Tag: film

The Last Inkling

The literary world owes a tremendous debt to Christopher Tolkien, who has remained faithful to his father’s vision to the very end:

In 1975, Christopher Tolkien left his fellowship at New College, Oxford, to edit his late father’s massive legendarium. The prospect was daunting. The 50-year-old medievalist found himself confronted with 70 boxes of unpublished work. Thousands of pages of notes and fragments and poems, some dating back more than six decades, were stuffed haphazardly into the boxes. Handwritten texts were hurriedly scrawled in pencil and annotated with a jumble of notes and corrections. One early story was drafted in a high school exercise book.

A large portion of the archive concerned the history of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional world, Middle-earth. The notes contained a broader picture of a universe only hinted at in Tolkien’s two bestselling novels, The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55). Tolkien had intended to bring that picture to light in a lengthy, solemn history going back to creation itself, but he died before completing a final, coherent version.

Christopher took it upon himself to edit that book, which was published in 1977 as The Silmarillion. He then turned to another project drawn from his father’s papers, then another—ultimately publishing poetry, academic works, fiction, and a 12-volume history of the creation of Middle-earth. The Fall of Gondolin, published in August, is the 25th posthumous book Christopher Tolkien has produced from his father’s archives.

Now, after more than 40 years, at the age of 94, Christopher Tolkien has laid down his editor’s pen, having completed a great labor of quiet, scholastic commitment to his father’s vision. It is the concluding public act of a gentleman and scholar, the last member of a club that became a pivotal part of 20th-century literature: the Inklings. It is the end of an era.

I have little doubt that we will see Amazon proceed to finish the process of convergence and corruption that Peter Jackson started. But thanks to Christopher Tolkien, the original vision will survive in the one medium capable of surviving the passage of time, the written word.

UPDATE: Change that “little doubt” to “no doubt”.

Amazon’s big Middle-earth-set show based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien is slowly moving forward. During this week’s Television Critics Association press tour, the company says that it has brought on two writers, JD Payne and Patrick McKay, to write and develop the series. The two writers are relative newcomers: both worked on the original script for Star Trek: Beyond, were part of the writer’s room for Godzilla vs. Kong, and are writing the upcoming sequel to Star Trek: Beyond.

No wonder movies are so horrifically bad these days. Remember, this is an industry so infested with Dunning-Kruger syndrome that when they had one of the greatest American writers and one of the greatest English writers at their disposal, they didn’t bother to have either of them write a screenplay. Because what did F. Scott Fitzgerald and P.G. Wodehouse know about storytelling, right?

Not even a little surprised

I never watched more than a few minutes of any movie from this series, but I picked up a fairly negative vibe from it even in passing. CDAN talks about what was apparently going on behind the scenes while it was being made.

He actually has a chance to be more famous outside of acting in his current career than he ever did acting, despite being in such a huge franchise. He was talking to an interviewer about his new profession and the interviewer asked the former actor why he chose the new profession. The former actor said it was because on the set of the franchise he was scared everyday of getting molested or raped by many of the older men that were on the set. He said this was especially true in the first few films where you learned really quickly not to walk around certain areas of a set or to wander too far away from other people. There were just too many men there who loved nothing more than dragging some 10 year old boy somewhere for 20 minutes and threatening to hit him or get him kicked off the movie if he told anyone. Our former actor said there were only a few older actors who took part, but they were some of the worst. An actor would tell a crew member and the crew member would grab the boy and hold him for the actor and then often the crew member would take a turn too. The former actor said some of the tween girls on the set were bothered, but as far as he knows, none were raped liked the boys. Once the actors got to be a certain age, they could fight or were big enough to get the men to back off, but with new young boys coming in for every film, it was a never ending cycle of sexual abuse and no one did anything to stop it.

Go there to learn which huge franchise it allegedly was.

Celebrity crackdown in China

This policy limiting celebrity compensation is very far from the worst idea I have ever heard, particularly in an increasingly post-scarcity environment.

Chinese broadcasters and online entertainment sites should curb the amount of screen time given to celebrities, the country’s television regulator announced.

The new directive aims to crack down on celebrity hype, fake audience and click-through rates for a healthy growth of the industry, according to a statement issued by the National Radio and Television Administration on Friday. The statement by the radio and television watchdog also restated a commitment made by television and film companies that the salaries of all performers must not exceed 40 per cent of the total production cost while leading actors will have their pay capped at 70 per cent of total wages for the entire cast.

One of the reasons the shadowy evils of Hollywood are so powerful is their ability to gatekeep the money and fame they dole out to the desperate. Measures such as these being enacted by China will not eliminate the problem, but it will reduce some of its effects. And they’re pretty tame considering that a headline star can still be paid more than a quarter of the total budget.

It’s going to be interesting to see how China’s growing influence in the film industry modifies its practices.

You can’t stop The Legend

You can’t even hope to contain him:

Prolific comic book creator Chuck Dixon and the creator of Bane will see his novel series based on Levon Cade adapted to television by Sylvester Stallone’s Balboa Productions. The Levon Cade series follows Levon Cade, a former Marine, who became a construction worker. Cade eventually becomes a mercenary and metes out vigilante justice. The first book Levon’s Trade sees Cade hunt for a missing college student and uncover a vast criminal conspiracy.

This will not be the only news on the TV/movie front this month. Stay tuned….

Insufficient inclusivity

The King in the North slams Marvel’s toxic heterosexuality:

Kit Harington has slammed Marvel for its lack of gay actors.

The 31-year-old star – who is best-known for his role in Game Of Thrones – has called on the studio to take a lead on the issue of diversity.

‘There’s a big problem with masculinity and homosexuality that they can’t somehow go hand in hand,’ the star told Variety magazine.

