Alumni Defend Nate Parker

variety

Dept Of Homeland Security Investigating Leslie Jones Hack

NY Times

Warren Hinckle, A Godfather Of Gonzo Journalism, Was 77

Woody Allen Doesn’t Know Why He Buys $100 Worth Of Lottery Tickets Each Week

NY Times

“More than 50 years ago, André Bazin asked ‘What is cinema?’ But what is film?”
Manohla Dargis On “The Race To Save The Films We Love”

Jim Hemphill Retrospects Jerry Lewis, The Innovator At Paramount

“Similar efforts to charge Google for aggregating news stories have failed in both Germany and Spain.”
Europe Plans Levy On Search Engines For News Results

New York Mag’s Ashley Weatherford, Rembert Brown, Lindsay Peoples And Dayna Evans Roundtable, “Is It Okay To See Nate Parker’s Birth Of A Nation?”

Mark Cousins On Female Film Editors

Melissa Anderson On Madonna: Truth Or Dare 25 Years On

“Listing rumors about prospective takeovers, VICE’s Shane Smith said he thought Fox would bid again for Time Warner and that Apple had got its eyes on both Time Warner and Netflix.”
And – “If Viacom continues its Shakespearean implosion, we will have everyone snapping off bits. In the next six months everyone is going to try and buy everyone else and we will be sitting there laughing our heads off.”

“Besides having a longer running time than a movie, episodic content has the additional challenge of a non-captive audience. There’s a freedom in delivering a whole story in one sitting. You know that short of walking out of the theatre in disgust, moviegoers will absorb everything you have to show them. Episodic creators don’t have that assurance, which can lead to all sorts of awkward tactics to keep them coming back.”

hollywoodreporter.com

Danny Trejo On 48 Years Of Sobriety

Alibaba Expands Stake In Chinese Cinema Holdings

Jason Bourne Released In China In 3D To Queasy-Making Result

“My editors at the Reader were not film buffs, so I had to make whatever I was writing about comprehensible to people who were not film buffs. And they were good editors, so I think in a way it was a very good experience to be obliged to write for people who weren’t film buffs.”
Jonathan Rosenbaum Talks Criticism In Melbourne

hollywoodreporter.com

“The fact is that he was confronted and then he did go through the process. Why are you bringing this up now? What has he done that requires this kind of animus?”
Harry Belafonte On Nate Parker And The Birth Of A Nation

“It was absolutely not the whole team,” Serge Losique said. “It’s defamation. I’ve dealt with defamation my whole life. I can’t comment on this,” he said, adding that the Montreal festival will go on as scheduled.”

David Lowery On An Unlikely Inspiration For Pete’s Dragon

Why Not Call A Remake A Remake?

variety

Insufficient Numbers Of “Faith-Based Consumers” Lead To Possible $70-$100 Million Loss On Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur

“As a monoculture splintered permanently into niche groups, the idea of a film everybody sees and everybody can’t stop talking about fades into the cultural past.”

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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

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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