MCN Curated Headlines Archive for June, 2017

NY Times

Sofia Coppola Narrates A Scene From The Beguiled
And – Choreographing Chase Scenes In Baby Driver

Jonnie Rosenbaum On “Paranoia Rising,” The Origins And Legacy Of The Conspiracy Thriller

“It happened really quickly and we started editing immediately, and it started growing in length – every time we shot, we would add more, and then more, and then it was close to 80 minutes in length and we thought, This is a film. We’ll stop now.”
Jason Bailey Chats Up The “Delightful” Errol Morris

LA Times

Zoe Kazan As Screen Presence And Public Intellectual

variety

San Francisco Film Fest Moves Annual Gala To Awards Season

“At times, Bong’s gaze feels pitiless. He is as quick to skewer activists as he is toadying company men and morally abstract upper management. His depictions of meat processing spare no one. Okja may well hold a message for film studios too: despite their displeasure, the ovation the film received at Cannes lasted several minutes.”

“A high-visibility legacy brand bankrolled by Viacom would publish quality work across various platforms at a time when the industry seemed to be moving towards inane, disposable video content.”
What Went Wrong With The MTV News Experiment?

Murdoch Sky Takeover Bid Referred To British Competition Authorities

variety

Producer-Executive E. O. “Doc” Erickson, 93, Worked On Rear Window, Vertigo, Chinatown, Blade Runner, Groundhog Day, The Misfits, Popeye

 

“The New  York Times now has more than 2 million digital subscribers, and this new revenue source—$223 million last year—helped turn the company’s fortunes around after it had to be rescued in 2009 by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. While Slim still owns 17% of one class of stock, the company is controlled by another class, owned by the heirs of Adolph Ochs, who bought the paper in 1896.”

Kim Morgan Gets Into Videodrome

ew

Hannibal Buress Pays Impostor To Attend Spider-Man Premiere

NY Times

Self-Portraiture By Audrey Tautou

Academy Adds New Governors, Including Whoopi Goldberg, Mandy Walker, Kimberly Peirce,  David Linde, Larry Karaszewski

NY Times

Jim Jarmusch On Showing Godard’s Contempt Outdoors In Brooklyn

variety

Edgar Wright, Once More, On Soundtracking Baby Driver

Cinematographer Lyle Vincent On Shooting Bad Batch In Desert Wilds

MSNBC Fires Fox News Hire Greta Susteren

Lana Wachowski Announces Finale Episode Of “Sense8”

Trump Intends To Add GOP Lawyer To FCC Vacancy

indie wire

“How Spider-Man: Homecoming Will Save Sony’s Summer And Launch A-List Careers”
You Read It There First

hollywoodreporter.com

Bob Iger: “A workout and my iPad.”
James Murdoch: “Laughing out loud at least once.”
Lachlan Murdoch: “Quietly acknowledging the responsibilities we have to both employees and our customers around the world.”
Bob Bakish: “My Android Blackberry.”
THR Asks Bigs How They Get Through The Day

variety

Tyler Perry To Play Oscar Micheaux

LA Times

“There are so many artists who were not admitted in the past because we had a limit on how many new members we invited each year. So with the elimination of those and the aggressive pursuit of excellence by all of our members, we will be able to expand in a more inclusive way for several years.”
Dawn Hudson On The Added Academy Membership

LA Times

“Maybe the Academy, far from seeing its standards decline, is figuring out what it means to have standards in the first place: namely, by fostering a membership that can genuinely be described as world class.”
Justin Chang, Fast And Curious, On 2017 Academy Invitees

hollywoodreporter.com

“The Academy, with last year’s invitations, largely depleted the pool of women and people of color who have had the sorts of film-specific careers to merit an invitation. And, therefore, you can imagine how this year’s list looks even more problematic. The bottom line is that the Academy cannot fix the industry’s diversity problems any more than a tail can wag a dog. This is not a problem that can be reverse-engineered… Invite every member of almost every guild and comparable organization to vote for the Oscars and just call it a day.”
Scott Feinberg Contra The Academy

“We are one of the crucial layers of review that you seem so determined to erase, as the sudden removal of the public editor role shows. We are stewards of The Times, committed to preserving its voice and authority… you have turned your backs on us. We abhor your decision to wipe out the copy desk.”
New York Times Copy Desk Addresses Top Editors

variety

“We are conducting a full editorial review to pinpoint how this source was vetted, and how these stories were approved and published in violation of our usual editorial workflow.”
VICE Retracts Two Stories About Disney Animatronic Trump

Reuters Institute For The Study Of Journalism Says Consumers Don’t Consume News Video

“‘For the first time, which wasn’t the case with the Walkman or the Discman, the iPod meant people could basically start soundtracking their own lives,’ says Edgar Wright.”

 

“The two studios are contractually locked together for at least two more years. Contracts will be fulfilled, but don’t look to Marvel to throw in any extra heroes as party favors, or to sign on for another go-around.”
Richard Rushfield Surmises Sony’s History With Marvel And Present/Future With Tom Rothman

“An unlikely leading man in the vein of Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, a bulldog (or, more, a pitbull) and that guy who either hugs or punches you (or both) after a long night of drinking, he was a stocky lug, short in stature but large in charisma, with a slangy eloquence that was rough-hewn melodious, a guy one loves to listen to – his rugged cadence was often full of wit and an energy that was both boot shaking and an absolute pleasure.”
Kim Morgan On The Great The Long Good Friday And The Even Greater Bob Hoskins

Bilge Ebiri And Sofia Coppola On “The Sofia Coppola Touch”

“I realized that the whole concept of narrative art has been forgotten.”
Los Angeles Approves Plans For George Lucas Memorabilia Museum

Besson EuropaCorp Records $136 Million Loss At Dawn Of Valerian

“Maybe Korean cinema as it stands loves exploring the fact that life is everything, that life isn’t just a comedy or a thriller or a horror. It’s all of them.”
Steven Yeun On Working With Bong Jong-hoo

Movie Actor Credited With Helicopter Attack On Venezuela Gov’t Buildings

“The crack epidemic gave me something to write about – but I had to survive it first.”
John Singleton Opens Up Over L. A. Catfish Dinner

Kentucky Adds A Film Production Tax Credit

variety

MTV News Fires About A Dozen In Move To… Video; Union Contract Saves Some Jobs

Directors Include David Ayer, Derek Cianfrance, Pedro Costa, Garth Davis, Lav Diaz, Barry Jenkins, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Kim Ki-duk, David Mackenzie, Takashi Miike, Kira Muratova, Isdrissa Ouedraogo, Jordan Peele, Guy Ritchie, Mrinal Sen, Johnnie To

Academy Invites 774 New Members pdf

Here Comes Everybody: Actors 

NY Times

Michael Bond, 91, Created Paddington Bear

“I would say the inspiration for it was reality.”
Amy Pascal On The Diverse Casting Of Spider-Man Homecoming

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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