December 1, 2023

MCN Curated Headlines Archive for August, 2019

THANK YOU to everyone across the country who came out over the past 6 weekends to celebrate the movies and the places they came from. #A24PublicAccess pic.twitter.com/hlaG9gwgeX

— A24 (@A24) August 26, 2019

Leonardo DiCaprio launched a $5M fund to help fight fires in the Amazon. The money is being sent directly to local groups and Indigenous communities, whose lands are where many of the fires are located. pic.twitter.com/bxNWacnCki

— AJ+ (@ajplus) August 26, 2019

Just for reference, "Boss Baby" cost $200 million https://t.co/7wBMXI3GmC

— hussein kesvani (@HKesvani) August 26, 2019

Netflix paid $100 million to stream Friends. https://t.co/bkE2sO4Cch

— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) August 26, 2019

is there a film movement with fewer worthwhile movies than the spaghetti western. boring as hell, dirt cheap and ugly movies.

— Bront (@bmrow) August 26, 2019

the Star Wars sequel trilogy as an assessment of how boomers ultimately failed to vanquish the social evils they claimed to have overcome, leaving those problems to a generation of millennials who will more than likely just end up making all the same mistakes

— Paul Krueger (@NotLikeFreddy) August 26, 2019

If 65 is this good, I can’t wait for the rest.
Thank you to all my family and friends for their love and surprises pic.twitter.com/SQFh9X4IZh

— Elvis Costello (@ElvisCostello) August 25, 2019

“The Song Hunter Who Gets Music for Quentin Tarantino’s Movies”

“Taylor Swift’s Nashville apartment is an Etsy fever dream, a 365-days-a-year Christmas shop, pure teenage girl id. You enter through a vestibule clad in blue velvet and covered in gilt frames bursting with fake flowers. The ceiling is painted like the night sky. Above a koi pond in the living area, a narrow staircase spirals six feet up towards a giant, pillow-lagged birdcage that probably has the best view in the city. Later, Swift will tell me she needs metaphors “to understand anything that happens to me”, and the birdcage defies you not to interpret it as a pointed comment on the contradictions of stardom. Swift, wearing pale jeans and dip-dyed shirt, her sandy hair tied in a blue scrunchie, leads the way up the staircase to show me the view. The decor hasn’t changed since she bought this place in 2009, when she was 19. “All of these high rises are new since then,” she says, gesturing at the squat glass structures and cranes.”

🐙 pic.twitter.com/81AL9tzsuF

— brit marling (@britmarling) August 23, 2019

Profiling Gary Busey As He Prepares To Play “God”

Vincent Gallo buys Trump Tower condo at heavy discount in all cash deal https://t.co/C0E6Uufsop pic.twitter.com/6pn2nLf2IC

— Variety (@Variety) August 22, 2019

An abandoned theater in Tbilisi, Georgia that I got to visit and photograph today pic.twitter.com/FbJQnVxb3S

— Abandoned America (@abandonedameric) August 24, 2019

Post-Iger Succession+ At Disney

We all knew the world would end/they would close before we got a definitive pronunciation.

— Mark Lisanti (@marklisanti) August 22, 2019

“Crystal Liu says she is being unfairly singled out, given that other Chinese celebrities have voiced support for Beijing over the Hong Kong protest movement, including the city’s own Jackie Chan and Tony Leung Ka-fai. Though protesters bristle at all stars who parrot an autocratic government’s talking points, they have an ideal wedge with Liu as the lead of the upcoming global tentpole Mulan — about a young Chinese female fighter of injustice — that Disney will release March 27. The studio’s apparent decision to try to duck the difficult PR dilemma has put it in the awkward spot of aligning its interests with Beijing and the Hong Kong government, both of which seem to be hoping that the protesters will lose their nerve.”

“In a superhero cinematic landscape where inspirational maternal figures are still far too rare, Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May could be a welcome trailblazer in that regard, rather than just well-dressed window dressing.”

