MCN Curated Headlines Archive for November, 2016

How Films Influence Kate Bush’s Sound

And The Gothams Go To…. Moonlight; Huppert, Affleck; Barry Jenkins, Screenplay, Ensemble, Audience Award, Moonlight; Adams, Hawke, Stone, Milchan; O. J.: Made In America

“Zadie Smith and I met for the first time the same night I went on my third date with my boyfriend. We met in a dark bar on Lafayette, and I was way more nervous about impressing Zadie than about making sure my new paramour liked me. So nervous that on the way to see her I used Chapstick as deodorant. Ten minutes after leaving her presence I began to vomit. I vomited on and around my then-crush, now life partner. All I could think was, At least it wasn’t with Zadie.”
Lena Dunham E-Chats With Novelist-Screenwriter Zadie Smith

Slamdance Announces 2017 Competition

Presenting Anton Yelchin’s Portraits mnsfw

variety

Brent Lang On Moana As Disney’s “Latest Feminist, Progressive Hit”

Tina Hassannia On The Almost-Lost History Of Canada’s Cinematic Birthplace, Montreal Chinatown’s Now-Incinerated Robillard Building

Filmmaker Josh Gilbert Was 54
With – 8 Dispatches Gilbert Wrote For “Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood”

LA Times

“Smith is perhaps the most respected, if unheralded, member of a small clique of in-house Hollywood historians, someone who has quietly dedicated his life to assiduously documenting, preserving and cataloging all facets of America’s most iconic entertainment company.”
Visiting With Dave Smith, Disney’s Retired Archivist Of Four Decades

Rogue One Headed To China


Wasn’t It Easy To Predict Wes Anderson’s Christmas Ad For Fast-Fashion Conglom H&M Would Star Adrien Brody On A Train?

Colin McCabe Visits With Writer-Critic-Filmmaker John Berger At 90

Joe Leydon Recalls Tales Told By Fritz Weaver

NY Times

Anita Gates Looks Back On Movies Featuring Howard Hughes

hollywoodreporter.com

“Whatever the merits of the original Star Wars,  the empire it spawned is not about art; it’s not even about myth; it’s about money.”
Stephen Galloway On “Why I Hate Star Wars“

“When I see a movie — I mean, sometimes my first response is, ‘Oh my God, Anne Hathaway’s totally winning an Oscar for this, because I just saw her fucking sing a song for three minutes in one shot, and she’s gonna win.’ That’s the news.”
Jason Bailey On The “Backwards Creep” Of Oscar Season

A Meandering Take On The Profit Model Of Screen Gems Holds A Sharp Notion Or Two

Zootopia And Kubo Lead Annie Noms

Boris Kachka On Natalie Portman’s Jackie

150 Pics Of “At Home With Monsters,” The Now-Shuttered LACMA Guillermo Del Toro Show, 

deadline

Paramount Hires COO Fresh From Sony

NY Times

Tony-Award Winning Actor Fritz Weaver Was 90

hollywoodreporter.com

MGM Suing Earl Mac Rauch And W. D. Richter Over Remake Rights To Buckaroo Banzai

NY Times

“This is a challenge we are capable of meeting with America’s technical ingenuity. Perhaps an immigrant like Nikola Tesla will help solve it.”
Francis Coppola Writes To The Times About President-Elect Trump

Alejandro Jodorowsky On A Career On Fire

hollywoodreporter.com

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Screenwriter Dishes Behind-The-Scenes 

“Let’s not be naive. Creating on-screen chemistry is a massive job shared by hundreds of smart people, some of them utterly cynical about how to compel an audience with a thrilling, romantic tale told directly to your pocket.”

“The regular system isn’t able to absorb my film output fast enough.”
Why Werner Herzog Likes Netflix And VOD podcast

“Where do we go? Where is the hope?”
Spike Lee And Bernie Sanders Have A Sit-Down

“I dialed his number on my iPhone, and heard a blaring ring from an analog phone on the other side of the door, but the tone just continued; no answering machine intervened. Perhaps he’d gone to lunch? Figuring I’d give it some time, I slumped against the wall to the left of the door and buckled down for a stakeout.”
Stalking Reclusive Comics Artist Steve Ditko, Co-Creator Of Doctor Strange, Whose Last Interrview Was In 1968

rulesdontapplyfox004Meet The Location Managers Who Sought Sites For Rules Don’t Apply For Over A Decade

Previewing The Orchard’s 50-Filmmaker Election Day Doc

NY Times

Monica Castillo On Disney’s Latina Movie Princess

NY Daily News

Son Of Sex Pistols Manager Malcolm McLaren And Designer Vivienne Westwood Sets Fire To Claimed $6 Million Worth Of Punk Memorabilia On Boat On Central London

NY Times

William Grimes‘ Obit For Production Designer Paul Sylbert Leans Heavily On The Design

Richard Brody Muses On Amber Heard And Contractually-Obligated Nudity

An Oral History Of Starwars.com, For Those So Inclined

variety

Actor Ron Glass, Son Of Evansville, Indiana, Was 71

NY Times

“Some out-of-work Hollywood moguls can be one of moviedom’s saddest sights. Some are very obviously at loose ends, no matter what kind of face they put on. Others seem terrified about a table downgrade at Mr. Chow.”
Peak Brooks Barnes As Timeser Style-Sections Pity Party For Sources Who Have Been Fired

wsj

WSJ Decides It’s Time Again To Superficially Looky-Look At Surviving Independent Videostores

“A Shameless Endorsement Of Alamo Drafthouse”

The 2016 Taipei Golden Horse Film Awards

NY Times

Fidel Castro Was 90

William Friedkin Observes “The Dean Of Exorcists” Trying To Expel Satan From An Italian Woman

British Director-Photographer Of Underage Girls David Hamilton, Accused Of Child Rape, Was 83

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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