Having now completed the long journey from upstart/wunderkind to venerated elder statesman, Peter Bogdanovich has amassed a lengthy CV that includes a celebrated career directing pictures, an early post programming films at the Museum of Modern Art, teaching, writing and, not unlike his mentor, Orson Welles, taking up the odd acting job. His contribution to the cinema in 2018 was twofold. First, he made the documentary The Great Buster, an interview-heavy appreciation of the pantheon silent filmmaker, Buster Keaton. His other project this year was, by design, one that required vigilant self-effacement—that’s the long-awaited post-production and release of Orson Welles’s The […]
by Jaime Christley on Oct 5, 2018Lately, it seems that events are conspiring to make me look backwards. First of all, about two years ago, I was invited to donate my personal archives to the University of Michigan’s Screen Arts Mavericks & Makers Collection. It was an incredible honor to be joined with such illustrious company as Orson Welles, Robert Altman, John Sayles, Alan Rudolph, Nancy Savoca and, most recently, Jonathan Demme. But it was also a bit nerve-wracking to think that total strangers would be rummaging through my proverbial attic—a hoarder’s collection of film posters, correspondence (actual hardcopy letters, memos and mimeographs!), grosses and marketing […]
by Ira Deutchman on Sep 17, 2018I’ve always been mystified by the relative lack of attention and acclaim Orson Welles’ 1946 thriller The Stranger has received compared with the director’s better known efforts, since on just about every level it’s top-tier Welles. Perhaps Welles’ own denigration of the picture, which he saw as an impersonal assignment designed to restore his box-office credibility after The Magnificent Ambersons, is to blame. It’s a genre film, sure, but then so is Touch of Evil, which many Welles enthusiasts (myself included) consider to be every bit as important in the director’s oeuvre as Citizen Kane. The Stranger is actually a […]
by Jim Hemphill on Sep 5, 2017To finish off 2016, I’d like to round up some of the year’s best Blu-ray releases that I didn’t get a chance to cover in my weekly column. It was an exceptional year for physical media thanks to labels like Criterion, Twilight Time, Arrow, Kino Lorber, and Olive, all of which continue to license neglected titles from studio vaults and give them the first-class treatments they deserve. While the list below barely scratches the surface of the efforts of these companies and others, it contains what I consider to be the most essential discs of the year — movies that […]
by Jim Hemphill on Dec 30, 2016In this interview clip from a shelved Errol Morris project, businessman and now presidential candidate Donald Trump muses on the meanings of Orson Welles’ classic film, Citizen Kane. Trump doesn’t diverge from critical orthodoxy about the film, but it’s still interesting to hear him take away the standard lesson that money isn’t everything. Still, as Jason Kottke notes, Trump can’t just help himself from throwing in conversation-ending misogynistic aside. From Morris’s site: The Movie Movie, an aborted project, is based on the idea of taking Donald Trump, Mikhail Gorbachev and others and putting them in the movies they most admire. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 7, 2015In this short interview snippet, Mel Brooks holds forth about his experience working with Orson Welles on History of the World, Part I. What did Welles intend to spend his fee on? 100 Cuban cigars and Sevruga caviur – not Beluga, since Sevruga was good enough and half the price.
by Filmmaker Staff on Aug 24, 2015At first, I viewed the Indiegogo campaign to help finish Orson Welles’ last film as a desperate attempt to solve a troubled situation. I was hauling in all my feelings about the Kickstarter saturation that has infected indie film culture. Everyone and their mother is crowdfunding their films — now the late Orson Welles? It felt like a violation against his legacy and made me incredibly sad. After all of this time, Orson Welles still can’t raise money the “normal” way?! But now, after much thought and digging, I see the campaign as a triumphant way to actively and symbolically help […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Jun 11, 2015You’ve probably heard about the latest push to finally produce a finished, edited version of Orson Welles’ uncompleted final film, The Other Side of the Wind. In support of an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach have taped a video message urging you to just contribute already. Unusually for the famously controlling Anderson, he appears to have shot the video handheld selfie style.
by Filmmaker Staff on May 20, 2015Today would’ve been Orson Welles’ 100th birthday, so to commemorate here’s a new video essay made by Kevin B. Lee with critic/avowed Wellesian Jonathan Rosenbaum. This clip-heavy overview argues that it’s more productive to think of Welles as a successful independent filmmaker who sometimes used Hollywood equipment rather than a failed prodigy who got himself kicked out of the studio system. Along the way, Rosenbaum touches on Welles’ views on actors, dislike of Antonioni, the way he stages combat scenes as if from a child’s point of view, and much more.
by Filmmaker Staff on May 6, 2015This week’s round-up of suggested reading is all film-related for a change: • The China Digital Times conducts a long, fascinating interview with Paul Pickowicz, an authority on Chinese cinema who talks about studying film in China from 1982-83 as an “unwelcome guest,” shifting trends in national anxieties as expressed on-screen through the decades, how long-dead political affiliations shape the government’s choice of which films from pre-1949 to promote as canonical, and much more. It may be the most interesting film-related thing I’ve read all week. • Kurmanzhan Datka: Queen of the Mountains, a Kyrgyzstani epic about a 19th-century hero, […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 21, 2014