MCN Curated Headlines Archive for January, 2018

“The allegations are untrue… whatever flirtation occurred between the complainant and me was mutual, believe me. She enjoyed flirtation, as many people do.”
Garrison Keillor Continues His Correspondence About His Alleged Years Of Sexual Harassment Of His Employees

NY Times

Reese Witherspoon: Producer

ACE Eddies Go To Dunkirk; I, Tonya; Coco


Paul Thomas Anderson Makes A Video

“Two years ago, I said something about the Academy being very white male, which is the reality, and I was slashed to pieces by the media. It’s funny — women can’t talk. I sometimes wish I were African American because people don’t bash them afterward.”
Julie Delpy

“The film triggers many different things in people. The exact thing that gives this film its power is the same thing that had theatrical distributors afraid about making sure they do the film justice and get it into theaters properly.”
No Theatrical As HBO Films Takes Global On Jennifer Fox’s Sundance The Tale

“tronc Is Building A Shadow Newsroom Full Of Scabs, L.A. Times Staffers Fear; a mysterious new management team appears to be quietly building a non-union network“

Long-Detained Saudi Arabian Billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Convinced He Will Be Released Sometime Soon, Permitted To Keep His Worldwide Investments Including In Twenty-First Century Fox, Twitter, Lyft, Citigroup And Four Seasons; And Cleared Of Corruption Charges

variety

“’Awful,’ was the frank assessment of one studio executive. ‘Boring,’ was the takeaway of another. ‘Who are these movies for? griped an influential distributor.”
Anonymous Distributors Trash Competitors’ Sundance Movies, Maybe In Hopes Of Getting A Price Or Two Down

A Great Spate Of Sundance Coverage From Filmmaker Magazine Gets Right Down To The Why And How Of The Work

“I took it for granted that Jane, the documentary on the remarkable life of Jane Goodall by my (full disclosure) old friend Brett Morgen was going to walk right into an Oscar nomination for best documentary. Despite the shenanigans that have been apparent in the branch’s process, it was hard to imagine AMPAS’ non-fictionistas would refuse to nominate a film that was not only one of the year’s highest-grossing documentaries, but the highest-scoring on every critics’ compilation, had all but swept the run-up awards, WGA, ACE, MPSE, PGA and BAFTA etc. and was built around one of the most inspiring female-empowerment stories of the past century, perfectly aligned with the conversations of the moment…”
Richard Rushfield

“A working class autodidact from Prestwich in Bury with a mind wired differently both by nature and a prodigious consumption of alcohol and speed, Mark E. Smith would employ the lumpen brutality of pre-Beatles rock ‘n’ roll plus Krautrock’s mind-dissolving repetition to deliver a dense cross-cultural payload. In this endeavour, the group made successive generations of supposedly alternative rock appear craven and illiterate.”

Nick Park On Why He Refused To Sell Wallace and Gromit

indie wire

“Anybody going to see this movie who has no idea of the backstory to the production will have no idea this was shot on the phone. That’s not part of the conceit. People forget, this is a 4k capture. I’ve seen it 40 feet tall. It looks like velvet. This is a game-changer to me.”
Steven Soderbergh

variety

“Toni Collette’s Crater-Leaving Performance in Hereditary deserves to be in the Oscar conversation.”
With About Four Hundred Days Before Oscar 2019, Kris Tapley Starts The Engines

“The failure of the latest western to add nuance or complexity to stagnant tropes highlights a problem with a set of films that need to move past macho escapism.”
Flagrant Grauniad Spoken Here

“It is with the most awful dread that you sense cinema becoming another field of politics in these over-politicised times. Detectable in the pre-Oscars mood is a creeping indifference to art as art — a demotion of aesthetic judgment to tests of ideological soundness. Even if the intentions are mostly good, it amounts to philistinism by another name. A critical culture that rates work by what it says about populism, identity and the rest of the nightly news will end up begetting a lot of “woke” but low-quality filmmaking.”

National Gallery Cancels Solo Show of Chuck Close, Accused Of Sexual Harassment

Once-Aspiring Actress Tells Megyn Kelly Steven Seagal Raped Her At On Deadly Ground Wrap Party; She Focused On Photo of Seagal and “The Lady From Weird Science.”

