MCN Curated Headlines Archive for September, 2017

Dee Rees Adapting Joan Didion Novel With Producer Cassian Elwes And Others

indie wire

Harry Knowles Says He’s Leaving Ain’t It Cool News For “Therapy, Detox And Getting To A Better Place”

Harry Knowles Is Still Posting, Here On The “Ins And Outs” Of His Website

harry-the-hat

“Looks like AICN is going under ‘Female Control’ for a while!  MUUHAHAHAHAHAAA! Boy’s club out, Girl’s club in.  For my first post, let’s talk about a beautiful strong female creator and actress/director whose most recent directorial feature, ‘First They Killed My Father,’ which has debuted on Netflix, and I’ll be watching tonight and posting a review promptly.”
Does This Pseudonymous Blatt Pass For An Acknowledgment From The AICN Family?

How John Boorman’s Gaudy, Great, Garish Point Blank Still Inspires Awe (And Homage)

Susan Doll On Dave Kehr’s Forthcoming “Movies That Mattered,” Excavating Work From 1974-1986

“Despite the press, Harry is the same large red fireball I remember bouncing around comic book conventions run by his parents in the late seventies—the kid who would stop and look at your comics and say, ‘I have that, but in better condition.'”
Louis Black‘s Slim 1998 Texas Monthly Profile Of Harry Knowles

indie wire

“On more than one occasion HK has grabbed my ass and other parts of me. I just learned to not go within grabbing distance of him.”
Ain’t-It-Daily News: Four More Women Accuse Harry Knowles of Sexual Assault and Harassment

Michael Phillips On Horror, It And That Pesky Exorcist Gross

 

 

wsj

“If you’re not in a position to make the fifteenth Star Wars movie, you have to search for things that people really feel they have got to go out to a movie theater and see.”
Ben Fritz Inside The Financial Making Of Blade Runner 2049

Sundance Institute Documentary Fund Awards Grants Across Nonfiction Formats

daily beast

“Ain’t It Cool isn’t as relevant as it once was, but it’s still weird, you see him around town and he has these screenings and stuff, and he acts like… he rolls up and he acts like he’s the king of Austin. And I’ve seen many people who continue to be very friendly to him, they treat him with reverence, and I find it really hilarious and also disturbing. Some people who are really embedded in this community, in their minds they sort of built him up as a powerful figure who is perhaps sort of untouchable because he often has screenings at the Drafthouse, and he has his marathon here every year, and because everyone loves the Drafthouse and respects the Drafthouse.”
More Tales From Texas On Harry Knowles And His Influence

Nayantara Roy On How Journalistic Documentaries Check Facts

“Discussions with the film administration bureau and other relevant parties”
China Yanks Youth, China-Vietnam Border War Pic As Part Of National Day Holiday Crackdown

telegraph.co.uk

Mel Gibson’s Unfinished Oxford English Dictionary Picture Still Stalled In Post

“Pivot” To Video Costing Sites At Least Sixty Percent Of Traffic

“We’re now a big company with over 4,500 employees. We have over a million guests come through our doors every month… the most important thing I can do right now is to travel to all of our theaters, talk with our staff and listen… we have taken some first steps on the path to listening and ensuring that we create a safe, inclusive environment for our staff at both the theater and the festival as well as the community at large… we have severed all ties with Harry Knowles and he is no longer affiliated with the company in any capacity. We are striving to better respond to allegations of sexual assault and harassment, and will take actions so those who work at the theater or attend as a guest are not made to feel unsafe.”
Tim League Publishes Statement On Behalf Of Fantastic Fest

indie wire

“After obtaining a substantial majority vote from membership, we have made the decision to remove Harry Knowles from our group. We feel this is the best choice for our organization and for the future of the Austin film community.”
Austin Film Critics Boot Harry Knowles

“Christopher Nolan’s epic movie about the rescue of the British army from the beaches of northeastern France in May 1940 has become a worldwide box office success. This is splendid news for its makers, and can do no harm to American, Taiwanese, or for that matter Rajput audiences. In the eyes of some of us, however, its impact upon the British people is calamitous at this moment in our fortunes.”

