MCN Curated Headlines Archive for August, 2019

variety

Venice Joker Ovation Alleged

thestar.com

It’s The Nineteenth Year For “Chasing The Buzz” With  Peter Howell From Toronto; Here’s Forty Potential Highlights

deadline

Peter Bart Takes Trump To The Movies With An Insight That His Mind Might Be Like That Of Chance The Gardener From This Movie From His Era Called Being There

Filmmaker’s Got 2019’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film 

Have you ever guessed the number of partners you’ve had?
It would be in the double-digit thousands, but that is not unusual.

Double-digit thousands. You mean like 2,000 or 3,000?
That’s not double digits, that’s single digits.

Oh! So 20,000 or 30,000. Somewhere in there.
Or 10, or 20.

That’s really amazing.
It’s not for a gay male, because it’s available.

Did you date famous men?
I’ve had sex with famous people, and I’ve had sex with married people, and they go to the grave. I’ve never kissed and told about anybody who gives me the favor of sharing a bed with me.

“Joel Schumacher, In Conversation”

“Twitter won’t autoban Nazis because the filters may ban GOP politicians”

variety

“No matter what the political situation is,  art should always prevail and be given top priority, because it is what pushes for civilization to grow, what shapes people’s minds and hearts. It’s important not to give up on that.”
Saudi Filmmaker Haifaa Al-Mansour

NY Times

“New York’s glorious Paris Theater on its sixtieth Anniversary. Today, the Paris went under. It was the last single-screen theater in Manhattan. And oh, it was a treasure.”

“How a killer-clown horror sequel became a fable of courage and resistance”: Breznican Debuts At VF

Tallying Telluride 2019

deadline

“I kind of am… an apologist is the wrong word, although some people think Visconti’s work is uneven. I don’t agree. I’m a huge fan, even, of Ludwig. I just luxuriate in Ludwig. I don’t care how long it is, or what’s going on. Five hours of Helmut Berger, and I’m in. There’s an incredible moment where he’s bankrupted Bavaria, building Neuschwanstein. Romy Schneider walks into the castle and it’s all filled with mirrors and gilded, and she looks at it, a beat of silence, looking around, what’s her reaction going to be? She just breaks into laughter, and it’s beautiful,’ James Gray says. “Why are we talking about Visconti? What are we supposed to talk about?”

 

LA Times

“You know, I have a lot of flaws and one of them is that I miscalculate degree of difficulty. The jungle for The Lost City of Z was really terrible and very difficult physically. But I thought mistakenly that I was going to go into a soundstage and I would be in L.A. and it would be easier. And it was harder. It was harder than the jungle because you have to create the entire world. You can’t just look for a shot, point the camera. Everything has to be imagined.”

“A Disney spokesperson says there has been no change in policy on their end for Canadian repertory cinemas. ‘If the theatre is a repertory theatre, they will still have their usual access to the Fox (and Disney) library through our non-theatrical department,” said Julia Caslin in an emailed statement. That’s not the message the Rio says it received . [and] was given no notice about a change, nor notice that her usual two contacts at 20th Century Fox had left the company.”

variety

“Martel clearly defended the choice of Polanski’s film in the Lido lineup, despite the controversy. “I will not congratulate him. But I think it is right that his movie is here at this festival.’ She said that her comments had been ‘deeply misunderstood.'”

 

“For a long time I think I thought being a tough guy meant being tough at oneself. Like, how much can I take? And now I think I see it quite differently. My lineage is dark survivors. I come from real Auschwitz stock. So Hitler was a big player in my childhood, and it was this mentality of surviving and no matter what sort of horrors life throws your way, that was something that had been endured by my grandmother and my grandfather and therefore it was kind of the litmus test of a human experience. For a long time I think I thought being a tough guy meant being tough at oneself. Like, how much can I take? And now I think I see it quite differently. I certainly think it made me very curious to sort of like, see what else was out there, and kind of push at the edges of this thing called reality.”

“Allen makes fun of well-off people — including, in a late-arriving masterstroke, how some of them got that way — places a few excellent digs at privilege across generations, skewers the pitfalls of celebrity-obsessed lazy journalism and bundles more than one romance into a breezy one-weekend package, with and without rain, exquisitely filmed by Vittorio Storaro whose work on Wonder Wheel was alone worth the price of admission.”

 

“I’ve never been recognized in my industry. I’ve never been nominated for anything. Maybe like, twice for Golden Globes when I was little, and one for ‘Fargo.’ Maybe they think I’m just the girl from Bring It On.”

NY Times

“People perceive all my stuff as red state, and it’s the most ridiculous thing. If you truly look at ‘Yellowstone’ or Wind River or Sicario, these are pretty wildly progressive notions. The people who are calling it a red-state show have probably never watched it. I am apolitical publicly. I don’t want to be preached to, so I’m not going to preach to anybody else. But I’m not just going to show you one side. I’m going to show you all sides. I happen to think a Native American trying to buy back the land that was stolen from his people, like Gil Birmingham’s tribal-leader character is doing on the show, is historically pretty progressive. And it’s not a fantasy. That is happening.”

“How UTA’s Rena Ronson Became One of International Film’s Biggest players”

hollywoodreporter.com

We Pain Moviehouses: The Irishman Won’t Go Wide

Annabella Sciorra Will Testify That She Was Raped By Disgraced Former Producer Harvey Weinstein

“From afar, Pop resembles a bronze statuette. He is lithe, sinewy, and deeply tanned, with a torso that, for decades, has appeared so exquisitely and minutely muscled that an onlooker might reasonably assume it was painted on. In recent years, his midsection has relaxed a bit, but he assured me, while patting it, that it remains quite firm. His hair is blond, shoulder length, pin straight, and parted in the middle, and his eyes are an oceanic blue. Though he has had Lasik surgery—“In Colombia, before it was legal here”—his vision is still imperfect, a malady he chalks up to doing too much intravenous cocaine. He has retained a bit of a round, Midwestern accent from his upbringing, outside Detroit. In conversation, he is nearly guileless, and he listens intently and carefully. Periodically, his face will collapse into a benevolent grin.”

“Harry Styles isn’t exactly dressed down for lunch. He’s got a white floppy hat that Diana Ross might have won from Elton in a poker game at Cher’s mansion circa 1974, plus Gucci shades, a cashmere sweater, and blue denim bell-bottoms. His nail polish is pink and mint green. He’s also carrying his purse — no other word for it — a yellow patent-canvas bag with the logo “Chateau Marmont.” The tough old ladies who work at this Beverly Hills deli know him well. Gloria and Raisa dote on him, calling him “my love” and bringing him his usual tuna salad and iced coffee. He turns heads, to put it mildly, but nobody comes near because the waitresses hover around the booth protectively.”

“I really thought that I was finished with filmmaking. I was getting bored with it. I thought that I would end up writing another novel, and then I got interested in the whole Netflix thing and the idea of a streaming series,” David Cronenberg says. “To my surprise, I found myself flying down to L.A. to pitch an idea to Netflix, which they liked enough to green-light two episodes, which I wrote. But then they decided to pass. I’m trying to set it up somewhere else, but that got me back to think that maybe I’m not done with it after all. I’m involved with [producer] Robert Lantos on two things now: a script, which I’d written some time ago, and a series based on my novel, ‘Consumed.’

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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