Category: media

Okay, not the precious bodily fluids obsession, and not the part about Slim Pickens astride a nuclear missile, but beyond that …

David O. Russell (I ♥ Huckabees, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle) and scriptwriter Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) have been commissioned for 13 episodes of “an upstairs/downstairs soap centered on a private country club.” (And this will be for network television rather than cable.)

“In the documentaries [about the West Memphis Three] many of the characters implicate themselves by virtue of the fact that they’re performing for a documentary camera … And I felt that dramatically, using professional actors you could actually achieve a degree of naturalism that maybe in a documentary [you can’t, because] there’s always an agenda.” (audio)

The director says he gave copies of The Hateful Eight‘s script to three actors (yes, he names names), one of whom shared it with an agent who leaked it. And Tarantino is furious.

Earlier this month, Manohla Dargis wrote: “Take a moment and consider whether flooding theaters with titles is good for movies and moviegoers alike.” Tim Wu counters: “Dargis is wrong: making lots of films to yield a few hits is not dangerous to independent film but exactly how independent film sustains itself – and ultimately how it improves Hollywood.”

Richard Brody: “Being a critic used to mean, basically, waiting for a movie to be released theatrically in one’s city, going to a screening of that film, and writing a review that got published on or near the time of that release.” Not anymore.

The man was watching Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit at an AMC theatre in Columbus on Saturday. Authorities did not identify him.

“During the last 12 months, “crowdfunding” entered the popular lexicon as it expanded from funding DIY endeavors to multimillion-dollar celebrity projects and became one of the most exciting — and polarizing — developments in pop culture.”

Says the producer of Quentin Tarantino’s movies, “I have to just choose movies that aren’t violent – or as violent as they used to be. … I can’t continue to do that. The change starts here. It has already.” (video)

“The question is, of course, how Harvey is going to reconcile being in business with Tarantino. The filmmaker has made a lot of money for the company with violent fare. … Weinstein is trying to tip the scales; to shift Hollywood from glorifying violence in films, to showing the true human cost and destructiveness of it.”