MCN Originals Archive for April, 2019

No Spoilers: Thinking About AVENGERS: ENDGAME

A consideration of the weight of Avengers: Endgame with no plot details whatsoever.

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The DVD Wrapup: Diamonds of the Night, School of Life, Red Room, Witch/Hagazussa, Tito & the Birds, Keoma, Andre’s Gospel, Noir

In a risky leap of narrative faith, he avoids attaching labels to the characters. Instead of describing ‘Diamonds of the Night’ as a World War II or Holocaust film, he wants audiences to see it as a survival story that explores the human condition under extreme conditions.

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All Parts: A Review of Alex Ross Perry’s HER SMELL

“I can’t point to any movie, recent or otherwise,” writer-director Alex Ross Perry has noted of his intently, intensely ambitious sixth feature, “that combines the two things I wanted to explore in ‘Her Smell’: lowbrow popular music and highbrow theatrical productions going back to Shakespeare’s five-act tragedies.”

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Fluid Mechanic: Claire Denis Talks High Life

“Deny them your essence, Mandrake!”

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Vertiginous Scale: Thoughts on WELCOME TO MARWEN

Welcome to Marwen is something else, but what is it?

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The DVD Wrapup: Bumblebee, Ginsburg, Buster, Silent Voice, Nazi Junkies, Prisoner, Golden Vampires, Highway Rat, Terra Formars, No Alternative … More

The studio decided to downscale the size of the sixth installment, by reducing the budget drastically, bringing in fresh behind-the-camera talent , keeping the running time under 120 minutes for the first time in 12 years, putting the focus on fewer characters and de-emphasizing the brand in the publicity material. It would promote the presence of a formidable teenage heroine, alongside the already popular Bumblebee and formidable Decepticon enemy, and add a malleable American warrior.

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Unapologetic Stuff: A Review Of KNIFE + HEART

“Knife + Heart” (Un couteau dans le coeur) has all kinds of stuff. It’s a tumultuous original, dragging worlds of cinema sensation that came before screaming and punching behind it. Begin with “Phantom of the Paradise,” stir in “Peeping Tom,” and “Body Double”; don’t stop at “Poison” or “Cruising” and “Blow Out.” Sex and art commingle…

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American Charmer: A Review Of The Brink

Alison Klayman’s “The Brink,” an avatar of cinema-vérité observation, arrives in a hush and escalates with precision. Recording political consultant and purported intellectual powerhouse Stephen K. “Steve” Bannon after his dismissal from the arms of Trump power, captured by a filmmaker-cinematographer-sound recordist on their own, edited to a fierce ninety-minute form from day-after-day of close…

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MCN Originals

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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