MCN Curated Headlines

variety

China Release Of The Farewell Bumped Two Days Before Release; May Be To Take Advantage of Anticipated Awards Notice In U. S.

David Lynch Opens “Squeaky Flies In The Mud” In Manhattan

“The faces of the lovers—bereft or joyful, clouded or radiant—tell the whole story of Cold War. When the line between one country and another can shift overnight, where, exactly, is home? Wiktor and Zula find it and lose it, again and again, in each other’s eyes.”

Sex Rules, Please, We’re British: Brit Directors Issue Ninety-Six “Guidelines” For Sex Scenes

“Kevin G. Riley, editor in chief of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said that the film’s suggestion that its reporter Kathy Scruggs traded sex for information from an FBI agent was not true, and that the film’s intention was to undermine confidence in the media and law enforcement agencies.”

Producer Abigail Disney Endorses Elizabeth Warren Wealth Tax

hollywoodreporter.com

Czech Filmmaker Vojtech Jasny Was 93

Trump Justice Department Edict: “The end of the Paramount Decree arrives at a time when streaming is the dominant viewing mode, though changes to theatrical exhibition will affect all modes of viewing. If and when the repeal happens, studios could engage in a number of previously banned practices to increase their market hold again. What does that mean for the moviegoer?”

Michael Ferro sells Tribune Publishing stake, prompting fears of staffing cuts

variety

“When the cars are swept into that big sandstorm and the music escalates, ” Bong Joon-ho Says Of Fury Road, “I felt like my soul was escalating too, and tears just came out of my eyes. I was like, ‘Wow, this is a master at work.'”

About The New Book On Manny Farber As Critic And Painter

Behind Pentagram’s Graphic Revamp of the Historic WB Shield

“I’ll assure you, I’m not as bad as in the movie,” Almodóvar says. “I have the feeling now that people love me more than before. And they think that they have to express that feeling toward me, which is wonderful, but they think I’m much worse off than I am.”

Google Places Some Restrictions On Targeted Political Ads

An Excerpt from “Get Out: The Complete Annotated Screenplay”

Diablo Cody On Musicalizing “Jegged Little Pill”

UK-Educated Russians Are Upholding Putin Regime, Says Newly Released Ukrainian Filmmaker Oleg Sentsov

variety

Randy Newman Remembers His Earliest “Square” Rock ‘n’ Roll: “Peyton Place”

“I wish that I’d have had your experience when I was in my teens. Jane Tennison was the first. Her ambition and her self-interest and the fact she knew she was better than most of the people—most of the men—around her. The way she had to be quite ruthless. The way her relationships with her parents, her family, her boyfriend all got pushed to one side for her job. There hadn’t been anything like that.”

White House Claims Trump Hosted White House Joker Screening After Rush To Walter Reed Hospital

‘When you’ve seen enough movies in enough places, in drive-ins from childhood and city palaces in adulthood, do you remember the places as well, if not better than the films themselves? The edifice as much as the onscreen evidence? I do. (You should be able to remember what’s around or behind the flatscreen in your living room.) I’m not Marilu Henner, I don’t remember the exact seat and what she said and what I said and if the Dots were juicy-fresh. But I remember the seat I chose, best for the movie in that particular space The memory of dreams projected, played out in spaces: my own dreams I remember and photographs I take are often that frame within frame: the scene, also seen.”

Photographer Terry O’Neill Was 81: A Life in Pictures

hollywoodreporter.com

‘Nobody owns cinema. We don’t own cinema. You don’t own cinema. Scorsese doesn’t own cinema. When we look at the box office[of Avengers: Endgame, we don’t see that as a signifier of financial success, we see it as a signifier of emotional success,”—The Russo Brothers

variety

“From the moment I saw Marriage Story at the Venice Film Festival, I was always planning to circle back to this issue. But now that the film has been released, that question had bled into a new dynamic: the calling of the movie on the carpet for not being enlightened or woke enough.”
The Sunday Column Has Pondered Scenes From A Marriage Story

“Scooter never had a relationship with Taylor, he should have offered her a partnership when he bought the company. Even if he offers Taylor a 50-50 deal now and allows her to buy in, her masters have dramatically increased in value since the sale. Taylor is very unlikely to give Scooter hundreds of millions given the bad blood.”

The DVD Wrapup: After the Wedding, Buñuel in the Labyrinth, Bliss, Nuke ’Em High Redux, Tel Aviv on Fire, They Are We, Hitchhikers, Far Country, Popstar, Truth … More

“It is done his way. The script is shot in sequence and actors learn the story as they go along – all the better to surprise them. “I just want the performance to come straight from their stomach,” he says. At lunchtime, everyone piles into a minibus to go to a church hall. Loach remembers shooting Bread and Roses in Los Angeles, and an actor asking: “Where are the chairs?” Loach said: “What chairs? There are a few around. Find one.” “We always have chairs with our name on.” Loach: “How old are you?” “Sixty.” “Well I’m fucking 75. When you see me sit down, you sit down.” Loach laughs then says: “We keep going because we’re so inexpensive.”

OH, NO HUMANITY

“The first day subscription numbers are impressive, but not surprising, this being the greatest family brand, the one must-have brand in familydom. There’s been grumbling online, particularly from middle-aged critics, about how much is missing and how there is nothing for them to watch. D+ is failing to serve the all-important ‘Mad Men’ audience of media professionals!”

“Howard Hawks was a wonderful director, but he was not the greatest director Hollywood ever knew. The guys with the cigarette ashes on them ignored our greatest directors and humiliated George Stevens, Willie Wyler, Billy Wilder,” Mike Nichols once said of the film giants whose critical stock crashed when New Hollywood arrived. “The tragedy of Willie and Stevens and Fred Zinnemann, these were great men, but they just weren’t part of the froggy conspiracy.” Welles and Ford agreed the director was the driving creative force of their films, but to what end? What was it about?”

Oscar-Winning Production Designer Lawrence G. Paull Was 81
Over Fifty Films In Long Career

The Rise And Rise Of Queen & Slim‘s Melina Matsoukas

hollywoodreporter.com

Joker First Billion-Grossing R-Rated Pic

LA Times

Louis C.K. “Comeback Tour“: “What’s mostly absent now though is the appearance that he’s at least trying to be decent.”

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

MCN Curated Headlines

Archives Comments Most Recent

“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