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The sled known as Rosebud — or at least one of the original red sleds created for the 1941 Orson Welles masterpiece Citizen Kane — has just sold for $14.75 million at auction.

The pine hardwood prop, which bears its original paint but signs of production use, wear and removed rails likely sacrificed to wartime scrap drives, has belonged to director Joe Dante since 1984. While he was directing Explorers (1985), it was given to him by someone clearing out a portion of the Paramount lot that once served as the home of Rko Pictures.

“One of the crew who knew I was a fan of vintage films came to me with a wood prop and said, ‘They’re throwing out all of this stuff. You might want this,’” Dante recalled in a recent interview. “I’m not sure he knew what the sled was, but he must have had some inkling, or why else would he have asked me?...

After making what many people cite as the greatest film ever made, "Citizen Kane" (1941), multi-talented actor, writer, director and producer Orson Welles struggled to live up to the success he achieved when he was just 26 years old. Yet seen today, many of the films he made afterwards have attained a similar acclaim. Let's take a look back at all 13 of his completed feature films as a director, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1915, Welles first came to prominence as a stage director, mounting groundbreaking productions of "Macbeth," "Dr. Faustus," and "The Cradle Will Rock" before forming his own repertory company, The Mercury Theater. In addition to Welles, the Mercury Theater Players included Joseph Cotten, Ray Collins, Agnes Moorhead, Everett Sloane, George Coulouris, Norman Lloyd, Martin Gabel and Paul Stewart, many of whom would go onto appear in the director's films.

It was the Mercury Theater's transition into radio that brought them the most acclaim.

Alberto De Martino’s The Antichrist is easy to dismiss as a shameless rip-off of The Exorcist. But that would be to diminish the stylistic verve that De Martino brings to the project. In fact, aside from the more overt story elements relating to the occult, De Martino’s direction owes more to other Euro contemporaries like Walerian Borowczyk and Sergio Martino than to William Friedkin.

Densely plotted, if overlong, The Antichrist proves more enamored with matters of sexual repression than demonic possession. As the film opens, Ippolita (Carla Gravina) attends a madhouse religious ceremony—featuring snakes, writhing bodies, and a possessed man (Ernesto Colli) who hurls himself from a cliff to his death—alongside her aristocratic father (Mel Ferrer), in an effort to try and walk again. She’s been paralyzed since she was 12, the result of a car accident that also killed her mother. Needless to say, her...

Citizen Kane follows the rise and fall of ambitious publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, and its ending brings the story back to the start in a well-structured mystery narrative. The lead character, played by Orson Welles, who also directed the 1941 feature, dies at the beginning of the plot, breathing his last breath as he says the ominous word "rosebud." His last word leads to an investigation deep into his scandalous life, but only the film's audience is treated to a definitive, albeit still puzzling answer.

Called the greatest movie ever made, Citizen Kane plays out as a pseudo-biopic as viewers are led through Kane's entire life story, from his childhood in Colorado to his rise as a yellow journalism tycoon and a politician in New York, eventually building up to his demise at his colossal mansion, Xanadu. The way “rosebud” links the beginning to the end was quite a unique plot point in its time,...

Hey everyone! We’re back with a whole new batch of home media releases that will be arriving on Tuesday, and it includes quite an eclectic array of titles that genre fans are going to want to check out. If you missed out on the previous edition, Arrow is releasing the Standard Special Edition of Legend this week which is absolutely worth checking out, and for all you cult film fans, Severin Films is showing some love to Don’t Go Into the House with their Special Edition presentation.

Kino Lorber is resurrecting Alberto De Martino’s The Antichrist on Blu-ray this Tuesday, and if you’re looking to catch up on some recent horror, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City and Student Body are both being released on multiple formats as well.

Other releases for February 8th include Santo: El Enmascarado De Plata Box Set, Bloody Mary, Hiruko the Goblin,...

A thousand releases down the line, Criterion gives us a special edition of the most creatively brilliant & innovative movie in history, as the label debuts selected 4K releases. It’s a four-disc set, with three Blu-rays that hold a huge quantity of well-chosen and well-produced extras. What can be said about Kane that hasn’t been debated decades ago? Our Declaration of Principles is to just try and tell the truth: we try a ‘civilian’ approach, sketching the film’s wonderments without assuming the reader is already a true believer in the Cinema God Orson Welles. Which Welles definitely is.

