MCN Originals Archive for August, 2019

The DVD Wrapup: All Is True, Patrick Swayze, Harder They Come, Aniara, Alice Guy-Blache, Akio Jissoji, Orcas, Ronja, Walking Dead … More

I wonder how many of the teenagers who dug ‘Romeo + Juliet’ and ‘O’ in theaters or on video enrolled in Shakespeare courses in college and went on to support local theater companies.

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The DVD Wrapup: Endgame, White Crow, Vault, Trial by Fire, Shiraz, Keaton, Rafiki, Damned Summer, Anti-Nowhere League. … More

By bringing back hundreds of Marvel characters, actors and voicing talent – from Dr. Stephen Strange and Spider-Man, to Nick Fury and Groot – ‘Endgame’ effectively serves as a monumental memorial to franchise co-creator Stan Lee, who died last November, at 95.

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The DVD Wrapup: Charlie Says, Reflecting Skin, Girl in the Fog, Souvenir, Girls of the Sun, Deep Space Nine, Sweet Alice, Penguin Highway, Jamestown, Patrick Melrose … More

The motivations behind such slaughter remain unfathomable. It was a freakish occurrence in the Season of the Witch … far less portentous than the current wave of massacres at Walmarts, schools and garlic festivals.

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2 Key Issues From Disney’s Q3 Fiscal Announcement

1. The only thing really left from the 20th Century Fox studio that was operating for 84 years as a major is Fox Searchlight.

Basically, they have Icahn-ed the shit out of Fox.

And the DOJ didn’t blink an eye. A major studio disappeared… and all we got was this lousy feeling of nostalgia.

2. Disney just slowed down the transition to streaming. A lot.

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Review: Hobbs & Shaw

I have an on-again, off-again relationship with the The Fast & The Furious franchise. I remember seeing the first film in the run, directed by the ever-cinematically flatulent Rob Cohen, 18 years ago in a room somewhere at Universal that I can’t ever remember being in before or since. And it was flawed. But it was fun. And intimate. And weird. And it was great to see in-camera car stunts that we hadn’t seen in a while.

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The DVD Wrapup: Long Shot, Mountain Rest, Brighton Rock, Wildland, Ayiti Mon Amour, Hammer, Leopard Man, Woodstock, Manhunt and more

The filmmakers took an unlikely, illogical and intermittently off-putting concept and delivered a commercial comedy that should have done better at the domestic and international box office than barely break even.

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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