MCN Curated Headlines Archive for May, 2018

Screenwriter Trevor Preston Was 89; Scripts Include Alan Clarke’s Snooker Classic Billy The Kid And The Green Baize Vampire

From Cannes, Cohen Cops Ash Is Purest White, Girls Of The Sun

indie wire

Netflix Will Add Cannes Winners Girl And Happy As Lazzaro To Streaming Service Catalogue In North America And Latin America

“Before BlacKkKlansman had its world premiere, I wondered which black American film critics would be writing on it. The answer, it turns out, was just me (and one other woman who wrote more about her experience getting a ticket than on the film itself). I felt that pressure and resented it. The frustration grew as reviews came in, most glowing, about how this is The Film We Need Now. Some criticized the film‘s missteps while missing some of the racial frissons. I wanted to be a critic writing about the film, not the black critic sassily setting everyone straight. ‘My profession is not Black,’ was the phrase in my head before writing this review.”
Miriam Bale From Cannes

“Childish Gambino and how the internet killed the cultural critic: The response to ‘This Is America’ shows the emergence of a new type of criticism: one done by fans”

“Are scrawny guys suddenly ‘in’? Or are straight men just, finally, getting openly objectified like women and gay men long have been?”
The Atlantic Blogs Upon The New York Times And Its “Age of The Twink” Venture

Five More Men Accuse Disgraced James Levine Of History Of Sexual Misconduct

“In 1997, I was raped by Harvey Weinstein at Cannes. I was 21 years old. This festival was his hunting ground. I want to make a prediction: Harvey Weinstein will never be welcomed here ever again. He will live in disgrace, shunned by a film community that once embraced him and covered up for his crimes. Even tonight, sitting among you, there are those who still have to be held accountable for their conduct against women, for behavior that does not belong in this industry, does not belong in any industry. You know who you are. But most importantly, we know who you are. And we’re not going to allow you to get away with it any longer.”
Asia Argento Addresses Cannes Awards Ceremony

“I’ve watched 2001 in every format imaginable: Betamax, VHS, laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray, 16mm, 35mm, 70mm, DCP, TV broadcast, cropped, uncropped, standing up, sitting down, lying down, with the lights on and people screaming, in a perfectly quiet movie theater with only me and three others… I was, I think, five when I first saw it; Star Wars buzz had hit Ankara, Turkey, but not Star Wars itself, so my parents took me to a screening of 2001 telling me it was Star Wars. (Imagine thinking for a whole year that 2001 was Star Wars.)”

variety

“The outing of public figures has also been made difficult because of France’s strict libel laws.”
French Actress Alleges May 10 Luc Besson Sexual Assault

deadline

WGA And Luc Besson’s Seaside Productions Reach $1 Million Unpaid Residuals Settlement

“I said very early on to them: “This is not a murder trial, we’re a film festival jury. We have to be there with respect, joie de vivre and curiosity”. We’re really trying to respect every single filmmaker, their culture, their gender or their age, and just to see what is in front of us. It’s like a great rehearsal room, there is an attempt to understand what people are saying or trying to say!”

Cannes Prizes
Shoplifters
Grand Prix: Blackkklansman
Jury Prize: Capharnaüm
Special Award: Jean-Luc Godard
Best Director: Pawel Pawlikowski, Cold War
Screenplay (shared): Lazzaro Felice, 3 Faces
Actor: Marcelo Fonte, Dogman
Actress: Samal Yeslyamova, Ayka
Camera d’or: Dhont

hollywoodreporter.com

Eastwood Set To Direct And Act Again

Fifty Years of Witchfinder General

variety

Netflix Cancels “13 Reasons Why” Premiere After Santa Fe, Texas Mass Murder

“Lacking Bresson’s sensuality, Godard’s existentialism, Spielberg’s former ecumenical vision, and Jared Hess’ beatific embrace of humanity in Nacho Libre and Don Verdean, Schrader’s dour films score points for the gatekeepers of today’s agnostic film culture… hipster nihilism.”
National Review Online’s Armond White Endorses Paul Schrader’s First Reformed With Chunky-Clunky Thumbs Down

Google Removes “Don’t be Evil” From Code of Conduct 

variety

“I tried Black Panther. I escaped from the cinema after 20 minutes. I thought it was as bad as Star Wars. (I hated Star Wars.) I hated the R&B music. The music was so bad that I had to escape.”
Gaspar Noé

hollywoodreporter.com

“There’s no reason why Cannes should change for Netflix.”

