MCN Curated Headlines Archive for November, 2016

NY Times

“Shawn Levy quickly made a name for himself in Hollywood. Maybe too quickly. The hyperactive Mr. Levy wanted both commercial hits and critical respect. ‘Pure, unmitigated thrill is what I feel,’ Mr. Levy said over lunch at Mr. Chow here recently. He is producing a drama about a father-son pilgrimage to a Kansas photo lab. The modestly budgeted film is based on a 2010 article in The New York Times by A. G. Sulzberger, a former reporter who is the company’s new deputy publisher.”
Brooks Barnes Provides Complex Tongue Bath To Highly Successful Filmmaker

“The Walk of Fame essentially allows vetted celebrities and their fan clubs to purchase the monuments.”
Man Who Demolished Trump Star On H’wd “Walk Of Fame” Faces Three Years In Jail For Felony Count Of Vandalism Over $400

NY Times

“Tell me about your decision to set ‘Figaro’ in Trump Tower, Mr. Sellars.”

“Despite the difficulty and all the Sturm und Drang, I don’t feel like I’m in need of any particular vindication, and I’m certainly not out to pay anyone back.”
Kenneth Lonergan On Where He Is Today

Make Your Own 2016 Dumpster Fire Tree Ornament

NY Times

James B. Stewart Assesses J. K. Rowling’s Riches

Tacos With Pokémon Go Creator John Hanke

From The Diaries Of Andrei Tarkovsky

For Your Consideration Screenplay PDFs Include Manchester-By-The-Sea, Loving, Elle, Hail, Caesar!, Kubo, Jackie, Love & Friendship, Nocturnal Animals

“It’s such an exciting time to be an American… People are clearly tired of the status quo.”
Gwyneth Paltrow Looks Forward To Trump Presidency

Film Critic Scott Eric Kaufman Was 39
With – SEK’s Piece “‘Louie”s Dreamlike Reality”

NY Times

“It was designed as a live piece of theater and I think that film is such a different medium from being in the presence of people onstage and among an audience. It’s such a completely different experience. I think in a lot of ways that a live album is more representative of what we’ve done.”
Kate Bush Gives Jon Pareles Interview Get

Chris Jones On The “Abomination” Of Attacks Against “Hamilton” In Chicago And By Opportunist Politicos

NY Times

Seagal putin“I would like to congratulate you, and I also hope that this small step will mark the beginning of the gradual improvement in our interstate relations.”
On Deadly Ground: Putin Grants Russian Citizenship To Steven Seagal

deadline

Thy Neighbor’s Development Deal
Yet Another Multimillion-Dollar Gay Talese Film Deal Detonates; This Time It’s “The Voyeur’s  Motel,” And In A Chummy Gab, Sam Mendes Gives A 1,200 Word Answer To Mike Fleming On Why The Nearly-Finished Parallel Doc Is Superior To Any Movie He Could Now Craft

NY Times

“Florence Henderson’s later movies, like Bobcat Goldthwait’s Shakes the Clown, in which she played an unnamed woman who has a one-night stand with the title character, and For Heaven’s Sake, in which she played a grandmother who dies on a roller coaster, did nothing to advance that side of her career.”

China Film Insider Provides Valuable Guide To Sino-Kino

variety

Wall Street Journal Copyeditors Don’t Correct Kal Penn Being Mistaken For Dev Patel

Showtime Showing First Two Seasons Of “Twin Peaks” For The Horrordays

“Touchstone Pictures ran towards brightly colored, high-concept, modestly budgeted comedies and light dramas with fizzy pop soundtracks and familiar if affordable stars like Martin Short.”
Nathan Rabin Muses On Captain Ron And The Swagger Of Kurt Russell

indie wire

“Much of Tarnation included unlicensed footage and music, rendering its initial cut unreleasable. Bannon signed off on Wellspring joining the project as executive producer, providing finishing funds for a new cut.”
Steve Bannon Background Includes Hands-On Duties At Defunct Indie DistribsWellspring And Genius Products

“‘The Show About the Show’ has more to say, and teach, about business, family, marriage, art, fear, bureaucracy and political correctness than anything I’ve seen in ages.”
Joe Swanberg On Caveh Zahedi’s Latest Enterprise

thestar.com

Robbie Robertson Testifies That Scorsese’s Silence Is A Whole New Kettle Of Christ

Florence Henderson Was 82

Needed: More Villains Like Ruth Gordon’s In Rosemary’s Baby

NY Times

Barry Jenkins Narrates A Key Scene From Moonlight

“If I linger on the fact that the audience last week was largely male and middle-aged, it’s because the film indulges a very specific male, middle-aged anxiety: That dad never really showed affection to you, and thus you have trouble showing affection to others.”
Christopher Kelly Says Shush About Tree Of Life Or “Rock Star Drama” Knight Of Cups Being Any Good

NY Times

“Ultimately the audience matters, and the audience is an inclusive, diverse audience.”
Hw’d Power Lawyer Nina L. Shaw Seeks Voice For Her Clients

indie wire

Eric Kohn Hangs With Burt Reynolds In Key West

900 Films (16 A Week) To Be Released To UK Cinemas In 2016

Norman Jewison And Walter Mirisch Look Back 50 Years To The Making Of In The Heat Of the Night

Ten Of 2016’s Biggest Money Losers

Mark Feeney Marvels At Mifune

“I decided that even though it was a very busy time for me, I should get involved in Arrival and personally try to give it the best science I could. For instance, there’s a nice shot of rearranging alien ‘handwriting,’ in which one sees a Wolfram Language notebook with rather elegant Wolfram Language code in it. And, yes, those lines of code actually do the transformation that’s in the notebook. It’s real stuff, with real computations being done.”
And – Pablo Villaça Writes Of Arrival, “There are some kinds of love so immense that we insist on experiencing them even if we know that they will inevitably result in pain.”

Aaron Orbey On “Mourning Through Horror Movies”

Howard Hampton Criterion Liner-Notes One Eyed Jacks‘ “Zen Nihilism”

Rian Johnson Introduces Under The Skin 12’42” vid

John Patterson On Network At 40

“Disney is really killing it across the board in terms of the depth of the bench and the commitment to an inclusive slate. They don’t even have a conversation about a movie unless they‘re talking about how it should reflect the world.”
And – David Oyelowo: “There’s resistance to films with black protagonists” 6’39” vid

How Johnny Depp’s Character Exemplifies What’s Up With Fantastic Beasts

variety

Lionsgate Making Step Up 6 As Chinese-Language Production

LA Times

Paul Sylbert, 88, Oscar-Winning Production Designer Of The Wrong Man, A Face in the Crowd, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Mikey & Nicky, Blow Out

Filmmaker Say Exhibs Wary Of His Doc On 2014 Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Protest

Good Dr. Bordwell Breaks Down The Use Of Time In Arrival

variety

Japan Exhib Stocks Rise, Anticipating Blockbusters

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MCN Curated Headlines

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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