MCN Curated Headlines Archive for February, 2018

Dakota Fanning On Directing

variety

 Gary Oldman Coaxed Makeup Artist Kazuhiro Tsuji Out Of Retirement For Darkest Hour

“I think about this a lot now. I have a bunch of daughters, a young son. Every society has to confront the ungovernable genie of sexuality and tries various ways to deal with it and none of them work very well. There is great difficulty when you are switching modes, which we seem to be doing now. People go crazy. They start tearing each other to bits.”
David Mamet Has Found His New American Buffalo: Harvey Weinstein

“You know what we got? We got the State Department controlling all the information that we heard,” Rohrabacher said. “You think that’s good for democracy? No way!”
Steven Seagal Acted As Russia Fixer For GOP Politicians Like Michele Bachmann, Steve King And California’s Dana Rohrabacher

deadline

“This is an awkward problem for me, because I think whitewashing is a serious and real issue, and I fully support the groups drawing attention to it. But the characters in the novel I read and adapted were not given names or ethnicities. I cast the film reacting only to the actors I met in the casting process, or actors I had worked with before. There was no studio pressure to cast white. The casting choices were entirely mine. As a middle-aged white man, I can believe I might at times be guilty of unconscious racism, in the way that potentially we all are. But there was nothing cynical or conspiratorial about the way I cast this movie.”

“As the process of making the movie went along, as they became aware of books two and three, they kind of took that into account in the casting, but really, that’s a question for Alex, I think.”
Annihilation Author Jeff VanderMeer On Adaptation
And – VanderMeer Cites Fifty Favorite Books For Strand

“Alex said, look, this segment is music from start to finish, there’s not a single word spoken, and it goes from strange orchestral pulses into this sort of very involved and heavy electronic workout into a choral thing. And the central piece of it is this strange little sound that you’ve picked up on. When you see the movie it’ll make sense. It’s one of the few examples where the use of that music in the trailer could actually benefit your appreciation of the sound when it lands in the film.”

“Annihilation is a demented science-fiction comic book of a movie that makes less sense than a butterfly mating with a buffalo.”
And How, Precisely, Would Rex Reed Know?

“Can a new Gothamist possibly be the same?”

Last Of The Jedi User Interfaces Designed For Narrative Function As Well As Plausible Functionality

Report: British High Court Orders James Murdoch To Address Allegations Of Criminal Cover-up of Phone Hacking at The Sun

Actress Emma Chambers, 53, Films Include Notting Hill

Romanian Touch Me Not Wins Golden Bear in Berlin; Wes Anderson Nod For Best Director

“Filmmakers I’ve talked to say Netflix made or bought their movie when no one else would, or Netflix gave them the kind of money and freedom that no one else would. To release 80 movies in a single year, Netflix must roll the dice on screenplays that haven’t been produced and films that haven’t sold, if only because that’s how you find 80 movies to release in 12 months. It isn’t enough to assume that there are idiosyncratic gems lying around, misunderstood and waiting for the warm embrace — read: lower financial obligations — of a nontheatrical release; there may be a few of these, but there aren’t 80.”

NY Times

Burkina Faso Filmmaker Idrissa Ouedraogo Was 64

Designing Annihilation‘s Horrors

Nanette Fabray Was 97

“The tea was good, not least because drinking it gave me a few seconds’ break from shoving food in my mouth. All together, they formed a breakfast that was almost impossibly decadent, which is of course the point. This is a meal of carbs, dairy, more carbs, and grease. There wasn’t a vegetable in sight.”
Nate Jones Prepares And Consumes The “Hungry Boy” Breakfast From Phantom Thread

How The End Credits of Black Panther Were Made

Richard Brody Hasn’t Reviewed “Mute” Yet, But Boy, Boy, He Didn’t Like Annihilation

hollywoodreporter.com

A Conversation Among Oscar’s Only Four African-American Directing Nominees in 90 Years 

Performers for 90th Oscars Announced

“Portland’s Living Room Theaters sues movie giant Regal when film goes dark”

“John Mahoney: Stage Creature And Child of God”

“Peter Thiel’s campaign to ruin Gawker Media was conceived and orchestrated by a previously unknown associate who served as a middleman, allowing the billionaire to conceal his involvement with the bankrolling of lawsuits that eventually drove the New York media outlet into bankruptcy. That man, an Oxford-educated Australian citizen, has few known connections to Thiel, but approached him in 2011 with an elaborate proposal to use a legal strategy to wipe out the media organization. That plot ultimately succeeded.”

