MCN Curated Headlines Archive for March, 2018

“The Diversity of ‘Anne Frank’: Grappling with complex issues of representation, a multiethnic staging offers a version for our fraught times.”

“I haven’t seen either People’s Light and Theatre’s or Drexel University’s multicultural productions of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ it’s true. I’m sure the casts and teams did fine work. But even without seeing them, I know this much: Anne’s story isn’t multicultural; it’s Jewish.”

“Gay Theatre Gets Hammered by the Canon, Again,” Writes Alisa Solomon

“Arts organisations will need to focus more on older audiences over the next 10 years to cater for England’s ageing population.”

“I’ve been a freelance writer my entire career, and, in some sense, I’m the last freelance writer. And I go into this situation and–I know everyone on this beat–I’m the only person without a job. So I can go into these things. That’s how I get access: because I’m me. I make relationships and find my way in. I mean, that’s what we’re supposed to do as journalists and writers. But there aren’t that many people like me anymore.”
“Fire And Fury” Writer Michael Wolff Digs Deep Into Self For Alumni Mag

Edgar Wright And Steven Spielberg Zoom Duel

“Behind decorative gabion walls, an elderly neighbor sits centurion on his porch watching Bob with surreptitious soupçon.”
“Sean Penn’s ‘Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff’  is an exercise in ass-showing, a 160-page self-own. We might call it needlessly cynical to promote such a garbage novel as the second coming of ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ just because it was written by a craggy white man with an unearned sense of intellectual superiority and a well-thumbed thesaurus. Nonetheless, Penn was allowed to publish this novel, and Salman Rushdie blurbed it.”

Domee Shi First Woman To Direct A Pixar Short

nymag

“Local News Is Turning Into Trump TV, Even Though Viewers Don’t Want It”

“It’s been explained to him in multiple meetings that his perception is inaccurate and that the post office actually makes a ton of money from Amazon.”
Trump Eager To Go After Perceived Political Enemy Jeff Bezos And Amazon, Hoping To Crash USPS Deal 

hollywoodreporter.com

Academy Clears President John Bailey of Allegations

NY Times

Delores Taylor, 85, Co-Writer and Star in Billy Jack Series

variety

Turner Sues Morgan Spurlock For Return Of Series Funds

“It’s sitting at a window where all kinds of people could see it if they bothered to look across. Do you know the funny thing about an Oscar? It’s exactly the right weight for a dumbbell. So if you had two of them, you could do a pretty good workout.” 
Oscar Winner James Ivory

The Story Behind Alden Global Capital LLC, The Hedge Fund That Suctions Money Out Of Newspapers For Other Investments

hollywoodreporter.com

Beijing Film Fest Drops Call Me By Your Name As China Grip Tightens

China Foxconn Buying Belkin, Linksys, Wemo For $866 Million

“Sara Gilbert, the driving force behind the reboot, now plays the mother struggling to provide for her kids. Gilbert has become a very good, low-key actress. She’s still a downbeat smart aleck, but she can make you cry without appearing to do very much. She’s not as big a personality as her mother, but she’s the source of the show’s greatest heartbreak. Dan and Roseanne may still be in the same house, eking things out, but it’s the show’s vision of Darlene that is the real American indictment, a woman who thought she could get out and do better, who went to college, but who can’t escape generational poverty despite her best efforts. She’s a feminist, too, but one who can’t overcome her seemingly immutable status as a poor person, whomever she voted for.”

Flashback: John Alcott On Lighting Barry Lyndon

deadline

“Weinstein’s private life was influenced by the environment in which they worked. You cannot justify everything, but you cannot completely hide it. Film is an art that evokes the emotions of the audience. It sometimes demands everything from the actors, sometimes also expressing eroticism in front of the camera. And then the public demands that in private life they should resist any temptation and be icons of puritanism. That is simply hypocritical. Banishing Harvey means removing an important trump card from European cinema: a person who appreciates auteur films and whose knowledge has allowed important works to succeed.”
Former Berlinale Boss Moritz De Hadeln

Stéphane Audran, 85; Films Include Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie, Babette’s Feast And 25 Films With Husband, Claude Chabrol

“There are plenty of other possible options, notably the putting in place of an embargo, to ensure the serenity of the filmmaker and cast before they ascend the stairs and allow the necessary time for critical and journalistic work.”
French Cannes Journos Chirp “Fou!” On Press Seance Shift

Nickelodeon Fires Longtime Key Series Producer Dan Schneider

deadline

“Along with all his success, for years Schneider had been under a cloud of suspicion over the treatment of some younger stars of his shows. Among the things that have raised eyebrows are his tweeted photos of the toes of his young female stars. Additionally, there have been issues with bloated budgets and long production days on Schneider’s shows. Schneider has had well-documented temper issues for years.”