Citizen Kane 4K

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1104

1941 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 119 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 23, 2021 / 47.96

Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, Everett Sloane, William Alland, Paul Stewart, George Coulouris, Fortunio Bonanova.

Cinematography: Gregg Toland...

Veteran filmmakers Michael Relph and Basil Dearden try a hip ‘n’ flip costume comedy about an 1899 consortium that’s the equivalent of Murder Inc.: Killings for hire done with veddy proper civility and good taste. The charming Oliver Reed and Diana Rigg lead a notable cast — Telly Savalas, Curd Jürgens, Philippe Noiret, Beryl Reid, Clive Revill — through mayhem-filled chases in several European capitals. Tossed off in tongue-in-cheek style, it’s shallow but cute, and if you like the stars it can be a lark. Its saving grace is the spirited Ms. Rigg.

The Assassination Bureau

Region-Free Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 86

1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 110 min. / The Assassination Bureau Limited / Street Date October 29, 2021 / Available from [Imprint] or Amazon /

Starring: Oliver Reed, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Curd Jürgens, Philippe Noiret, Warren Mitchell, Beryl Reid, Clive Revill, Kenneth Griffith, Vernon Dobtcheff, Annabella Incontrera, Jess Conrad, George Coulouris.

Cinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth

Art Director: Michael Relph

Film...

Norman Lloyd was the last one standing. For a long time, it looked like an extended, slow-motion foot-race between Norman and Olivia de Havilland as to who would be the final significant figure from Hollywood’s golden age to pass from Earth to the eternal cinematic firmament. But Olivia left us in July of last year at 104, and now Norman, two years older, has joined all the others who helped make Hollywood what it was. The parade has now definitively, conclusively, gone by.

In a life bracketed by two pandemics, the Spanish flu of 1918-20 and the ongoing Covid onslaught, this Jersey and Brooklyn boy born into modest circumstances first strode onto the New York stage in 1932, was the last surviving member of Orson Welles’ and John Houseman’s Mercury Theater and made his startling film debut in 1942 as the villain who fell from the top of the Statue of...

Citizen Kane is no longer the perfect movie, at least according to Rotten Tomatoes. As the Orson Welles classic is universally acclaimed and widely considered to be among the greatest movies of all time, it's long held a perfect 100% Certified Fresh score on the review aggregator website. After Rotten Tomatoes recently added a negative 80-year-old review to the 115 positive reviews, the score has since dropped to 99%.

The negative Citizen Kane review was written for the Chicago by Mae Tinée, likely a pseudonym as a play on the word "matinee." The headline for the review reads, "Citizen Kane Fails to Impress Critic as Greatest Ever Filmed." Tinée (if that is her real name) goes on to critique the classic movie in ways most other reviewers hadn't.

"It's interesting. It's different," Tinée writes. "In fact, it's bizarre enough to become a museum piece. But its sacrifice of simplicity to eccentricity robs it...

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By Doug Oswald

A French soldier and spy is sent on a mission to discover the location of a secret German U-Boat base in “Assignment in Brittany,” released on DVD as part of the Warner Archive Collection. Jean-Pierre Aumont plays Captain Pierre Metard, a member of the Free French army serving in Great Britain. He has an uncanny resemblance to a French farmer and soldier, Corporal Bertrand Corlay, a man with Nazi ties who ends up in a British hospital. The British devise a scheme where Pierre impersonates Bertrand and returns home to search out the U-Boat base. He spends weeks studying and memorizing everything known about Bertrand before being flown to and dropped by parachute in to Brittany and makes his way on foot to Bertrand’s family farm.

He runs in to two British soldiers who escaped from a...

“Adventure And Treachery”

By Raymond Benson

Sir Carol Reed made many fine British films, among them Odd Man Out and The Third Man in the 1940s, and the Oscar-winning Oliver! in the 60s… but among his lesser known pictures from the 1950s sits this gem of an adventure yarn based on Joseph Conrad’s novel, An Outcast of the Islands, first published in 1896.