“The document is just nine pages, but it serves as a subtle yet unmistakable indictment of NPR management, as much for what it doesn’t say as for what it does. With depressing regularity, managers were told of [top editor Michael] Oreskes’ advances, or given evidence of inappropriate behavior. At almost every step, their pursuit was slowed by bureaucratic snafus, or a remarkable lack of curiosity, given how much power Oreskes wielded in his newsroom. Even in Oreskes’ final 24 hours, the board met to discuss the allegations but held off taking take action—until the Post story ran. Then, Oreskes couldn’t be out the door soon enough.”

True/False Film Fest Extends Sustainability Program

“Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Cutting More Jobs Across Newspaper Group”

“It was never really about wanting swearing. It was about removing the filter and letting the movie feel like it’s about a loner who’s carrying a lot of anger and has no filter for his rage.”
James Mangold On Finding The Dark Vein Of Oscar-Nominated Logan Script

LA Times

Broke in America: How Oscar Looked At Lady Bird, Florida Project, I, Tonya

deadline

House of Saud To Reposition $64 Billion Into Entertainment Via General Entertainment Authority And “Quality of Life Vision Realization Program”

Sunset Seen At Sunshine Cinema

“While some may question how African Americans incorporate African fashion into their Black Panther-inspired wardrobes, it’s far more important to focus on the beauty of finally being represented with respect and intention — in a groundbreaking way.”

“Even though Mr. Weinstein has worked with hundreds of actresses and actors who had only professional and mutually respectful experiences with him, Mr. Weinstein has directed in the future that no specific names be used by his counsel, even where those actors have made previous public statements about him. Mr. Weinstein acknowledges the valuable input both Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence have contributed to this conversation and apologizes. Once again, moving forward, Mr. Weinstein has advised his counsel to not include specific names of former associates; and to avoid whenever possible, even if they are in the public record.”
Harvey Weinstein Issues Yet Another Statement From Spa Retreat

“How then does one criticize what is unquestionably the best Marvel movie to date by every conceivable metric known to film criticism? How best to explain that Black Panther can be a celebration of blackness, yes; a silencing of whiteness, yes; a meshing of African cultures and signifiers — all this! — while also feeling like an exercise in sustained forgetting? …What I will remember about Black Panther’s opening weekend is the tragic relief of arguing the ideological calisthenics of a fictional African country instead of whether it is a shithole.”

NY Times

“A unicorn, a monster, a phoenix, a machine, a heavyweight fighter, an astronaut, a superhero, a thoroughbred, a home-run hitter, a waitress juggling “16 entrees, 42 starters, 16 desserts,” a jazz virtuoso, LeBron James, Magellan, Snuffleupagus. The actress Laurie Metcalf has been compared to all of these things. To speak with her colleagues is to blush on her behalf. It is to hear words like “purity” and “devotion” and “work ethic,” delivered with the sober intonations of people doing all they can to rescue them from cliché.”

NY Times

“I feel like I’m enthralled to the same three composers all the time: Messiaen, Penderecki and Bach — well, Bach and Vivaldi. I love Baroque stuff. I’ve got such patchy knowledge of so much other music. It’s a childish way of looking at things, but I will listen to Penderecki and think about how that kind of thing can be done with modern music, or how Messiaen’s modes can work in the structure of Bach chorales. There is so much in between that I don’t understand or have never studied or don’t know enough about. I’ve got such patchy music education I have to just obsess on what I know. Maybe that’s what everybody does.”
Anthony Tommasini Talks Phantom Thread And Movie Scores With Jonny Greenwood

“I was trying to figure out what genre this movie was, and horror didn’t quite do it. Psychological thriller didn’t do it, and so I thought, Social thriller. The bad guy is society — these things that are innate in all of us, and provide good things, but ultimately prove that humans are always going to be barbaric, to an extent. I think I coined the term social thriller, but I definitely didn’t invent it.”
Jada Yuan And Hunter Harris Oral-History Get Out In 6,500 Words

hollywoodreporter.com

“‘We went about making it feel like a cultural event,’ says marketing executive VP Asad Ayaz of the stunts.”
Black Panther Marketers Talk

NY Times

“We want to make it as entertaining as possible — reverential and respectful but also fun and emotional. The Oscars should be a spectacle. Fun and funny and great performances. It should also be a giant commercial for the movie business, which we all need to keep going.”

“While Jones has apologized for his candor, he did not walk back any of his stories as untrue.”
Q Says Pay Him No Mind

deadline

“Harvey Weinstein and his company are continuing to do what they have always done which is to take things out of context and use them for their own benefit.”
Jennifer Lawrence

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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