MCN Curated Headlines Archive for January, 2019

“My brother ran one of Canada’s first video stores, and we ended up publishing a magazine about the video industry. Then we created a trade show to celebrate the Canadian scene.”
“How Cineplex Media President Salah Bachir Made it to the Top of Canada’s Cinema Scene”

variety

Slamdance Celebrates 25

NY Times

“The more we learn about that the less sense the rest of Serenity makes. That includes a big reveal that’s like the worst of Christopher Nolan, M. Night Shyamalan and the condolence-card section at Walgreens.”

“Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap Flips the Narrative on Domestic Violence”

Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre Offers Free Showings of The Manchurian Candidate

“When in Doubt, Play Insane”
Catherine O’Hara

“It’s dangerous to put on large amounts of weight and it’s dangerous to lose large amounts of weigh. Because of that, he was actually able to target where he was gaining the weight and do it in an almost scientific way, and at the same time, his vitals were very healthy – his blood pressure, everything – and in some cases got better. So I hope – because I love Christian – he continues to use a doctor.”

NY Times

 “I feel that many years to come, when historians search for a piece of art that clearly shows what is happening today, BlacKkKlansman will be one of the first things they look at.”
Spike Lee

When The Oscars Chose Driving Miss Daisy Over Do the Right Thing

variety

Alibaba Lends $100 Million to Huayi Bros. in Film Investment Expansion

“She ran for governor of California as a Republican. He’s raised big bucks for Democrats. She wears paisley scarves; he prefers Stan Smiths. It’s hard to imagine them enjoying a meal together, let alone joining forces to create Quibi, a short-form video platform—its name is short for quick bites—that has raised a billion dollars from Disney, Fox, Time Warner and NBCUniversal, all before writing a line of code or releasing a snippet of video.”
Mega-Investors And Entertainment Visionaries Meg Whitman And Jeff Katzenberg Say Quibi Will Replace Movies, Television

variety

1091 Media Buys The Orchard’s Film Group

“Jonas Mekas has no analogues that I can see in American or European culture … Every avant-garde, independent experimental-film artist in America is in some way in Jonas’s debt—as are some writers, like me.”
J. Hoberman

hollywoodreporter.com

“The over $800 million Bohemian Rhapsody has grossed, making it the highest grossing drama in film history, is testament to his remarkable vision and acumen. I know the difference between agenda driven fake news and reality, and I am very comfortable with this decision. In America people are innocent until proven otherwise.”
Avi Lerner Retains Bryan Singer on “Red Sonja,” Story Of A Survivor Of Sexual Trauma, With $10 Million Helming Fee

NY Times

“The story of its invention, distribution and updating is an amusing, invigorating, poignant and suspenseful story of an astonishing social network, and warrants a movie in itself. In the meantime, what does Tony need a Green Book for? He is the Green Book.”
Wesley Morris

“How many things has Whoopi Goldberg executive produced? Whoopi Goldberg has always been the help, and I say that humbly. So what is it that you’re going to school me on? I’ve been doing it for almost 30 years. This is a woman who says ‘I could have schooled you,’ and this is a woman who accepted Ted Danson in blackface, and our community praises this woman. So oftentimes, we do it to ourselves. But, I just can’t. Understand, I love my sister. However, when you know you’re being fed the wrong food, you must say, ‘I can’t chew this, y’all.'”

“Here in Baltimore we did something that’s not supposed to happen: we opened a new video store. And it’s packed almost every minute we’re open. Can it be repeated elsewhere? I think so.”

variety

“I don’t know if I’m depressed or excited,” jokes Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper after this list of celeb-heavy subjects from the lineup. “I think it goes all the way back to what’s getting financed, because there are many films [with famous subjects] that we didn’t show, as well. It does seem to dominate, especially in the documentary world, and it goes to both sides: films about people that are really inspirational and those on the other side.”
The Already-Famous Return To Sundance

variety

“Since this is the first Sundance with two out execs running the show, has it been reflected at the fest in any way? “We always program with representation and gender parity in our minds,” Yutani says. “And sometimes it works out that you have a higher representation of women, or not. This year I feel like the process was really organic, and I’m happy about that because it makes it seem like me being in this position means something, but at the same time, I think as a team we are always thinking about gender and who is being represented in our program.”

“Back in the forties, this town was crawling with dollies like you. Good looking cokeheads trying their damndest to act tough as hell. I got news for you: they did it better back then. This town doesn’t change. The just push the names around.”

In Apparent Preemptive Move Against Hostile Takeover By Hedge Fund, Gannett Slashes Journalist Jobs At Its Dozens Of Newspapers Nationwide

daily beast

“Bryan Singer’s claim of ‘homophobia’ is as offensive as Kevin Spacey’s weird coming out. Both men are using their homosexuality to deflect questions around alleged abuse.”

NY Times

“I can’t understand why people prefer the grossness and banality of a Hollywood or a European Art movie, as against the illuminations and ecstasies of an Avant-garde Film. The Hollywood film deals with gross, simplified realities, banalized feelings, ideas, thoughts. The Avant-garde Film deals with the subtler nuances of experience, emotions, ideas, perceptions — it illuminates them — it deals with things that make you finer. I do not understand by what logic the public, film critics and educators choose to spend thousands of hours of their lives with second-rate art, while at the same time making fun of the Avant-garde Film.”
Bruce Weber’s NYT Obit For Jonas Mekas, Who Was 96

“He says he used to feel certain the accusations against his friend were false. Like others we spoke with, he says he’s seen Singer check the IDs of young guys who approached him to make sure they were of age. “
The Atlantic’s Year-in-the-Making Report On Bryan Singer: “No One Is Going To Believe You” 

836A6910-886C-43B1-B7BE-3139AB92D965

https://twitter.com/thenyff/status/1088165974220701696?s=21

Why No Oscar Category for Best Title Design?

wsj

Condé Nast to Put All Titles Behind Paywalls by Year-End

Verizon Media Starts Layoffs, Firing At Least 7% Of Workforce

https://twitter.com/yalitzaaparicio/status/1087747265421283331?s=21

Pulitzer-Winning Columnist Russell Baker Was 93

deadline

“For more than a decade, movie-lovers have enjoyed the AMC Best Picture Showcase to catch up on the nominated films that played at AMC throughout the prior year. This year, Academy members nominated a film that was never licensed to AMC to play in our theatres. As such, it is not included in the AMC Best Picture Showcase.”

NY Times

“Mr. Elliott’s resonant baritone growl, which still weakens the knees of female fans, and mustache, rendered in multiple shades of handlebar, have, over the decades, become synonymous with stoic, steely dudes.”

hollywoodreporter.com

“Joining the Motion Picture Association further exemplifies our commitment to ensuring the vibrancy of these creative industries and the many talented people who work in them all over the world. We look forward to supporting the association team and their important efforts.”
Netflix Joins MPAA

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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