While many interiors were filmed at Shepperton Studios, much of the picture was made on location in Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), a British colony at the time. That alone provided the contemporary audience with a view of an exotic world that few had seen. Given that the tale is a period piece that takes place in the late 1800s, Outcast of the Islands is truly of a time and place along the lines of the 1935 version of Mutiny on the Bounty, but on a smaller scale.

Lust-filled treachery in the steaming tropics! He dared to love a cannibal empress! Taglines like that suggest that it wasn’t easy to sell Carol Reed’s phenomenally good adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s classic, a tale of human self-degradation and malevolence in the tropics. Long difficult to see, it’s finally here to dazzle a generation that might appreciate its superb performances. Forget Lord Jim and Colonel Kurtz. Trevor Howard’s back-stabbing Peter Willems shows us the price of total betrayal: permanent banishment from humanity.

Outcast of the Islands

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1951 / B&w / 1:37 flat / 100 93 min. / Street Date April 29, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Trevor Howard, Ralph Richardson, Robert Morley, Wendy Hiller, Aissa, George Coulouris, Tamine, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Peter Illing, Betty Ann Davies, Frederick Valk, A.V. Bramble, Marne Maitland, James Kenney, Annabel Morley.

Cinematography: Edward Scaife, John Wilcox

Production Design: Vincent Korda

Second Unit Director: Guy Hamilton...

“That’s all he ever wanted out of life… was love. That’s the tragedy of Charles Foster Kane. You see, he just didn’t have any to give.”

Citizen Kane comes to life on the big screen Monday August 5th as part of the ‘Classics on the Loop’ series. Showtimes are 4pm and 7pm. Admission is $7.A Facebook invite can be found Here

Citizen Kane (1941) Directed by Orson Welles Shown from left, front: George Coulouris, Buddy Swan; rear: Harry Shannon, Agnes Moorehead

Is Citizen Kane the greatest film ever made? On a technical level, it may as well be. It’s at least the most groundbreaking film ever made. On a storytelling level, it’s an amazing achievement itself in that Orson Welles used such avant-garde techniques yet maintained an engrossing story. It’s a film full of contradictions and works perfectly because of them. Its over-the-top yet subtle,...

Orson Welles would’ve celebrated his 104th birthday on May 6, 2019. After making what many people cite as the greatest film ever made, “Citizen Kane” (1941), the multi-talented actor, writer, director and producer struggled to live up to the success he achieved when he was just 26 years old. Yet seen today, many of the films he made afterwards have attained a similar acclaim. In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at all 13 of his completed feature films as a director, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1915, Welles first came to prominence as a stage director, mounting groundbreaking productions of “Macbeth,” “Dr. Faustus,” and “The Cradle Will Rock” before forming his own repertory company, The Mercury Theater. In addition to Welles, the Mercury Theater Players included Joseph Cotten, Ray Collins, Agnes Moorhead, Everett Sloane, George Coulouris, Norman Lloyd, Martin Gabel and Paul Stewart, many of whom would go onto...

“Grand Hotel. Nazis come. Nazis go. Nothing ever happens.” That’s a paraphrase from 1932’s Grand Hotel, indicating that the hallowed halls once occupied by Greta Garbo are now overrun with Warner Bros. contract players. As defeat looms, German officers, crooks, fugitives and ordinary citizens fumble for a way to survive. Writer and fervent anti-fascist Alvah Bessie almost didn’t — he would later be politically scourged as a member of The Hollywood Ten. Get set for a soap opera with swastikas.

Hotel Berlin

DVD

The Warner Archive Collection

1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 98 min. / Street Date March 6, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Faye Emerson, Helmut Dantine, Raymond Massey, Andrea King, Peter Lorre, Alan Hale, George Coulouris, Henry Daniell, Peter Whitney, Helen Thimig, Steven Geray, Kurt Kreuger, Erwin Kalser, Torben Meyer, Jay Novello, Frank Reicher, John Wengraf.

Cinematography: Carl Guthrie

Film Editor: Frederick Richards

Original Music: Franz Waxman

Written by Alvah Bessie,...

