MCN Curated Headlines Archive for December, 2017

“She also penned a movie script about World War II spies living in Akron called ‘Zeppelin Blondes.'”
A Lilting Obit For Betty French Jarmusch, 96, One Of The First Female Film Critics At A Major U. S. Paper; Mother To Filmmakers Tom Jarmusch And Jim Jarmusch

LA Times

“I’ve seen it three times, and honestly I would be thrilled to see it again. It deepens every time, it’s so rich. I think it’s just extraordinary, I really do. The first time I watched it on a politically subversive level; the next time I watched it as this legacy to Carrie, and to Luke Skywalker, and to what George Lucas created, and to Joseph Campbell. And then you’re just in the fun and the bliss and the irreverence of it… it just keeps unfolding.”
Jen Yamato And Laura Dern Talk Jedi

NY Times

“As a writer I was very hungry to create female characters who felt real.”
Meet “The Women Who Run the Star Wars Universe”

NY Times

“This is an extremely difficult time for everyone at NYPR [but producers will] be at work developing new programming that invites necessary conversations and addresses the most important, intriguing issues in American culture and the way we live now in New York.”
New York Public Radio Fires WNYC Hosts Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz

LA Times

“I never like the idea of trying to figure out how to talk about a film before it’s done or before it’s out; that seems crazy to me. And too hard. But on the other hand, it’s really important to find the ways to get the people to understand what the film is, create trailers and materials that are interesting. Mysterious but not obtuse.”
Paul Thomas Anderson

“The FCC proposed fining Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. $13.4 million for programming that appeared more than 1,700 times without disclaimers telling viewers the messages were sponsored by another business.”
Housekeeping Before Approval Of Sinclair Absorption of Tribune?

LA Times

“Even though Star Wars takes place in another galaxy, a lot of the themes and things that characters deal with in terms of lessons that they’re learning are things that are completely relatable to real life. That moment for me, the Canto Bight moment — I’m getting emotional thinking about it, because I made it so personal to me when we were filming it — it just feels so… specific. I’m hesitant to align a movie with any sort of current politics, but yes — for me, it was very emotional.”
Jen Yamato Has A Few Words With Kelly Marie Tran

“She’s swiping at us so we’re swiping back. We wanted to take a swipe back.”
Rightwing L.A. Wild-Poster Claims Streep Broadsides Are Payback For Criticism Of Trump

LA Times

“If it were possible to prove a negative, Mr. Goddard would debate these 40-year-old allegations.”
“Goddard directed and choreographed the production, giving him close access to its young male actors, many of whom were playing ‘The Lost Boys,’ Peter Pan’s tribe of loyal acolytes.”
Eight Former Child Actors Allege Gary Goddard Sexual Misconduct explicit abuse descriptions

MCN Curated Headlines

“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