A grand jury in Manhattan has returned a new indictment against Harvey Weinstein. The charges are expected to remain the same. The case was re-presented so prosecutors could include the testimony of Sopranos actress Annabella Sciorra

— Aaron Katersky (@AaronKatersky) August 22, 2019

What’s Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundry All About? A Mossack Fonseca And Panama Papers Primer

Chicago’s Music Box Theatre Posts its Digital Library of Film Calendars Back to 1983

“We can only do so, however, on terms that respect AMC’s important and close relationships with our longstanding studio partners, including Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal, Sony, Paramount, Lionsgate and so many other filmmakers who are the lifeblood of our substantial business.”
I Pain Moviehouses: Theater Chains Resist The Irishman

“What interested me about Fassbinder and Wenders was a documentary sense of rediscovery of a lost or frozen landscape.”@AdamScovell talks with Chris Petit about RADIO ON (1979) @BFI — https://t.co/3AV0U6pPGV pic.twitter.com/ttGu0ldQ8d

— The Daily (@CriterionDaily) August 21, 2019

“In the next few years, empires will rise and crumble. Heroes will arise and reputations will be destroyed in the greatest clash of content civilization has ever seen. Maybe they’ll all lose! With a thousand models and paths to victory, it’s entirely possible that everyone is wrong. Now, that would be entertainment. It’s a terrifying time to be an executive, but a great time to be a viewer. And an even better time to be an industry watcher as the carnage begins.”

New work for Bond 25/No Time To Die at Empire Design. Animation design and video shoot art direction. pic.twitter.com/oymZidPXLf

— Olly Gibbs (@ollyog) August 20, 2019

“Harvey Weinstein, the once-powerful movie mogul who put Manhattan’s skyline in the Miramax logo, wants his trial on sexual assault charges moved out of New York City, arguing that the intense media scrutiny makes it impossible for jurors to give him a fair trial.”

“There’s an impatience now to be entertained – to be fed with plot in a fast way,” González Iñárritu said. “Everything has to be clear, understandable, global, like a Coca-Cola commercial. It has to please everybody because it’s a world product, and you cannot deal with that fucking thing.The possibilities to experiment and explore are gone because TV demands guaranteed globality that everybody understands. That is changing the stamina and motivations of young writers and filmmakers. Cinema – the inspiration, that’s a jewel – it’s probably going to disappear.”

Isabelle Huppert Says More Women Should Head Film Fests

“Matrix 4” A Go With Lana Wachowski Producing, Directing; Script by Wachowski, David Mitchell, Aleksandar Hemon

We're so spoiled with the amount of stuff that Sense8, shot around the world for real with every kind of person & genre imaginable and a mind melting live birthing montage & orgies & Van Damme reference & the feel of living on the Internet, got kinda lost in the shuffle. https://t.co/tZmUdCOY9M

— Aaron Stewart-Ahn (@somebadideas) August 20, 2019

“The breakdown between the two parties came after Marvel and its parent company, Disney, requested a bigger piece of Spider-Man movies going forward, a suggestion which Sony turned down in preference for an extension of the existing agreement, which sees Marvel receiving a modest five percent of first dollar gross.”

“Forty years after I first embarked on the research for my biography, I ask myself if I can muster both the energy and the sagacity to find a fresh path through the murky forest that is Bergman’s legacy. Should I take a fictional approach to his life and films, as his son Daniel counsels me to do? Should I accept that one must question virtually everything Bergman ever said about himself or his work, that he was a serial fibber in matters emotional and professional? Or should I just expand and flesh out the original book, as Harvey Sachs did with his studies of Toscanini (first in 1978 and definitively in 2017)? As Oscar Wilde said, “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.””

“Hollywood’s biggest lenders are about to call off the dogs on Annapurna. Sources said that Ellison’s father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, has submitted a “last and final offer” to pay Annapura’s key lenders, offering between 80-85c on the dollar.”

Why Can’t Pop Culture Come Out And Say Charles Manson Was A Racist?