In a sense, Arabesque (1966) is a sort of warmed-over rehash of Donen's earlier Charade (1963), which was a really nifty mock-Hitchcockian comedy thriller with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. The later film stars Gregory Peck, who's no Grant, and Sophia Loren, who isn't Hepburn but is Loren—which ain't nothing.Donen was reputedly highly unhappy with the script, despite being the movie's producer, and his cinematographer Christopher Challis records him saying that their only hope was to present the story in as stylish and eccentric a manner as possible: this, for the most part, they do. (A pretty-well identical tale is told of Sidney J. Furie and The Ipcress File, and the result is similar in each case: a pop-art expressionist fairyland London in which everyone is or might be a spy or double or treble agent.)The opening scene, in which George Coulouris is murdered at the optician with poisoned eyedrops,...

Edward G. Robinson uncovers another killer, but this time he’s after a Nazi mass murderer, not an insurance salesman. Orson Welles’ most conventional thriller is a masterpiece of style and judgment, with a good sense of time and place – and a lot of expressive shadows. How does this new Blu-ray shape up in comparison to earlier presentations?

The Stranger

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1946 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 95 min. / Street Date August 29, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, Orson Welles, Philip Merivale, Richard Long, Konstantin Shayne, Billy House.

Cinematography: Russell Metty

Production Design: Perry Ferguson

Art Direction: Albert S. D’Agostino

Film Editor: Ernest Nims

Original Music: Bronislau Kaper

Written by Anthony Veiller, Decla Dunning, Victor Trivas

Produced by Sam Spiegel

Directed by Orson Welles

Up pops Olive Films with another Blu-ray of Orson Welles’ impressive The Stranger, for the first time an HD scan...

Peter Cushing! Christopher Lee! Each is at the top of his game, playing competing collectors of occult incunabula — the kind that comes with a satanic curse, when the purloined item in question is the Skull Of The infamous, despicable and sharp-toothed Marquis De Sade! Freddie Francis directs up a storm in this amicable Amicus chiller: the mysterious skull-duggery is beautifully shot and edited, giving the horror scenes real Bite.

The Skull

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 83 min. / Street Date March 14, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Peter Cushing, Patrick Wymark, Nigel Green, Jill Bennett, Michael Gough, Ceorge Couloris, Christopher Lee.

Cinematography: John Wilcox

Art Direction: Bill Constable

Film Editor: Oswald Hafenrichter

Original Music: Elisabeth Lutyens

Written by Milton Subotsky from a story by Robert Bloch

Produced by Milton Subotsky, Max J. Rosenberg

Directed by Freddie Francis

Nine years ago Legend Films brought us a DVD of this 1965 horror item,...

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, two of the horror genre's greatest and classiest titans, star in The Skull, and Kino Lorber has revealed the special features and cover art for their upcoming Blu-ray and DVD release of the 1965 film.

From Kino Lorber Studio Classics: "Coming March 14th on DVD and Blu-ray!

The Skull (1965) with optional English subtitles

• Audio Commentary by Film Historian Tim Lucas

• Jonathan Rigby on The Skull" featurette (24:14)

• Kim Newman on The Skull" featurette (27:18)

• "Trailers From Hell" with Joe Dante

• Reversible Blu-ray Art

• Trailers"

Synopsis: "The skull of the Marquis de Sade has been taken from its grave, bringing terror to those who own it. Demonologist Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing) is eager to add the piece to his occult collection. Despite the warnings of a friend (Christopher Lee), he's got to have it. And does he ever get it.

"The Skull (1965) Starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee,...

Kino Lorber has announced a new Blu-ray and DVD release of 1965's The Skull, starring two of the horror genre's greatest and classiest titans: Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

While the Blu-ray / DVD cover art and special features for The Skull have not yet been revealed, we'll be sure to keep Daily Dead readers updated on further details. In the meantime, we have a look at Kino Lorber's official announcement below, as well as the film's poster and trailer. Will you be adding The Skull to your home media collection?

From Kino Lorber: "Coming Soon on DVD and Blu-ray! Bonus Features to be Announced Soon!

