THE LION ONCE SWALLOWED UA, BUT IT’S PEDIGREE NEVER WENT AWAY

Last week, I gave special attention to Sony’s purchase of MGM and how I hoped they wouldn’t retire the iconic Lion banner which represents remembrances of Hollywood past. While concentrating on the history and importance of MGM, I didn’t mean to neglect its subsidiary studio which, by all accounts, seems destined to disappear, United Artists.

In one of the best “Critic’s Notebooks” I’ve read in a long time in the New York Times (therefore obviously not written by A.O. Scott), Dave Kehr examines the history and potential future of the formerly great UA. Sadly, this story was on the Saturday “The Arts” page and not the Sunday “Arts & Leisure” section, so maybe you missed it. Kehr actually lays out a reasonable suggestion to Sony regarding how to keep all the studio labels alive and give them individual purposes and identities. Kehr writes:

United Artists could once again become … a haven for American auteurs like Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino and Alexander Payne, filmmakers who work on a larger canvas than the average indie production but who don’t easily fit into a mainstream studio’s release slate of comic book movies and science fiction fantasies. They are the Wilders, Hustons and Frankenheimers of today, and hey deserve a home as cozy and congenial as the one United Artists provided for their predecessors.

I really couldn’t have said it better myself. Now if only someone at Sony is reading ….