MCN Curated Headlines Archive for February, 2019

NY Times

Karl Lagerfeld Was 85

hollywoodreporter.com

No “Luck” For Emma Thompson Over Concerns About Skydance’s John Lasseter

NY Times

“‘Competition has never been more fierce because it seems there is a battle for the future of Hollywood, the film industry and the Oscars themselves — not just in terms of saving the telecast from plummeting ratings, but also in terms of Netflix having a seat at the table,’ said Sasha Stone, a longtime Oscar observer.”

“I would love to have zero blemishes. I’ve learned there is no point trying to re-litigate it. In The Outlaw Josey Wales, there’s a great moment when Wales stands over the grave of a young guy who dies and says, “All I got to say is that I rode with him and I got no complaints.” A friend of mine and I say thatt to each other pretty often.”
Stanley McChrystal On Movies and Stuff

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Writers Guild Nods: Original, Eighth Grade; Adapted, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

“Facebook cannot be trusted to regulate itself and must be subject to sweeping new legislation, a parliamentary report will announce on Monday.”

“The internet was supposed to erase geographical boundaries, making art from all over the world quickly and readily available to people all over the world. In practice this has meant making people from all over the world painfully aware of a crazy quilt of copyright and licensing agreements from all over the world. Offering subscribers only seven of the 121 roles Bruno Ganz is credited for on IMDb doesn’t seem like much of a best-case-scenario for a streaming media library.”

“Richard E Grant is a human exclamation mark and I love him for it!”

Majestic Meta-Meme: “H-tler Reacts To Bruno Ganz’s Death”

LA Times

Disney Archivist Dave Smith Was 78

hollywoodreporter.com

“Knopf wrote about meeting Marvin in Aldrich’s Fox office. ‘There was that squint in his eyes and the so familiar baritone voice as he held court, dissecting his role.’ Marvin told Knopf that his character is ‘a philosopher, a disciple of Kant’s metaphysics and ethics, right?’ Knopf agreed. ‘Bullshit,’ Marvin replied. ‘The man was already in character,’ Knopf wrote.”
Christopher Knopf, 91, Former WGA Head, Wrote For TV, Emperor of the North

“I love everyday people,” said Gigliotti, who lives in Manhattan. “I ride the subway with them every day in New York. Everyday people don’t get me ratings.”

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“Is Porn Becoming a Monopoly? As the consumer internet becomes ‘sterilized and gentrified,’ alt-porn producers say they’re being marginalized“

NY Times

“Gigliotti would have to quickly retool the broadcast so that every Oscar was presented without edits, in the traditional manner. And the officials had a question: Could she still deliver a three-hour telecast — max? Pretty please? ‘The answer was no,’ Gigliotti said over the weekend.”

hollywoodreporter.com

Scott Feinberg On The Progress Of Early Oscar Prospect A Star Is Born

variety

“Probably the first time I saw music used this way was when I was seeing After Hours. There’s a scene in which Griffin Dunne is talking to someone and you can hear the Pretenders playing so far away, and you can tell that it’s something playing on a small radio through a window, and I loved how they used it with that quality. You’re used to, whenever in cinema you have a famous song, particularly, they will play it full volume, full blast, in your face. And here just was a song that was so far away, and I said, ‘Wow, this is so beautiful.’ it took me to the place, you know?”
Alfonso Cuarón On His “Inspired By Roma” Album

Ken Nordine Was 96

“To cover what we estimate could be the programming costs for its new Disney+ streaming service, Disney would need roughly 37 million subscribers paying $9 a month globally.”

variety

Academy Backing Out Of Latest Self-Laceration; All Oscars To Be Presented Live

deadline

“I’ve heard that in past [Oscar shows], they recorded the amount of collective time that it took between a winner being announced, and that recipient or recipients collecting the obligatory hugs and kisses, and then weaving the way to the stage. Over the course of an entire show, 26 minutes were wasted. Would it not be worth exploring putting all the nominees onstage, and then announcing the winner?”
Mike Fleming

indie wire

“As a filmmaker, the most important thing is that I make the film I want to make without paying attention to what the other parts of the society, the government, or the market tell me can or can’t be made. At this point, I have to say that my focus is still very much in China. Every year there are so many issues and things that happen that really touch me, move me, disturb me, or just cause a lot of reactions, that I want to express through storytelling to really reflect on what’s going on right now in China.”
Jia Zhangke

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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