A Few Notes On The University Press of Kentucky’s Work, Including Vital Film Volumes, Under Threat By Proposed State Budget

Recreating 1896 Manhattan In Budapest For “The Alienist”

“I have used it on every production I’ve ever worked on over the past 20 years. It has a unique collection of props that are not held anywhere else and are not readily or affordably available to buy anymore – it is an extraordinarily diverse and irreplaceable collection of antiques and objects.”
Historic, Million-Piece Deep London Prop House A+M Will Close Due To Voracious “HS2 Crossrail” Development

“If it comes out before the election, it could be an advantage as it will create a reaction. It’s an interpretation of the events and there will very likely be parts that are offensive and defamatory. But it is not a given that it will damage Berlusconi.”
Paolo Sorrentino Turns To Elderly Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s “Bunga-Bunga” Years

“Sexual harassment can never be condoned, especially in the name of philanthropy.”
Merryn Somerset Webb On The London Presidents’ Club Lewd, Drunken Male-Only Charity Dinner

“Rich is a great face of the brand. He’s got a national reputation as a great movie critic, but his career began as a news columnist. Having him back in that mix is great news for our readers and great news for Chicago.”
Roeper Returns To Twice-Weekly Metro Columnist Along With Being the Sun-Times Movie Critic

“There are plenty of discussions to be had about media business models and the power that companies like Google and Facebook hold. But to demand they hand over ‘carriage fees’ makes no sense. It’s a weak demand from someone who failed in the market and has no desire to innovate or compete. It also ignores that such a setup would entrench existing players and harm upstarts and competitors. The whole thing is silly, but also incredible for what it truly reveals about Murdoch’s actual feelings for a free market when he’s on the losing end of one.”

hollywoodreporter.com

“Writing music for film is not about doing what the director tells you to do because, to be honest, they can’t really tell you what to do. So, the idea is, you’re supposed to surprise them and do your take on what you think the movie is about.”
Hans Zimmer 

wsj

“The idea that I ever assaulted any woman is preposterous.”
Sexual Harassment Accusations Leveled Against Elderly Multibillionaire Steve Wynn, Worldwide Gambling Magnate and Republican National Committee Finance Chairman

hollywoodreporter.com

Redbox Demands Disney Not Be Allowed To Enforce Its Copyrights

“Guillermo del Toro has never read nor seen Mr. Zindel’s play in any form. Mr. del Toro has had a 25-year career during which he has made 10 feature films and has always been very open about acknowledging his influences. If the Zindel family has questions about this original work we welcome a conversation with them.”

NY Times

“In the Netflix documentary “The Confidence Man,” two “Apprentice” producers say they found the actual Trump Organization offices too dated and dowdy for TV. So they built a set in Trump Tower, modeled on the darkened lair where the mogul, Arthur Jensen dresses down the rebellious newsman Howard Beale, howling, “The world is a business!””

variety

“MoviePass pays theaters the full price for a ticket, so it is subsidizing its users’ moviegoing and losing money each time.”
MoviePass Scheme Withdraws From Highest-Attended AMC Locations

hollywoodreporter.com

James Franco Digitally Disappeared From Vanity Fair Hw’d Cover

Canada Post Doomed?

NY Times

“The tumult of both #MeToo and Black Lives Matter reverberated throughout the festival much as it has throughout the industry, which remains ridden by multiple crises: the sustained absence of racial and ethnic diversity in the mainstream studios; the future of the theatrical experience; and the worrisome state of foreign-language distribution. It’s difficult to know how all this affected this year’s Sundance and whether screenings were genuinely less crowded than last year or only felt like it. These woes may help explain why the festival had been widely and rather a little too conclusively declared a disappointment before it was even over (it ends Sunday).”
Manohla Dargis Reports From Sundance

“The problem is that nobody at NBC is controlling Megyn. They paid her more than $20 million to host the 9 a.m. show, and she’s been given too much power. But the fact remains: You can’t say those things, or be so aggressive, on morning TV. Plus, Megyn was already having trouble booking celebrities — so how is she ever going to book other stars if they disagree and she goes on air later and trashes them?”

Over 13,000 Signatures On Petition To Revoke Kobe Bryant’s Oscar Nomination Over 2003 Rape Allegation

hollywoodreporter.com

Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway” Canceled by Goodspeed Musicals

Behind Matt Lauer’s Lies And Cover-Ups In His Final Days At “Today”

“Creatively speaking, there’s an old saying that restrictions are needed to be truly creative. That’s always sounded like a form of Stockholm syndrome to me.”
Mandy Director Panos Cosmatos

“In a Weak Year at Sundance, Will Any of the Fest’s Movies Score with Oscar?”
Headlining Kyle Buchanan‘s Gold Standard

“I have fond memories of it just not being a total disaster.”
Sofia Coppola on The Virgin Suicides

variety

Redstone Approaches The Reuniting Of CBS Corp. and Viacom

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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

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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