Sandro Miller’s Latest Suite Of Malkoviches: A “Psychogenic Fugue” Of David Lynch Figures

“How the Year’s Most Harrowing Nude Scene Came Together”

“It’s like I stubbed my toe,” Gilliam said. “That hurt more, actually. It’s not actually a stroke; it’s something different with similar symptoms, a perforated medullary artery. I’m fine.”

telegraph.co.uk

“Even when the film feels like a circuitous, effortful mess, it’s often an intentional one – and for everything in the film that doesn’t quite connect, that element of self-portraiture, with the artist as sap, strikes a wistful chord.”

“It may not be Gilliam’s masterpiece, but it is a movie with sprightliness, innocence and charm and it is a morale boost to anyone who cares about creativity that Gilliam has got the film made at all. His own intelligence and joy in his work shine out of every frame, and his individuality is a delight when so much of mainstream cinema seems to have been created by algorithm. What a dull place the world would be without Terry Gilliam.”

“I just got up one morning and said to my office, ‘I’m moving to New York. I’m not going to live long if I’m staying here.’ So I sold everything. Got a place in New York. And sure enough I thought I had left all my drug friends behind. But I made new drug friends. I didn’t know they had drug friends in New York. So then I had to move on to Japan.”
Paul Schrader Looks Back Over His Shoulder

Sundance Institute Puts $500,000 Into Documentary Projects

“Are Quebec media slightly ahead of our time?”

“Cinema is a broad church that caters to all tastes. But it began its life as circus sideshow, on the magic-lantern and peepshow circuit of the late nineteenth century, and a disreputable pedigree has defined it ever since. So it is a thrillseeker’s medium, a peddler of sensation, always best enjoyed under cover of darkness. Or rather, it was until recently, before the advent of Netflix and smartphones and the white noise of social media.”

NY Times

Manohla Dargis Brings Cannes Up To Date

deadline

WB Closing $50 Million Deal For Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Tony-Winning Musical “In The Heights”

the wrap

“I don’t understand why men are taking pay cuts to establish ‘gender equality.’ Snow was worth his previous salary – he’s brilliant at his job – and any women who are as good as him should be paid the same, or more if they’re better. THAT is equality, surely? No, I don’t. It’s market force in the commercial TV game. If you deliver ratings/advertising, you get paid accordingly. If you don’t, you get fired.”
Blighty’s Piers Morgan, Once Fired From CNN, Goes On About A Thing

deadline

“I’ve been worried about women lately, perhaps because I’ve been seeing too many movies. At a time when women are achieving more muscle in managing their lives and careers, the female characters they portray in movies lack both muscle and self-esteem. Women need a movement – any sort of movement. They also need help at the box office.”
At The Age Of Eighty-Six, Peter Bart Can Still Climb The Tallest Hobbyhorse In His Mind

“Indians love cinema, but Indian television is terrible. And Netflix wants to step into that yawning gap.”

“I would have loved to have gotten a more explicitly LGBT character into this movie. I think it’s time, certainly, for that, and I love the fluidity ― sort of the spectrum of sexuality that Donald appeals to.”
Jonathan Kasdan On Lando Calrissian

Ben Sachs On The Deceptively Perky Genius Of Fassbinder’s Final American Release, Eight Hours Don’t Make A Day

“I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say I probably work so much so that I’m not constantly obsessing over trauma, so I can take trauma and turn it into something else. It’s like the engine that fuels the DeLorean in Back to the Future where they poured garbage into it, and it turns into energy.” 
Chris Vognar Profiles Matt Zoller Seitz

“The lie of genius is inextricable from the lie of meritocracy: Culture dictates that these men have risen to fame and success because of their unstoppable genius.”

variety

“Why Fox News Exec Suzanne Scott Isn’t the Answer to Network’s Discrimination Problem”

“A glossy Vogue shoot won’t save Georgina Chapman from the Harvey Weinstein fallout”

indie wire

“That’s the ending, end of discussion. Those terrorists groups and the real David Duke should join the Writers Guild of America. They wrote the ending for us. They wrote a better ending.”
Spike Lee On BlacKKKlansman

“See, I go to church. You go to church to be bored. I go to church to be bored. You set aside an hour out of Sunday morning to sit there, collect your thoughts, listen to the music, maybe listen to the sermon, maybe not. And it organizes the week. The same thing can be said of meditation—you can do that on a Sunday morning, too. That is where I think holiness resides: In the waiting, in the quiet places. I don’t think it resides in the entertainment arenas.”
Paul Schrader

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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