“In a single day, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan can turn everything around. Here’s how: 1. Hit the reset button hard. Announce that every penny of their personal philanthropy will be redirected to help society cope with digital technology. Focus the tens of billions they’ve pledged to give away on the challenges created by the technology they’ve promulgated…”

variety

“Whether a person portrayed in one of these expressive works is a world-renowned film star — ‘a living legend’ — or a person no one knows, she or he does not own history. Nor does she or he have the legal right to control, dictate, approve, disapprove or veto the creator’s portrayal of actual people.”
Olivia de Havilland “Feud” Suit Tossed

Steven Soderbergh Exec-Producing “Now Apocalypse,” Starz Surreal Comedy Series Directed By Gregg Araki

Cate Blanchett, Gillian Armstrong, Peter Weir, Rose Byrne, Richard Roxburgh, Phillip Noyce, Fred Schepisi Among 215 Who Sign Open Letter To Preserve Oz Film Biz

variety

Endeavor (Formerly WME-IMG) Acquires NeuLion Streaming Tech For $250 Million

hollywoodreporter.com

“Following the Hulk Hogan case, the firm focused its practice more and more on reputation issues that entailed adversity to major media companies. I had spent much of my career defending media companies, and I have been involved with the ACLU since I became a lawyer. I have had longstanding clients of mine who have expressed consternation at that representation and who have said to me that they will not send work to me so long as I am associated with a firm that represents those kinds of clients.”
Partner To Trump Lawyer Exits Firm

NY Times

“If I was as tough as I’m made out to be in movies, I wouldn’t have to worry. But I can’t beat my way out of a paper bag now. I’m too beat up. I haven’t had two hours of no pain for, gosh, I don’t know, honey, 20 years. Because it was always this macho crap that you’re full of, and I always thought, ‘Well hell, I could do that.’ And I could, except sometimes I didn’t quite make it.”
Burt Reynolds

Paul Thomas Anderson And Richard Linklater in Conversation

“It was crazy. They fired our bosses. Everyone was texting each other: ‘Did you see the news? Do you think they’re doing reshoots?’ It was messy. And it was crazy how everything got leaked to the press.”
Anonymous Solo Actor Tells Some

“I don’t believe that films that are given token qualifications, in a couple of theaters for less than a week, should qualify for Academy Award nominations. Once you commit to a television format, you’re a TV movie. If it’s a good show, you deserve an Emmy. But not an Oscar.”

Spielberg on Netflix And the Oscars

variety

A24 Co-Founder John Hodges Exits

“Stormy Daniels refused to indulge our appetite for more of the lurid flash and distraction that emanates from Trump’s orbit. She sat quietly and related facts. She was balanced. She even bored us a little. But how better to remind us that she is not just an X-rated spectacle on a screen? That she is a woman, a mother who puts her baby in a car seat to drive to a workout class? Stormy Daniels reminded us that ‘porn star’ is just a sensationalizing term for ‘person’ — and no person should be threatened or harassed.”

“I am a congenital movie-sleeper, and I wouldn’t dare suggest that my falling asleep in a film is any indication of its quality. Except, in this case, I didn’t seem to be the only one. Multiple other Vulture staffers reported that they, too, had fallen asleep in Isle of Dogs. Those who didn’t fall asleep reported that, while they had kept their eyes open, their friend, or maybe their friend’s friend, could not.”

French Critics Protest Cannes Simultaneous Competition Premieres And Press Screenings français

“Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg’s prestige panoply of fanboy lore, represents the final suck of a two-decades-old everlasting gobstopper for author Ernest Cline, who turned his life as an Amblin-and-Atari-bred suburban dork into a commercial pop empire.”
No, No, Thanks, The Lede’s Enough, Thanks Anyway

“My experience with the film has always been deeply self-conscious. As a spectator, at no moment do I lose awareness of my position as such. As for this idea of the slack-jawed, unthinking Showman viewer, I can safely say that few films in recent memory have made me wrack my brain as much as this one, both during screenings and after. A big part of this intense reflection stems from my belief that, as odd and inept as the film can be at times, it is also intensely self-aware.”

“What I like about a man or woman’s body is its flaws… I like the idea of time leaving its mark… perfection stinks.”
Agnès Varda

BBC Plummerizes Agatha Christie Actor After Rape Allegations

NY Times

“We don’t know anything about making television. So what skills does Apple bring to that? And the viewpoint is: very little. There’s other things we bring. We know how to create apps, we know how to do distribution, we know how to market. But we don’t really know how to create shows.”

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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