“If Manson gets short shrift from Tarantino, it may be because movies are an inherently authoritarian medium and there is room for only one autocrat in Once Upon a Time. More than any other working director, Tarantino understands the dark desires for domination and vengeance that movies can enable … because they are his. More self-aware than Spielberg and less cynical than Hitchcock, Tarantino is absolutely sincere in his grateful, reverent attachment to Hollywood and his obsession with the movies of his adolescence. And in successfully implicating the audience and satisfying its bloodlust at the conclusion of Once Upon a Time, he pulls off an impressively Hitchcockian switcheroo.”

“A24 executives declined to be interviewed for this story.”
“I could see them getting out of the film business entirely and just opening a bunch of cinema cafes,” Barry Jenkins said. “Which would be the most random thing in the world, but they are a random-ass company. That’s for the better.”

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Houston Street between Lafayette and the Bowery… Please tell me this is true. I’m getting very pumped for this… #film #nyc

A post shared by Dylan Leiner (@leinerdylan) on Aug 17, 2019 at 8:36pm PDT

ART SPIEGELMAN ON AMERICAN COMICS AS A RETORT TO FASCISM: THE SPIKED ESSAY

“It might be worth pointing out (not out of ethnic pride, but because it might shed some light on the rawness and the specific themes of the early comics) that the pioneers behind this embryonic medium based in New York were predominantly Jewish and from ethnic minority backgrounds. It wasn’t just Siegel and Shuster, but a whole generation of recent immigrants and their children – those most vulnerable to the ravages of the great depression – who were especially attuned to the rise of virulent antisemitism in Germany. They created the American Übermenschen who fought for a nation that would at least nominally welcome “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free … ” To namecheck just a few of these secular Jews who had adopted Clark Kent-like secret identities: Gaines was born Max Ginzberg; Goodman’s parents immigrated from Vilnius, Lithuania; Jack Kirby (né Jacob Kurtzberg), the powerhouse who co-created Captain America with his landsman Joe Simon, was born in the slums of New York’s Lower East Side; and Stan Lee, who became the face of Marvel Comics, was Goodman’s wife’s cousin, nepotistically hired as a 17‑year-old office boy named Stanley Lieber. Though not welcome in the higher precincts of advertising and publishing, they were all able to find their niche at the bottom of the barrel.”

Wow, Universal has quietly gotten YESTERDAY to over $70m domestic. What a strong year they’re having.

— Brian (@BrianDuffield) August 18, 2019

he said, “don, it’s taken me over 80 years, but i finally feel like i’ve mastered it. i finally feel like i’ve mastered animation. the big joke now is whether i’ll live long enough to do anything with it.” the creator of all those masterpieces never felt like he stopped learning.

— don hertzfeldt (@donhertzfeldt) August 17, 2019

every day my inbox is inundated with women (female) claiming that they understand Mens Life, whereas all i can do is simply smile.

— wint (@dril) August 18, 2019

A Desultorily Reported Description of American Cinematic “Soft Power” in La Paz, Bolivia

“Before the event, Disney sent Fox executives and staffers a 13-page memo outlining exactly how the event should go. Men were to shave, and women were to “wear light makeup.” Workers were encouraged to wear a wristwatch since using a phone, either to check the time or to take pictures, was a strict no-no. And Fox employees were to make sure the movie’s stars weren’t chewing gum on the red carpet, according to the memo, which was seen by The Wall Street Journal.”

“Broadway producer Ben Sprecher arrested on child porn charges”

“Even though we know the movie is fiction, those scenes will live on in our shared cultural conscience as impressions of those real people, thereby corrupting our memory of them built on their real-life actions. That’s why filmmakers have a responsibility when playing with people’s perceptions of admired historic people to maintain a basic truth about the content of their character. Quentin Tarantino’s portrayal of Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood does not live up to this standard. Of course, Tarantino has the artistic right to portray Bruce any way he wants. But to do so in such a sloppy and somewhat racist way is a failure both as an artist and as a human being.”

MCN Curated Headlines

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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

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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