‘That we can’t have someone in a Marvel movie who’s gay in real life and plays some super hero. I mean, when is that going to happen?’ he added.

I couldn’t agree more. I think Marvel should retcon all its superheroes and make them all gay, transgender handicapable individuals of color.  Diversity is strength! Fat is beautiful!

A meager ONE or TWO LGBTP characters is NOT enough, Mr. Feig!

Also, LISTEN TO DAVID BAUTISTA! Bring back James Gunn!

Everyone knew

Screenwriter Scott Rosenberg admits that everyone in Hollywood knew about Harvey Weinstein:

Let’s be perfectly clear about one thing:

Everybody-fucking-knew.

Not that he was raping.
No, that we never heard.
But we were aware of a certain pattern of overly-aggressive behavior that was rather dreadful.
We knew about the man’s hunger; his fervor; his appetite.
There was nothing secret about this voracious rapacity; like a gluttonous ogre out of the Brothers Grimm.
All couched in vague promises of potential movie roles.
(and, it should be noted: there were many who actually succumbed to his bulky charms. Willingly. Which surely must have only impelled him to cast his fetid net even wider).

But like I said: everybody-fucking-knew.

And to me, if Harvey’s behavior is the most reprehensible thing one can imagine, a not-so-distant second is the current flood of sanctimonious denial and condemnation that now crashes upon these shores of rectitude in gloppy tides of bullshit righteousness.

Because everybody-fucking-knew.

And do you know how I am sure this is true?
Because I was there.
And I saw you.
And I talked about it with you.
You, the big producers; you, the big directors; you, the big agents; you, the big financiers.
And you, the big rival studio chiefs; you, the big actors; you, the big actresses; you, the big models.
You, the big journalists; you, the big screenwriters; you, the big rock stars; you, the big restaurateurs; you, the big politicians.

I saw you.
All of you.
God help me, I was there with you.

There is one problem with condemning the Scott Rosenberg’s of the world. If the women didn’t speak up, and if so many of them were willing to make that trade, why was anyone else obligated to do so? It’s not as if Harvey Weinstein had any less power over the careers of the Rosenbergs of the world.

Actors ran interference for Weinstein

The sudden downfall of Harvey Weinstein is merely the very tip of the Hollywood iceberg. And it’s a really big iceberg of moral sewage and corruption:

In 2004, I was still a fairly new reporter at The New York Times when I got the green light to look into oft-repeated allegations of sexual misconduct by Weinstein. It was believed that many occurred in Europe during festivals and other business trips there.

I traveled to Rome and tracked down the man who held the plum position of running Miramax Italy. According to multiple accounts, he had no film experience and his real job was to take care of Weinstein’s women needs, among other things.

As head of Miramax Italy in 2003 and 2004, Fabrizio Lombardo was paid $400,000 for less than a year of employment. He was on the payroll of Miramax and thus the Walt Disney Company, which had bought the indie studio in 1993.

I had people on the record telling me Lombardo knew nothing about film, and others citing evenings he organized with Russian escorts.

At the time, he denied that he was on the payroll to help Weinstein with favors. From the story: “Reached in Italy, Mr. Lombardo declined to comment on the circumstances of his leaving Miramax or Ricucci, saying they were legal matters being handled by lawyers. ‘I am very proud of what we achieved at Miramax here in Italy,’ he said of his work for the film company. ‘It cannot be that they hired me because I’m a friend.’”

I also tracked down a woman in London who had been paid off after an unwanted sexual encounter with Weinstein. She was terrified to speak because of her non-disclosure agreement, but at least we had evidence of a pay-off.

The story I reported never ran.

After intense pressure from Weinstein, which included having Matt Damon and Russell Crowe call me directly to vouch for Lombardo and unknown discussions well above my head at the Times, the story was gutted.

Russell Crowe is hardly a surprise, but suddenly Matt Damon doesn’t look like such a good guy, does he? Read the whole thing, there are more details at the link. There should be no slacking off on the attention given to this issue, as it is a promising opportunity in the cultural war, especially given the way in which Hollywood is used as Satan’s pulpit.

Good riddance

The rocks are being overturned, one by one:

BREAKING: The Weinstein Co. board of directors announces that Harvey Weinstein is terminated, effective immediately.

Of course, it took three directors resigning before they realized they would have to take it seriously. It will be informative to see who tries to rehabilitate him.

There are also rumors that Weinstein is only the first, and the least important, Hollywood figure who will be taken down.

Milo reviews Silenced

He gives himself 10 out of 10. And, he also happens to mention, as a brief aside, Mike Cernovich’s film isn’t bad either:

I feel compelled to set aside my trademark modesty in order to review Silenced, a new documentary in which I briefly appear. To get the most important thing out of the way, I rate my performance 10 MILOs out of 10.

Silenced was crowdfunded by producer and Twitter celebrity Mike Cernovich and director Loren Feldman to document the state of free speech in America. The timing couldn’t be better, as we’ve just witnessed Twitter attempting to purge the alt-right and various libertarian and conservative personalities from its platform as revenge for Donald Trump’s victory.

Several of the people who appear in Silenced were targeted in the purge, including Pax Dickinson and the pseudonymous Ricky Vaughn.

Silenced is a different type of documentary to Cassie Jaye’s The Red Pill, which I also examined recently. Jay’s movie told a specific story: her exploration and eventual sympathy with the men’s rights movement. Silenced takes a different approach, relying on its interview subjects to make the case for free speech.

Mike and Loren did a solid and professional job on an important subject, and they’ve paved the way for the Right to start fighting the culture war on a new front: film. Thanks very much to all of the VFM and Dread Ilk who helped them do it!

I’m in it too, by the way. I give myself 3 MILOs. Frankly, it was bordering on the miraculous that Loren managed to figure out a way to get me in there at all.