“In an internal announcement, Star Tribune publisher Mike Klingensmith says City Pages is shutting down print and online publication effective today.”
Wallace Shawn: “The country had been brutal for a very long time, from the beginning actually. And now the rhetoric began to mirror reality. Now that I’m seventy-six, when I remember the way I used to feel—when I think about how important it once seemed to me to tell people the truth about the crimes in which we all were implicated—well, that all seems quaint and sad. It turns out that by the time the American public learned the sorts of things I’d felt they needed to learn, by the time they came to look in the mirror, what they saw there didn’t look so bad to them. And so, yes, an awful lot of people don’t get upset when they hear Trump talk. On the contrary, they seem to feel a great sense of relief. Trump has liberated a lot of people from the last vestiges of the Sermon on the Mount. A lot of people turn out to have been sick and tired of pretending to be good.”
“Kazakh tourist board embraces “very nice!” as one of its slogans, rolling out videos with a stunning mountain range, Kazakh fermented tea, and one of the country’s modern skylines.”
Director of Irresistible Gets Current Affairs Slot At Apple Plus
“Layoffs hit Sony Pictures’ marketing and distribution teams as the Hollywood studio combined parts of its domestic and international film and television operations. Roughly 35 positions have been eliminated in the consolidation.”
Veteran Fox News Producer Rob Brown Taken By Virus; Passenger On Fox News Private Plane Post-Debate From Nashville To New York Along With Bret Baier, Juan Williams, Martha MacCallum, Dana Perino And Network President Jay Wallace
Leigh Whannell: “With horror movies, the villain often becomes the hero. Freddy Krueger quickly became the protagonist. On the original film, he’s the bad guy and everyone’s afraid of him, but by part four you’re waiting for him to kill the teenagers. And then he’ll say something quippy and you cheer. It’s interesting how that happens with horror. The villain is the star. With Jigsaw, that definitely happened. The cast around him revolved and he was a fixture. I don’t mind that. I guess James Wan and I accidentally created the Freddy Krueger of the millennial generation. I’m proud of that. We shot Saw in ten days. It was a victory against the odds. The fact that it connected with people was astounding to us. And then Hollywood economics came into play and producers are knocking on our door saying, “It’s time to make another one.” I hadn’t planned on that. And I did two more of those films and eventually I walked away because that’s not what I came here to do. It’s a funny thing how that works. Everybody has to eat. I didn’t have a burning desire to make sequels to that film. I had a burning desire to make some money.”
Cameron Crowe Talks To Joni Mitchell About Her Unearthed Early Work
“Prince Azim was fourth in line to the throne of Brunei, a small oil-rich absolute monarchy in Southeast Asia. His father, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, is one of the wealthiest men in the world. Known for his lavish, star-filled parties he also produced You’re Not You, The Time of Their Lives and The Happy Prince.”
Salt Lake Tribune ends daily publication this year
Abe Goldfarb: “Got a wild fuckin idea for the near future of cinema: lots of movies that cost way less and feature grown-ups doing stuff and aren’t based on shit from my childhood.”
Marguerite Duras: “I think that’s the only acceptable option for me now. I had a kind of very violent reaction against speaking after the screening. That’s over now. I will never again speak about my films after a screening. You see, writing is still a little bit like disappearing, like being behind something. As long as you’re writing, you don’t have to appear. A rather simple syllogism, but that’s how it is. You know how it is. The requests are endless. People begged me once, they begged me ten times. You give in, and then there it is. But I had gotten physical signs that there was something about all this that was dubious, I would say nearly immoral—about speaking afterward. It made me physically ill. I was disgusted with myself after I spoke. And that’s how I understood that I was wrong.”
UK Cinemas: We, the undersigned, are a group of the country’s independent cinemas. We are charities, social enterprises and small businesses. We are a vital part of the nighttime economy and our local communities. Many of the cinemas listed below are over 100 years old. We have overcome numerous challenges in our history, the 1918 flu pandemic, the Blitz, the rise of television, VHS, DVD and VOD but, without support from our colleagues, we will not make it through the next six months and many of the UK’s great cultural institutions will be lost…”
Matthew McConaughey: “I think in the next few years we are going to see some great content. A lot of creative people in my business have been forced to go inward. Have been forced to reconsider. And get more creative. I think that writing is going to be better. More evolutionary. There could be a golden age in art coming up, I really do. Because of what people create during this time.”
