BY RON MWANGAGUHUNGA |
This Week's Best Online Film Writing: 'The Counselor' Splits Critics
A round up of this week's insightful commentary, debates, Twitter feuds and nice, long weekend reads on the subject of film, the industry and storytelling.
- Buzz/Backlash: David Thompson thinks Ridley Scott's The Counselor lacks clarity, plausibility, suspense and purpose.
- Manohla Dargis finds that there is "a clarity, solidity and stillness (the camera moves but does not tremble) to his images that augment the narrative's gravity and inexorable momentum."
- Since 1980 Woody Allen has been donating his papers to Princeton University's Department of Rare books and Special Collections. On display this week are original scripts, including Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and her Sisters and The Purple Rose of Cairo.
- "I first met Dennis Hopper on River's Edge, and Blue Velvet had not come out yet but he was really open and congenial and you know, it was cool to sit and have lunch with the guy," says Keanu Reeves in his Reddit AMA chat.
- A brief history of Deadline's Feud with The Hollywood Reporter.
- Bruce Lee, apparently, could "thrust his fingers through unopened cans of Coca-Cola," according to a robust Quora discussion of the martial arts film star.
- Here are seven signs that you are living in a Wes Anderson movie.
- A propos of the season: Hulu is teaming with established horror brand Fangoria for a new channel.
- Netflix is expanding to original movies. And next year they plan on doubling their investment in original series. @DavidPakman sums it up, "Netflix lessons: customer first, no ads, lots of choice, any device, any time, low price = wins."
- Alyssa Rosenberg thinks, however, that the future of Netflix is in TV and not in original films. Also: Ten reasons why today's TV is better than movies.
- A discussion about the new documentary I Am Divine about the late drag star Divine.
- "My father, John Marsellus Huston, was a director renowned for his adventurous style and audacious nature," writes Angelica Huston of her filmmaker dad.
- We're Here For a Good Time, Not a Long Time tells the story of the 15-year romance between filmmaker David Gledhill and his chronically ill partner Tracey Willkinson, who did not live to see the film made.
- Eighty short films into his career, British filmmaker Shane Meadows pens an essay on how to be a filmmaker.
- "(All is Lost) gives new meaning to the term minimalist," writes Richard Schickel, "and perhaps to the label 'action movie."
- Shekinah seeks to defang stereotypes of Hasidic women in Montreal.
- In another sign of the West's decline, Hollywood no longer dominates the box office in Japan, the third largest market in the world.
- Some good news: Alfonso Cuaron says he already knew about the scientific errors in Gravity. So, in your face Neil deGrasse Tyson!
- Vulture named the 100 most valuable stars. Meryl Streep was number 13, Johnny Depp was number 10.
- Grantland asks, rather earnestly, if Harvey Weinstein helps or hurts movies. But would we really want to exist in a world without Harvey?
- Gabriela Cowperthwait explains why she made Blackfish.
- Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz wants a Bluth movie on Netflix.
- The bizarre feud/slapfight between Abdellaif Kechich and his own cast continues apace, suspiciously. Further, Kechiche is attacking his own film, Blue is the Warmest Color, telling the French magazine Telerama, "the film shouldn't be released, it has been soiled too much ... The Palme D'Or had been a brief moment of happiness.; then I've felt humiliated, dishonored, I felt rejected, I live it like I'm cursed." The Gallic soul, you see, is a very complex thing.
- Lake Bell, who made a wonderful film about the glass ceiling in the movie voiceover business, shares life lessons.
