What was it W. B. Yeats wrote, that line Joan Didion lifted and twisted in her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” about West Coast chaos in 1967? Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. That’s how it felt on Thursday, a few minutes before lunch with some seasoned film executive-friends at the Academy Museum (Salad Niçoise
Controversial
Where did everybody go? They certainly weren’t watching the Friday night Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony. The audience dropped to about 17 million, down 37 percent from 26.5 million viewers for the Rio de Janeiro opening in 2016. (Though Saturday was better.) We know they weren’t at the movies. The box-office dropped 25 percent from last
Will the movies ever let religion back into the mainstream? It doesn’t seem likely, given the secular bent of most critics, festivals, and film awards. But the question could certainly occur to any thoughtful viewer of Marco Pontecorvo’s Fátima, which is set for release by Picturehouse in theaters and via PVOD on Aug. 28. The
Suddenly, 2020 is a year of imponderables. Will there be a Cannes Film Festival? Given the coronavirus-induced cancellation of SXSW, MipTV, and the AFI Life Achievement Gala, who knows? Is Marvel’s Black Widow the big spring-summer hit, now that No Time To Die is bumped to November? Maybe, if an April/May release still looks wise
If any good is to come of the coronavirus outbreak, and just now it is hard to see even a glimmer of good, we might consider this: The media will have a shot at redemption. Japan is closing its schools. Saudi Arabia has put Umrah on hold. Cruise ships are dead in the water. And
A scene that featured the first same-sex kiss in Star Wars franchise history has been cut in Singapore, Deadline has confirmed. In Singapore, gay sex is illegal and the government does not recognize same-sex marriage. A spokesperson for the country’s media authority the Infocomm Media Development Authority told the BBC that the scene was removed
The upcoming release in China of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood has been halted, sources on the ground have confirmed to us. The film was set to debut in the country next Friday (October 25) after being approved last month. Beijing-based Bona Film Group, which was an equity investor on the movie,
EXCLUSIVE: Amid concerns about potential violent situations, the opening weekend of Warner Bros’ controversial Joker in New York City will see an increased police presence both in and out of uniform. Earlier this week, the NYPD’s Chief of Patrol Rodney Harrison told officers that the department plans to visibly station cops at theaters showing the
Universal is putting the brakes on the marketing of their Blumhouse release The Hunt in the wake of recent mass shootings which have taken the lives of 34 people in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and Gilroy, California. “Out of sensitivity to the attention on the country’s recent shooting tragedies, Universal Pictures and the filmmakers of The Hunt
Having brain-screamed at yet another driver blowing through a stop sign at 30 miles per hour in my quiet, child-filled residential neighborhood, I got to wondering: Whatever happened to Garp? Released 37 years ago, on in the summer of 1982, George Roy Hill’s film version of John Irving’s novel The World According to Garp seemed to