MCN Curated Headlines Archive for January, 2018

“Elon Musk was my neighbor for ten years. Great guy, man. He’s a fearless motherfucker. Every week we’d have two or three dinners with Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin and all those cats. Jeffrey Bezos. Bezos — the richest motherfucker in the world now.”
Quincy Jones Talks And Talks To GQ

NY Times

Ben Kenigsberg Goes Wide On Cinerama

“Roeper did not respond to a request for comment Monday. He declined to comment Sunday.”

Dropbox Blogs Against “Conventional Wisdom” in Film From Sundance

“It had taken me two whole days and five pages to capture the diffident dialogue between the two would-be lovers. But Guadagnino had distilled it in just a few minutes. They shot it three to four more times. For me, the message was clear: film cuts and trims with savage brevity, where a shrug or an intercepted glance or a nervous pause between two words can lay bare the heart in ways written prose is far more nuanced and needs more time and space on the page. But the thing is, I couldn’t write silence. I couldn’t measure pauses and breaths and the most elusive yet expressive body language.”
André Aciman On The Adaptation Of His Novel, Call Me By Your Name

Harvey Weinstein To Be Deposed In NYC In April By TWC Lawyers

To make a long story short
We’re being left only with the future:
I make a toast
For that day which never comes
But is the only thing
Really left in our control.
Chilean Poet Nicanor Parra Was 103

“Bridging the chasm between words and action, however, will be the ultimate test of what long-term effects last week’s festival has. Getting female filmmakers and women’s stories into Sundance is a start, but it’s even more important that those movies find wider distribution and become accessible to audiences outside of those few thousand who can afford a weeklong Utah vacation in mid-January every year.”

Billionaire Ikea Founder Ingvar Kamprad Was 91

wsj

Here Comes Keurig Dr Pepper Snapple Conglom

“Mudbound feels relevant to the current moment in ways many similar period pieces concerning black life do not. This is most apparent in the way it studies the tense relationship between black and white women, and touches upon how even the most ‘well-meaning’ white people have racism that deserves to be unpacked.”
Angelica Jade Bastién Insists On Mudbound‘s Virtue

NY Times

“Businesses die every day in New York, but all deaths are not equal. Some rend the very fabric of a city that fancies itself, quite reasonably, the nation’s cultural tastemaker. So there is reason to mourn the passing of two movie houses in Manhattan that believed in the capacity of films that aren’t dominated by car explosions, light sabers and computer-generated gimcrackery to more faithfully reflect the human spirit.”
Clyde Haberman Waxes Rot

Sun-Times Halts Publishing Richard Roeper While Investigating Whether He Bought Fake Twitter Followers

“Capitalism killed this cinema, this evil, greedy, 20th century form of capitalism. The multi-billionaires have done this. It’s so strange that this neighborhood, the capital of the left in America, would allow this theater to close. It’s shameful — it should be embarrassing. You understand though that each time we let another thing like this happen, they become empowered. It’s like in horror films when the beast gets fed another morsel and it becomes stronger and stronger. I don’t know what to do about this situation.”
Michael Moore Mourns Closing Of Lincoln Plaza Cinemas

NY Times

“Ronan is in a good position now,” Ms. Aronson said. “He’s traveling around with a halo. Unfortunately, he’s wrong.”
Melina Ryzik And Brooks Barnes Handicap Woody Allen

Jonnie Rosenbaum Afterwords Orson Welles’ Screenplays For Cradle Will Rock And Big Brass Ring

London Critics Go Three Billboards

wsj

“With $1.3 billion in global box office for The Last Jedi, the most of any movie released in 2017 and No. 9 of all time, Disney’s problems are ones other entertainment companies would kill to have. Nonetheless, for a property as valued as Star Wars, any sign audiences are losing faith is concerning and could prove costly down the road if the trend continues.”

Gene Hackman Jumps On A Bike

“My message to the newsroom will be that we will be working together as one team starting tomorrow to do the best work we can.”
Amid Controversies, L.A. Times Names Jim Kirk Editor-in-Chief

I’m a big fan, A lot of people are big fans. At what point did you see something like his movie Cabin Boy?
“I saw it when I was a kid. And I thought it was kind of a monster movie. There’s Chocki and the giant. We actually had the props, like the miniature fish sticks, and I would play with them as if they were Barbies. But when I was 20, I saw it from the lens of my dad’s humor and realizing it wasn’t just this adventure movie I saw when I was little, that it was a cult comedy. I know so many people obsessed with it. So yeah, I’m a huge fan of my dad.”

