MCN Curated Headlines Archive for February, 2019

“The truth will come out about my motivations and how much I believe in Jeff and Lauren’s love. It’s a legendary romance that will blow your mind as to just how in love they are. Jeff never blinked about losing $70 billion.”
Bezos Considered Buying National Enquirer Owner AMI Under The Corporate Moniker Of BOBO LLC

variety

“Regarding your concerns of “misinformation” and “inaccurate reporting”: Our protest letter of February 13 was created by a small group of ASC members directly referencing a copy of President Bailey’s February 11 letter, as well as the AMPAS Mission Statement. There was simply no room for misinterpretation, misrepresentation or inaccuracy. And the media has reported well on this issue and should be commended for airing both sides equally. The other concern is exactly how the Academy came to this decision.”
Cinematographers Slap Academy Succotash

“People need to calm down about it before the Oscars and we only have like 10 days,” says Mary Zophres. “What worries me more is actual unrest in the building before, during or after. So they need to make sure that everybody is under control.”
Fear of a Battle for the Dolby

“Sometimes, if the pants are too fitted, he’ll blow out the crotch just by trying to get in his car.” 
Putting Dwayne Johnson In Pants

NY Times

“Over four years — as president and, for 18 months, chief executive — he oversaw the creation of Disney Channel, the company’s cable network. He established Touchstone Pictures as a vehicle to release films targeted to adults, scoring a quick hit with Splash. Miller also acquired a real estate company that helped Disney develop land near its Disney World complex in Lake Buena Vista, and brought the company closer to an agreement to open a Disney theme park in France. But it was not enough.”
Former Disney Boss Ron Miller Was 85

https://twitter.com/timhorsburgh/status/1096123213308928005?s=21

variety

“Unfortunately, as the result of inaccurate reporting and social media posts, there has been a chain of misinformation that has understandably upset many Academy members. We’d like to restate and explain the plans for presenting the awards, as endorsed by the Academy’s Board of Governors.”
Academy Emails Rebuff To Members Who Would Doubt (Let Alone Contest) Their Undying Righteousness and Behind-the-Scenes Moves 

hollywoodreporter.com

“It’s amazing to me that the CEO of Fox News would personally inject herself into a small ad buy just to make sure that Hannity viewers weren’t exposed to this chapter of American history.”
Fox News Axes Paid Ad For Oscar-Nominated Short A Night At The Garden And Its View Of Historical American Nazism As Inappropriate For “Hannity” Viewers

Hey! Leggo my IP!

NY Times

“From a teenager living in a small town to his ex-wife, the singer and actress Mandy Moore, these artists said Ryan Adams exploited and then stifled their ambitions.”

“The Academy should push everybody out of business in terms of the awards. There’s one award that matters and that’s the only thing to protect. There’s nothing else that matters.”
“Business Insider spoke to past Oscar show producers, Academy voters, and producers of other live TV shows to investigate what has gone wrong.”

MCN Curated Headlines

“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