MCN Columnists
Kim Voynar

Voynaristic By Kim VoynarVoynar@moviecitynews.com

O Christmas Tree

Published under 1,000 Monkeys. I love everything about the Christmas season, from the decorations to the Christmas music piped in to all the stores to the lights brightening up all the houses. I love planning what to get each of the kids, baking Christmas cookies, and listening non-stop to Christmas music on the radio until…

Read the full article »

Of Indie Film and Insularity

This Thanksgiving weekend, as I ponder my abundant blessings, one of the things I’m most thankful for is having a job that allows me not only to watch a lot of movies, but to see many of them at film festivals far and wide. As I write this, over the past couple years we’ve seen…

Read the full article »

Home is Where My Heart Is

Published under 1,000 Monkeys. Why 1,000 Monkeys? David and I spent a lot of time talking back and forth about a new name for this more philosophical, life-stuff column. One day in frustration, I said to David, “If you put 1,000 monkeys at 1,000 typewriters, they could never write the craziness that is my life…

Read the full article »

Memory Lane

Published under 1,000 Monkeys. Why 1,000 Monkeys? David and I spent a lot of time talking back and forth about a new name for this more philosophical, life-stuff column. One day in frustration, I said to David, “If you put 1,000 monkeys at 1,000 typewriters, they could never write the craziness that is my life…

Read the full article »

Precious Things

Back at Sundance last year, when Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire was first unveiled for critics with little fanfare but high hopes, quite a few folks thought it would never see the light of day off the fest circuit. Too dark, too depressing, too tragic … with little redemption or justice to buoy…

Read the full article »

The Vampire as Moral Compass

These days, it seems vampires are the new black — but they aren’t quite as black as they used to be. Today’s vampires have more than just gloomy good looks and great fashion sense; they come complete with a moral compass. If art and literature reflect the world in which they are created, what does…

Read the full article »

Quote Unquotesee all »

“I don’t really think, Sean, that you need to know about my various sexual liaisons. Or that anyone else needs to. I did write about them. I filled a hundred pages of Moleskine notebooks with my one-night stands, my affairs. But I decided they didn’t belong in a professional memoir. First of all, these are real people we’re talking about. Many of them were enjoyable. Some were abject failures. My wife said to me when she read the pages, ‘Of what purpose is this in a memoir? Of what purpose is this other than to titillate?’ The point is, I never see them. It’s because I have nothing in common with them, frankly. And probably didn’t at the time. I could not provide a sensible reason why I married these women. The thing is, in the case of my marriages, it takes two people to fuck up a marriage. It wasn’t simply the fault of these women that I lost interest in them and realised they were insignificant relationships. Which is how I look at them right now–as being insignificant. I see them as blips.”
~ William Friedkin On Cutting Interviewers Off At The Sass

“I have to imagine from Mr. Spielberg’s point of view, the paradigm shift in the 1970s was just the new “normal,” a “halcyon era” from which we are straying in the 21st century–because theatrical exhibition is tenuous (as it has been since the 1940s), the home video market has dried up and people are watching pirated movies on their phone. Spielberg’s coming-of-age era was for him the halcyon period that the 21st century “implosion” will cause to go “crashing into the ground.” But he is wrong. The market for movies is actually diverse and highly segmented–although from the top-down movie industry vantage point and media punditry you would not think this to be true.  Would we really mourn for Mr. Spielberg or ourselves if Lincoln would have been made for cable or had played on public television?  Is it bad for humanity that cable television is creating wonderful, resonant stories in long-form series that people want to watch at home on TV (or streamed onto their computer)? I don’t think so, but it is a paradigm shift and it might affect people’s theatrical moviegoing habits. Televisions in people’s homes have had that effect for seven decades–it is not a new phenomenon. As Art House cinema impresarios we need to focus on what WE can do at our theaters and in our communities. It is not productive for us to fret over what pundits say or about what well-meaning filmmakers like the Stevens–Spielberg and Soderbergh–say. We should fret about what we can do in our communities. What we can do to support filmmakers.”
~ From A Response By Russ Collins, CEO, Michigan Theater – Ann Arbor And Director, Art House Convergence, To Mr. Spielberg