“MoviePass’ claims about its importance to AMC Theatres are grossly deceptive: Why is a data-analytics company playing fast and loose with facts?”

“I’ve never heard anyone suggest that all offenses are equal — that a bawdy limerick is the same as a forced kiss, or that groping is equal to rape. And no one is proposing that all repercussions be the same. Those who shout about fairness to the accused should stop to consider what they don’t know — including how difficult it is for victims to complain about a prominent person.”

“Since 2015, the alt weeklies serving four of the six largest cities in the country have folded or essentially been stripped of all resources to adequately do real journalism.”

“F—, it’s awful living there with Trump. I’m so glad I’m f—ing out of that f—ing country – I think it’s really broken. I wish I could just stand up in some kind of Speakers’ Corner in Australia and go, ‘Guys – just – everyone: this rise of nationalism – don’t do it! You’re just going to turn your nation into a bunch of head-butting motherf—ers.’”
Australian Musical Maker Tim Minchin After The Death Of His $100 Million DreamWorks Animated Musical

Armenian Director Maria Sahakian Was 37

Alec Baldwin Again Seized By Need To Comment

NY Times

NY Gov Cuomo Jets To Sundance On Hedge Fund Billionaire’s Dime To See Girlfriend’s Movie

“Facebook says it can’t guarantee social media is good for democracy”

NY Times

John Morris, 91, Composed “Springtime For Hitler,” Scored Blazing Saddles, Elephant Man, Ironweed, The In-Laws, Young Frankenstein

“A teen lesbian sent to “pray away the gay,” a reformed member of the Ku Klux Klan, a crusader against child slavery and a family struggling against an unfair prison sentence were front and center in the winners at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.”

And The Sundance Jury Awards Go To…

variety

“Los Angeles Times insiders believe the company is actively investigating the leaks by combing through phone records, work email accounts and company-provided phones. Some employees have resorted to communicating about the state of affairs through encrypted platforms like Signal and are they are also careful to avoid criticism of D’Vorkin on internal messaging channels like Slack. Staffers describe a witch hunt atmosphere, driven by an editor characterized as condescending and aloof.”

Amazon Ashcanning Woody Allen’s “Rainy Day in New York”?

variety

“The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has outlined the next phase in its planned Standards of Conduct initiative for members in the wake of the ongoing sexual misconduct scandal rocking the industry.”

“One need not graduate magna cum laude with a philosophy degree from Vassar to understand how profoundly dumb it is to compare your workplace to ‘Get Smart’ or think that Minority Report is a tale about the benefits of machine-assisted policing. What, exactly engineers are resisting when they read these media is basic human decency. Someone at Axon must look at their TASER X26C with ‘Electro-Muscular Disruption technologies’ and say, ‘Wow, that really makes my heart sing.'”

NY Times

“Ms. Shearmur’s husband said that despite her cancer, she was working till the end. The day before she died, he said, Ms. Shearmur attended a meeting about visual effects for Solo. And on the day she died, while in the hospital emergency room, she asked her husband to bring a certain script for her to read. It had been written by her former assistant, and Ms. Shearmur wanted to help it find its way onto a screen.”

LA Times

“We’ve had very, very stable, unwavering support from senior management. It allows us to focus on the work. When you’re able to focus on the movies and the marketplace as opposed to looking over your shoulder, that really helps.”
What Would Be Fox Searchlight’s Future Under A Successful Disney-Fox Merger?

NY Times

“This is a revolting film and a mockery of our history, our heroes. The way in which all Soviet people are depicted is quite simply offensive. First of all for the descendants of those depicted in it and likewise for war veterans.”
Moscow Raids Pioneer Cinema, The Single, Billionaire-Owned Theater That Dared Show The Death Of Stalin

Ingmar Bergman, Folk Horror Pioneer

“I was ashamed and embarrassed, and then I went through stages of grieving because I lost my career. For a man, that’s the ultimate degradation.”
Billy Bush Still Sore Over Losing His Nice Job

“These allegations, which in one case goes back more than 30 years and the two others more than 20 years ago, are false. As evidenced by the lie detector test I took and passed, I have never forced myself on anyone, nor have I ever exposed myself or restrained anyone against their will,” Piven said. “To the contrary, if any woman ever said no, I stopped.”

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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