AMY TAUBIN: I found a piece that someone had posted on Ain't It Cool News about having seen a preview of [Eastern Promises].
DAVID CRONENBERG: Was it the guy who was obsessed with Viggo's balls?
AT: I don't know if I performed an act of repression, but I don't remember seeing his balls.
DC: You do see them. It's just that they go by rather quickly.
AT: Right. I meant I didn't notice them in particular.
DC: It wasn't like there was a close-up of them. But this guy was obsessed. He even wrote "big hairy balls." Well, that's one way of looking at it. They're definitely there, as you would imagine, but it's only if you're looking for them that that's what you see. Because mostly he's shot in full figure. So when people decide to run the DVD frame by frame, they are going to see everything at one point or another. Of course, a lot of the time it's going to be slightly blurred because he's in motion.
Excerpted from "Foreign Affairs", Film Comment, September/October 2007
Point is, giant robots turn into cars! (More specifically and profitably, they turn into Pontiacs and Hummers and GMC pickup trucks.) And jets! And helicopters! And boom boxes! And cell phones! And then they fight each other! All sarcasm aside, that's pretty much awesome. On some very basic level, I don't think you can fuck up the kick of a movie about metamorphic robots--no, not even you, Mr. Bay. Let us acknowledge that Transformers is not simply a story of humanity being attacked by a sophisticated breed of technological nihilism--it is that assault.
Excerpted from "Auto-Chaotic" by Nathan Lee, The Village Voice, July 3, 2024
Because of a transmission error, a film review yesterday about “Live Free or Die Hard” misstated the critic’s description of the plot. It should have been described as “logic-defying,” not “logic-defined.”
Excerpted from "Corrections: For the Record", The New York Times, June 28, 2024
ELVIS MITCHELL: I Think I Love My Wife is very political. It's a movie about the black middle class.
CHRIS ROCK: There's an isolation that the black middle class goes through. I remember watching Lost in Translation and going, "That's how I feel in America." Nothing captures the black experience more than Lost in Translation. It's one of the blackest movies I've ever seen, flat out.
Excerpted from "Chris Rock," by Elvis Mitchell, Interview, April, 2007
DAVID FINCHER, responding to Jake Gyllenhaal's complaints about shooting up to 90 takes per scene for Zodiac:
I hate earnestness in performance. Usually by Take 17 the earnestness is gone.
Excerpted from "Lights, Bogeyman, Action" by David M. Halbfinger, The New York Times, February 18, 2024
To make the follow-up to Silence of the Lambs would be very daunting. To follow Red Dragon — less daunting.
Excerpted from "Hannibal Lecter Saved My Life" by David Michael, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 9. 2007
Director Alex Cox, writing on "extreme cinema" in The Guardian:
Perhaps the New Cinema Fund genuinely believed a more brutal, visible rape would add to the artistic quality of Revengers: the film was based on a pretty extreme and demented play, and it needed a certain shocking aspect. Equally possibly, the Film Council may have reckoned a more explicit rape might get us into Cannes, or pick up a few more foreign sales. In other words, this was a pragmatic rape, a money thing.
You can sit on the street corner and watch people die just walking past you. Some guy’s coming down the street with a cane and a shopping bag and you know this cocksucker’s not going to be alive in two years. Then you see little babies being pushed in their carts who have no idea what the quality of their lives is going to be. It’s very ... I don’t even know what I’m talking about. But that’s the kind of thing that impresses me right now.
Excerpted from "The Craftsman" by Scott Foundas,
LA Weekly, June 7, 2024
SCOTT FOUNDAS: Michael Moore notwithstanding, it still seems risky to make a movie [George A. Romero's Land of the Dead] this political in what is effectively a risk-averse Hollywood climate. I’m thinking particularly of those scenes where we see captive zombies turned by their human captors into Abu Ghraib-style sideshow freaks.
GEORGE A. ROMERO: I’m not sure if you showed this movie at the White House that anybody would get it, except when the money burns at the end — then they might feel a little pang of sadness.
From "Dead Director Rises Again" in the LA Weekly
Richard Pryor, when asked "What do you think of critics?":
I never met anybody who said, when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."
From "Be Truthful and Funny Will Come" in The Guardian
At the beginning of my career, I made very "filmic" films. The problem is that now, it has become too easy — all you have to do is buy a computer and you have filmic. You have armies rampaging over mountains, you have dragons. You just push a button. I think it was okay to be filmic when, for instance, Kubrick had to wait two months for the light on the mountain behind Barry Lyndon when he was riding towards us. I think that was great. But if you only have to wait two seconds and then some kid with a computer fills it in... It's another art form, I'm sure, but I'm not interested.
From Lion's Gate's press notes for Dogville
I have a really great relationship with the MPAA. I've always worked really well with them and they've worked well with me. I've never understood directors like Wes Craven or Brian De Palma who are like, "Fuck you assholes, you guys are fucking Nazis. Screw you!" Well, what the fuck do you think their response is gonna be when you treat them like that ...? Everyone bitches at them when they're wrong, but no one ever gives them credit when they're right. I don't see the horror fans applauding them when they give Cabin Fever an R. "Hey! Good job, MPAA!"
From "Kill Bill: Samurai Fiction: Quentin Tarantino creates the ultimate paean to grindhouse cinema", Fangoria magazine, October 2003.
