MCN Curated Headlines Archive for August, 2017

Idea-Starved Producers Could Lean On Twitter “Fan Casting” For New Ways To Fail

NY Times

Park Slope’s Dilapidated Art Deco Pavilion Becoming A Second Nitehawk Cinema

variety

Apple And Comcast Apparently Demanding A Mere Two-Week Window Between Theatrical Exhibition And Home Video-On-Demand

Three-Time Tony Winner Thomas Meehan, 88, Wrote Books For “Annie,” “The Producers,” “Hairspray”

Twitter Suspends User Days After His Sexual Joke About Furries-Style Tony The Tiger Ads

“Artists are being asked, even by the art world itself, to make work that’s easy, digestible, good for short attention spans, Instagrammable, marketable. Even the political stuff needs to be something one can ‘get’ through the equivalent of a Hollywood pitch. Where does that leave the majority of our most dedicated artists? I’m certainly not saying that all successful artists are sellouts. I am saying that our world is increasingly eager for pre-disposed sellouts and marketable work, and that artists with any profound integrity or vision are more endangered than ever.”

Ben Sachs Takes To Toilet, Two-And-A-Half Hour Indian Musical About The “Clean India Project,” Likening It To The Pajama Game

Truth In Advertising Asks California Regulators To Look At More Than Fifty Allegedly Deceptive Claims By Gwyneth’s Goop

The Athletic Pivots To Writing

NY Times

“Whatever white supremacy was and is — the murderousness of the KKK, the centuries-old institutional bias toward white people, the self-pitying narcissism of the so-called alt-right — it’s older than what happened in Charlottesville, older than this presidency. It’s wedged in the bedrock of American popular culture. Even when you aren’t looking, it manages to find you.”
Wesley Morris Says It’s Been A White Nationalist Summer All Along

#hashtag Turns Ten

Art Of The Title Credits Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2

variety

tronc Shakeup At Los Angeles Times Partially Caused By Questionable News Judgment And “Possible Ethical Lapses” By Higher-Up Editors

LA Times

Developing: Resignations At Los Angeles’ Cinefamily After Sexual Misconduct Allegations

“As a kid raised in suburban Baton Rouge, Louisiana, there was nothing in my upbringing that would push me toward being interested in caper films, but I always was. And then I realised, literally a week ago, I think it’s because heists are so much like making a film. You’re getting a gang together, there are external forces beyond your control. This may work, this may not. You could end up in movie jail. And it’s important to remember that panic has never solved anything in the history of the world. The analogies are very clear – I don’t know why it took so long for me to see what was right in front of me.”

After The Voice Takes It Off The Streets, Annalies Winny On The Slow And Painful Death Of The American Alt-Weekly

Filmmakers On Biopics That Stink Or Sink

Despicable Me Now The Most Successful Animated Franchise

More On The “Soviet-Style” Arrest And Allegations Against Russian Director Kirill Serebrennikov

Former CIA Operative Valerie Plame Wilson Wants To Buy Twitter To Kick Trump Off

What If Taylor Swift Were To Use Her Internet Powers For Good?

indie wire

“The cast, and Craig in particular, guaranteed foreign sales that reportedly paid for production. But compared to the diverse ensemble for Hitman’s, it had less appeal to women (drawn by Reynolds) and the minority audiences who have been typically underserved this summer.”
Tom Brueggemann Thinks About Logan Lucky

Medium Website Will Pay Writers By The Clap

At Madison Square Concert, Billy Joel Wears Gold Star Of David

“Pretty sure the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you’d be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours. You’re adorably out of touch.”
Wife Of Treasury Secretary/Producer Of Rules Don’t Apply Steve Mnuchin Wealth-splains An Instagram Commenter En Route To Examine The $200 Billion In Gold In Fort Knox; Once Dressed As Marie Antoinette In An Episode Of “CSI: NY”

From 2009, Louis Menand On How The Village Voice Changed Journalism

Brody-gram!
Looking Back To Safdies’ Second Feature, Daddy Longlegs
“It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine terrorist attacks. What distinguishes Nocturama is its lack of imagination, a lack that appears to be a crucial element in the director’s artistic strategy. What if the act of terrorism was an acte gratuit, an action undertaken for the sheer hell of it, with no motive other than curiosity or existential self-affirmation by dint of the act itself?”
And – Forward To Nocturama

Here Comes The 53rd Chicago Int’l Film Festival

“Everything is returning to the most pathetic Soviet practices.”
Acclaimed Theater And Film Director Kirill Serebrennikov Detained By Russian Authorities

New Mexico TV And Film Production Surpasses Half-Billion Dollars

David Byrne Rues “Removing The Human”

Michael Phillips Has A Hot-Hot Jerry Lewis Remembrance

thestar.com

“Much of the story at the multiplex this summer has been very positive. Few of the movies that won strong reviews and a warm reception from moviegoers didn’t also perform well at the box office. With few exceptions, when the studios supplied the goods, audiences came in droves.”

“Staking out a middle ground is difficult, but the truth is that Lewis was monstrous, infantile, narcissistic, pretentious, tasteless — and brilliant, life-affirming, thoughtful, and sometimes visionary. He was a definitive monstre sacré whose like we have rarely seen.”

Cosby Sexual Assault Retrial Pushed To Spring 2018

deadline

Michael K. Williams Latest Casualty Of Young Han Solo Movie

How Iggy Pop Collaborated With Good Time‘s Composer And The Safdies

variety

NFL To Stream In China

NY Times

NYT Op-Ed Weakly Opines That “Jerry Lewis Was The Quintessential American Jew”

Clooney Foundation for Justice Grants $1 Million To SPLC To Counter Hate Groups 

VOICEVillage Voice Owner To Fold 61-Year-Old Print Edition As Union Seeks Raises

hollywoodreporter.com

“The most powerful thing about the Voice wasn’t that it was printed on newsprint or that it came out every week,” the owner since 2015 said. “It was that The Village Voice was alive, and that it changed in step with and reflected the times and the ever-evolving world around it.” 

indie wire

“Garth, Iain, Emile and Liz along with the rest of the team are working hard to finish the film and tell Mary Magdalene’s extraordinary story. Having Garth direct back-to-back films for us was always going to be a race against time, especially with the overwhelming success and his enormous dedication to Lion.”
Weinstein Moves Mary Magdalene Out Of Awards Season To Easter 2018, Leaving A Single Contender For Themselves (For Now)

NY Times

“We’re frankly not where we need to be from a digital perspective. We also think The L.A. Times over all just needs a little refresh and a little personality back.”

variety

tronc’s L. A. Times Fires Four Top Editors, Including Editor-Publisher; Names Former Sun-Timeser Jim Kirk Interim Editor

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

MCN Curated Headlines

Archives Comments Most Recent

“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