Movie City News

Sacha Baron Cohen ADL in full

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Martin Scorsese’s “Late Style” By Scout Tafoya

Martin Scorsese’s “Late Style” By Scout Tafoya

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“I’ve been talking to Charlie about this novel for almost eight years and watching it change and recalibrate and grow. ‘Antkind’ is a hilarious, devastating, epic mindfuck. I’ve never read anything else like it.”

“I’ve been talking to Charlie about this novel for almost eight years and watching it change and recalibrate and grow. ‘Antkind’ is a hilarious, devastating, epic mindfuck. I’ve never read anything else like it.”

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Writing Uncut Gems Across A Decade, With the Safdies And Ronald Bronstein

Writing Uncut Gems Across A Decade, With the Safdies And Ronald Bronstein

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“As DirecTV tanks, AT&T says it will “re-bundle” TV with HBO Max”

“As DirecTV tanks, AT&T says it will “re-bundle” TV with HBO Max”

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Terry Gilliam is 79

Happy Birthday @TerryGilliam – 79 years young today! pic.twitter.com/G2F6sgBQcu — Monty Python (@montypython) November 22, 2019

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Binging Preventing Appointment TV Careers

Lost could NEVER have existed in a binge format, can you imagine? In fact Damon Lindelof, JJ Abrams, and Chris Carter might never have had careers if TV in their eras had come out a whole season at a time. — Ginny Brown (@lirelyn) November 22, 2019

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Laemmle Shutters Beverly Hills Arthouse Music Hall After 82 Years

Laemmle Shutters Beverly Hills Music Hall After 82 Years

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No Downtown Seattle Bookstores

On my post-movie walk home, learned the local Barnes & Noble is closing after Christmas. Leaving no bookstores in downtown Seattle. — Vince Keenan (@vpkeenan) November 22, 2019

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Why You Should Be Afraid Of The End Of The Paramount Decree

hanges in the course of the last 70 years have put the studios in a better position to reinstate their cartel more than ever. Aside from Paramount, the other four surviving major theatrical distributors are owned by multinational conglomerates that do not rely on their theatrical business as their primary revenue source. Even Disney’s leading theatrical is dwarfed by other Disney divisions such as ABC, cable operations and theme parks.

Meanwhile, the exhibition business, which splintered in many directions after the Paramount Decree has consolidated dramatically. America has four chains that own almost half the total screens in the country. AMC (8,218 screens), Cinemark (4,566), Regal (7,308), and Marcus (1,098).

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“The Ticking Time Bomb That Could Blow Up Hollywood’s Streaming Era”

“The Ticking Time Bomb That Could Blow Up Hollywood’s Streaming Era”

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Streaming Regulation?

Is streaming growing so big and out of control it should be regulated? A growing chorus says yes. https://t.co/qNYLPGTrJr — Steven Zeitchik (@ZeitchikWaPo) November 22, 2019

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“”All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.”

“All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.”

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“Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.”

“Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.”

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Fox News Harvests Paul Schrader’s Facebook: “Taxi Driver screenwriter equates Trump supporters to Nazis who ‘lined the streets in Nuremberg'”

Fox News Harvests Paul Schrader’s Facebook: “Taxi Driver screenwriter equates Trump supporters to Nazis who ‘lined the streets in Nuremberg’”

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Gahan Gaaaaah

RIP Gahan Wilson, genius. pic.twitter.com/E1wWjGIM1m — Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) November 22, 2019

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Gahan Wilson

One of the great cartoonists of all time has died, Gahan Wilson. I especially loved his Nuts comic strip in National Lampoon. It was really ahead of its time in showing a real kid’s view of being a kid. pic.twitter.com/Uk9IVDdfjv — Tom the Dancing Bug (@RubenBolling) November 22, 2019

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Michael Jackson biopic

No Studio Has Publicly Signed On For Graham King-Jackson Estate-John Logan Michael Jackson Feature

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Sacha

Actor @SachaBaronCohen reflects on his work in exposing bigotry and prejudice. Thank you for your vision, your creativity, and commitment to making our world a better place. Full speech here: https://t.co/m3mVgPm84t #NeverIsNow pic.twitter.com/h8ckdVCVAE — ADL (@ADL) November 22, 2019

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Knives Out Title Treatment

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Movie City News

“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.”

Review: Little Women (no spoilers)

The DVD Wrapup: Cold War, Betty Blue, Official Secrets, Demons, Olivia, American Dreamer, Land of Yik Yak

20 Weeks To Oscar: Cinema, Trump, and Oscar

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?

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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