“Before everyone freaks out about the ArcLight closing: it is largely a negotiation over their leased cinemas (Grove, Americana, Paseo). Our domed 3–strip Cinerama palace is likely safe.”

“Theaters across the country have negotiated deferred rent payments to landlords. It is not clear what ultimately forced Pacific and ArcLight to throw in the towel. Previously, Austin, Texas-based Alamo Drafthouse declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, as did Studio Movie Grill.”

ArcLight, Pacific Locations And Their 300 Screens At A Handful of Locations Will Not Reopen

“’We cannot in good conscience provide economic support to a government that enacts regressive voting laws that are designed to restrict voter access,” Will Smith’s company Westbrook Inc. and Fuqua’s Fuqua Films said in a joint statement. They compared the new bill to restrictions passed during the end of Reconstruction that prevented many Black Americans from voting. Georgia’s film and TV production division didn’t respond to a request for comment.”

Harvey Weinstein’s Lawyer Makes Claim That His Client Is Nearly Blind, Had Four Teeth Removed And Has Sleep Apnea and Cardiac Issues

Richard Rush Was 91

Adam McKay: “I like Sorkin. I get along with him. I’ve had many conversations with him. He’s an institutionalist. That’s what I would say about him. It does sound on the face of it like an insane statement, but I was thinking that ideally Aaron Sorkin would be the right-wing version of me. Aaron Sorkin’s not a right-winger, but our right wing is so crazy — it’s like if Aaron Sorkin, I and a member of the Taliban are in a room together, of course both Aaron Sorkin and I are left-wingers. But in a dream world Sorkin and I would have constructive, interesting arguments, and he would be slightly more right and I would be slightly more left. And I’m not in any way comparing my career to Aaron Sorkin’s. He’s a brilliant, wildly accomplished writer. We’re very different animals.”

Virus-Free Australia Flame To Fame: “The list of transplants includes Julia Roberts, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, Zac Efron, Natalie Portman, Ron Howard, Taika Waititi, Tessa Thompson, Idris Elba, Chris Pratt, Michelle Ye, Paul Mescal, Rita Ora, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hanks, Awkwafina, Ed Sheeran, Jane Seymour, Melissa McCarthy, and Lord Alan Sugar; also the Australian Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban; Kylie and Dannii Minogue; Rose Byrne; Isla Fisher and her British husband, Sacha Baron Cohen.”

Korean Screen Surveyed 158 Critics From Twenty-Eight Countries To Arrive At The 100 Greatest Korean Films Ever Made; Prolific Hong Sang-soo Slates A Dozen Entries

Mary McNamara: “Hollywood’s history is littered with the casualties of a system that rewarded monstrous behavior, as is its present. Everyone certainly knew Harvey Weinstein was a tantrum-throwing, fear-inspiring, vendetta-fueled tyrant long before the ghastly details of his sexually predatory nature were made public… Is it any wonder that the entertainment industry is so infatuated with films about gangsters, serial killers, crooked leaders and the moral lines that must be crossed in war and business?”

“In keeping with our awards-show-as-a-movie approach, we’ve assembled a truly stellar cast of stars. There’s so much wattage here, sunglasses may be required.”
Academy Announces First Presenters: Angela Bassett, Halle Berry, Bong Joon Ho, Don Cheadle, Bryan Cranston, Laura Dern, Harrison Ford, Regina King, Marlee Matlin, Rita Moreno, Joaquin Phoenix, Brad Pitt, Reese Witherspoon, Renée Zellweger, Zendaya

“Will it matter in No Time to Die that the state-of-the-art Bond gadgetry is last year’s model? Have In the Heights and West Side Story missed the post-“Hamilton” wave they might have been hoping to catch? Will it be weird seeing a 16-year-old Finn Wolfhard in Ghostbusters: Afterlife when he’s pushing 19 in real life? In the broader sense, will any of these delayed movies feel truly fresh?”

“Even former assistants who survived their tenure with Rudin and became executives themselves described the tough skin they developed as an asset. Emotional and mental anguish—reportedly at minimum wage—were a given. “You’d always forgive him because he’s so smart, cares so much, and he gets movies made that no one else can,” explained Amy Pascal, one of Rudin’s former assistants who became a major studio executive herself, in 2008. “I attribute an enormous amount of whatever success I’ve been able to attain directly because of how I saw him operate,” the producer Craig Perry, another Rudin acolyte, said in 2005. “Does he yell? Sure. Do I yell? Sure.” Rudin’s workplace behavior may have been an open secret, but open secrets eventually build cultures—in this case, one where tolerating mistreatment is a fundamental ingredient for success. And that culture was reflected in the press: Many stories about Rudin casually downplayed or reframed his nastiness. Tempestuousness was excused as ‘behind-the-scenes excesses of passion.'”

Justine Bateman: “I think that whole phrase, ‘brave,’ is such bullshit. To me it says, ‘I’m so embarrassed for you. This is so brave.’ I fucking hate that term. No, I don’t think it’s brave at all. I’m just saying that we as a society somehow leapfrogged from ‘Wow, that plastic surgery is so extreme’ to ‘When are you getting your plastic surgery? Is it going to be at 20, or is it going to be at 40?’ It’s almost your duty now as a female to start cutting up your face. How did this thinking become so set in our society? How about just saying no?”

What A Brit Misses
—Discovering that you and your viewing partner had wildly different views about the merits of a film and knowing that a treat of discussing is about to unfold over several drinks.
—Discovering during the film that you and your viewing partner have equally eye-rolling disdain for something and anticipating picking over the cadaver afterwards.
—Discovering you and your viewing partner both loved what you watched and sitting in awe and ‘aw shucks’ at some of the best moments.
—Holding a new beloved’s hand to the point of discomfort.
—The drowning feeling of being sucked under into sleep in NFT1.
—Being absolutely slathered in a film, emerging alone into the night, carrying its mood with you.
—Blinking back into the light during a daytime show, realising how little time you’ve been away in actual hours.
—The magnetic connection between audiences that can cry and laugh together.

BAFTAs: Nomadland, Zhao, McDormand, Hopkins; Soul; Screenplays, Promising Young Woman, The Father; Editing, Sound of Metal; Cinematography, Nomadland; Another Round, Not In English; Youn Yuh-jung, Daniel Kaluuya; My Octopus Teacher; Score, Soul

While Shuttered During Pandemic, Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi’s Pay Rose to Nearly $7 Million in 2020

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show has played at Portland’s Clinton Street Theater every Saturday night for forty-three years. So, on March 15, 2020, when the theater was forced to close, one man was determined not to break the streak. For the next fifty-four Saturdays, Nathan Williams came to an empty theater to screen the film, sometimes with a friend, sometimes by himself…”

“You couldn’t, I think, find a better case for the prospects for experiment in popular culture than Sondheim’s work. His fondness for stage games is part of a theater tradition we might call “light modernism,” a merging of avant-garde strategies with traditions of popular entertainment. It stretches back to Cocteau’s ‘Parade’ (1917) and includes the work of Pirandello. Similarly, a trend in British theatre fused aspects of modern theatre (Pinter, Beckett, Ionesco) with the comedy of P. G. Wodehouse and ‘The Goon Show.’ Tom Stoppard’s ‘Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead ‘(1966) showed that what was ‘offstage’ in one story could constitute the amusingly doom-laden plot of another.”
Good Dr. Bordwell on Steven Sondheim At The Age Of 91

ArcLight Culver City Not Only Theater Facing Eviction