Taika Waititi: “Borat is one of the year’s most important films. Not only does Sasha Baron Cohen deliver those squirmy uncomfortable laughs but the film is also emotional. Yeah I know like wtf dude. I loved it.”
“The BBC Films ident — a faux-cosmic Big Bang in purplish blue — dates back to 2007. It was launched when Tony Blair was British prime minister. Steve Jobs had just unveiled the first iPhone. Now, in a different moment for the BBC, films and everything else besides, a new logo is replacing it. Simple white-on-black. Nothing celestial. The woman responsible for the corporation’s film-making arm is its director Rose Garnett. We meet outdoors on a chilly day in London’s Holland Park. The pandemic soon turns the conversation to cinemas. Garnett is optimistic: “Cinemas will make a comeback. There will be the right film at the right time.” She adds a postscript: “But film was changing before the virus. And a lot of that’s good, by the way.”
When Madonna Met David Fincher: “Um, David h—David’s idea for the cat to like… lick the milk and then pour it over. It’s great and believe me, I mean, I have to um… I fought him on that, I didn’t want to do it. I thought, ‘Oh, it’s just so over the top and silly and kind of cliché like art student or film student kind of trick, you know.’ I’m glad that I gave in to him.”
Tim Gray: “Television’s first televised Oscars in March 1953 set the template for every awards show since: cameras and audience in one auditorium. Though the format has been locked in place, technology has made quantum leaps, so this is a great year to rethink the entire approach. Reginald Hudlin, Jimmy Kimmel and the Emmy team opened the door to new ways of presenting awards, with remotes, pre-taped segments and some safe-distancing interaction; other ceremonies can study what they’ve learned. It’s a wakeup call to kudos producers: Don’t focus on the people in the auditorium; think of the viewers around the world.”
Richard Rushfield: “Netflix achieved the miracle of a generation, building a service that, from nothing, took on a sleeping entertainment industry. Even if the numbers remain an open question, what they pulled off is astonishing. And if there’s one thing Wall Street loves, it’s miracles. No wonder: When the 2010s began, Netflix stock sold at $10.50. When the decade closed in December, it went at $455. While Netflix was creating a miracle, Disney was building the entertainment business of the century—a full flywheel of goods and services built outward from the gold standard of entertainment brands, sub-brands, and micro-brands. Disney was so successful in this that it managed, for years counting, to defy the most basic law of entertainment: the hits-and-flops ratios. Call it the Big Brother of Entertainment, if you will, argue with its role in stamping out the middle range of filmmaking, but if the game is building on box-office success, no one has come close to achieving what Disney did in the 2010s—a string of monster hits so big that it came darn close to giving one company near monopoly power over the theatrical world. Then it built on top of that an endless stream of goods and experiences: consumer products, theme parks, cruise ships, Broadway shows, spin-off TV series. And Wall Street looked at that monumental business and yawned and pointed to the Netflix stock chart and said, Yeah, movies, toys, rides, whatever… we want one of those! With all of Disney’s success stories, the only thing that got the investment communities’ heart going pitter-pat was when the company would make some announcement or other about Disney Plus.”
“MGM was at least open to the possibility of unloading their crown jewel for a princely sum. The studio was said to be looking for a deal of roughly $600 million — a price tag that was deemed too rich for two of the free-spending streaming services. A sale of this magnitude would be led exclusively by Kevin Ulrich, the chairman and CEO of MGM’s majority owner Anchorage Capital Group. It’s unclear if producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who control the rights to the series through their company Eon, would have to sign off on the deal. Universal Pictures, which has foreign distribution rights to No Time to Die would have to be made whole in any possible sale and reimbursed for any expenses the studio incurred.”