Placing Mother! In The Lineage Of Artaud’s Theater Of Cruelty

Czech Actor Jan Tříska, 80; Movies Include Ragtime, The Karate Kid Part III, People vs. Larry Flynt

LA Times

The Josie And The Pussycats Reevaluation Continues

“Even with Carrie, my feeling was, ‘They’re gonna make this movie. If it’s a success, it will help me do what I want to do, which is to write books.’ James M. Cain did an interview near the end of his life where the reporter said, ‘They ruined your books for the movies,’ and Cain snapped his head around and pointed at the bookshelf and said, ‘No they didn’t, they’re all right there.'”

LA Times

“For the first time in Disneyland’s 62-year history, the entertainment giant is facing serious opposition from Anaheim politicians.”

“Dabney had this corner booth where he always liked to sit. Whenever Harry Dean got to Dan Tana’s first, he made a point of taking that corner booth so Dabney couldn’t sit there. Harry thought that mocking someone for the things they thought were important was good for your soul.”

“I cannot imagine that any woman who has read the perverse, drooling-fanboy shit that passes for film criticism in Knowles’ head hadn’t long ago come to the conclusion that he is a mega creep. This is not some anonymous fanboy writing a blog that no one reads. Hollywood has courted this guy, feted him. He’s made a lot of money off this junk, and he’s made it more difficult for other critics to be taken seriously. Ain’t It Cool News is still an extremely popular site. t won’t make a lick of difference. Knowles’ career will barely be impacted by it.”

“Given the recent allegations against Harry Knowles of behavior impossible to defend I can not, in good conscience, continue to contribute to the brand I helped build over the last 20 years.”

hollywoodreporter.com

Staff Deserts Ain’t-It-Cool News

indie wire

“There’s no real explaining of narrative at all. You don’t really go out of your way stylistically to make connections between scenes, unless there was something David consciously wanted to connect.”
David Lynch’s Cinematographer Peter Deming (In Arri-Partnered Post)

the wrap

“Neither the Leagues nor Knowles responded to The Wrap’s requests for comment; Baker could not be reached for comment.”
Wrap Leads With Harry Knowles Denial Of Sexual Assault Claims, Adding No New Material Beyond Basic Social Media Trawl

“At age seven all I wanted to do was terrify, but by eighteen I was trending towards a terrible, treacly goth sentimentality – a pit from which I am still struggling to emerge.”
David Lowery Unearths His First Ghost Story, A Two-And-A-Half Minute Short, Shot On VHS When He Was Seven-And-A-Half

variety

Pay TV Cord-Cutting Accelerates, Says, Yes, A Survey

NY Times

Following Saw Blood Drive Successes, Flashy Fashion Ads By Lionsgate’s Tim Palen For Jigsaw Protest Rules That Restrict Gay Men From Donating Blood

“The trailer sold Ninjago as a wacky comedy about a kid being hated by his father. It was mean-spirited to an unprecedented degree for a kids’ animation trailer, and for parents unfamiliar with the brand, it would be unconscionable to subject a child to a film that purportedly squeezes laughs out of parental abandonment.”

“There has never been a golden age for the sexually liberated cinematic heroine, the woman who reclaims the word ‘slut.’ TV is different: less conservative, better at tracking the ambient sexual mores of the culture. On the big screen, we look to the 1930s and 40s – rightly – for an object lesson in how to make a female character with depth, verve, wit and intelligence, but to expect those women to shag around would be unreasonable, anachronistic.”

Colin Firth Takes Italian Dual Citizenship Over Brexit’s Chaos To Come

NY Times

“I honestly thought we were doing something fantastic for both sides. We get money, they get money, and it’s all our money.”
“Tumult After AIDS Fund-Raiser Supports Harvey Weinstein Production”

“Five Untruths About Women In The Film Business”

When Do Celebs Cross Over From “Weird” To “Scary”?

NY Times

Sixty-Eight Things You Can’t Say On 600 Companies Of China Internet As Clampdown Continues: Detailed Sex Scenes, Underage Drinking, “Luxury Life,” Killing Endangered Species, “Grotesque” Criminal Cases, Masturbation, “Sexual Liberation”

Cinematographer Sean Price Williams On “A Year of Vomiting Color”

A.S. Hamrah On Sofia Coppola, Parties, Wealth And The Wealthy

Neil Jordan And Stephen Woolley Look Back 25 Years To The Crying Game

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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