The Skull (1965) Starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Patrick Wymark, Jill Bennett, Nigel Green, Patrick Magee, Michael Gough, George Coulouris and Peter Woodthorpe - Based on story "The Skull of the Marquis de Sade" by Robert Bloch - Screenplay by Milton Subotsky - Directed...

Germany's Explosive Media company has a serious itch for American westerns, and they have a trio of new releases. One is a minor Hollywood classic with major graces, from the late 1950s. A second sees an American producer based in England filming in Italy with a rising international star, and for the third an established American star goes European  to stay in the game. The best thing for Yankee buyers? The discs are Region-free.

Gunman's Walk, Land Raiders, A Man Called Sledge Three Westerns from Explosive Media Blu-ray Separate Releases 1958-1970 / Color Starring Van Heflin, Tab Hunter; George Maharis, Telly Savalas; James Garner

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The majority of American studios now choose not to market their libraries for digital disc, and license them out instead. Collectors unwilling to settle for whatever's on Netflix or concerned about the permanence of Cloud Cinema, find themselves increasingly tempted by discs from Europe,...

Stars: Jill Haworth, Bryant Haliday, Dennis Price, George Coulouris, Anna Palk, William Lucas, Anthony Valentine, Jack Watson, Derek Fowlds, Derek Fowlds, Gary Hamilton, Candace Glendenning, Dennis Price, Robin Askwith, Seretta Wilson | Written by Jim O’Connolly, George Baxt | Directed by Jim O’Connolly

Set in deserted lighthouse on fog-shrouded Snape Island, the terror of the Tower of Evil begins when a nude, crazed woman slaughters a sailor who visits the island. When she is taken back to civilization, she is found to possess an ancient relic; and so the authorities mount an expedition to solve a mysterious series of psycho-sexual murders…

I distinctly remember the very first time I saw Tower of Evil, it was on British TV – around the same time as the classic BBC 2 Horror double bills, so around 1993-95 – and, as someone who equated British horror with the likes of Amicus and Hammer, seeing the gloriously...

Dolores Hart, Pamela Tiffin and Lois Nettleton are flight attendants aiming to snag three attractive, wealthy husbands right out of the air -- Karl Boehm, Hugh O'Brien and Karl Malden. There's more social comment in this 'coffee, tea or me' romantic comedy than can be found in a graduate thesis about the sexual habits of liberated stewardesses. And Hey, Frankie Avalon warbles the classy title tune! Come Fly with Me DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1963 / Color / 2:35 enhanced widescreen / 109 min. / Street Date June 30, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 18.49 Starring Dolores Hart, Hugh O'Brian, Karlheinz Bohm, Pamela Tiffin, Lois Nettleton, Karl Malden, Dawn Addams, Richard Wattis, Andrew Cruickshank, James Dobson, Lois Maxwell, John Crawford, Robert Easton, Maurice Marsac, George Coulouris, Ferdy Mayne. Cinematography Oswald Morris Film Editor Frank Clarke Original Music Lyn Murray Written by William Roberts from a book by Bernard Glemser Produced by Anatole De Grunwald Directed by Henry Levin

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

What?...

Stars: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Patrick Wymark, Jill Bennett, Nigel Green, Patrick Magee, Peter Woodthorpe, Michael Gough, George Coulouris | Written by Milton Subotsky | Directed by Freddie Francis

For fans of Hammer Horror films, Amicus was another studio that felt comfortably close to its style, yet just different enough to bring more diversity to your horror taste. With The Skull, Amicus brought together horror icons Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in yet another story of the dangers of the darker side of life…

The Skull sees Cushing star as Dr. Maitland a collector of strange and unusual artefacts. When he buys a skull said to be that of the Marquis De Sade, he ignores the warnings from fellow collector Sir Matthew Phillips (Christopher Lee) of the dangers of owning it. As the skull soon begins to take control of his mind, he soon realises the danger he has put himself and his wife in,...

Part I.

In 1963, Film Quarterly published an essay entitled “Circles and Squares.” It addressed the French auteur theory, introduced to America by The Village Voice’s Andrew Sarris. Auteurism holds that a film’s primary creator is its director; Sarris’s “Notes on the Auteur Theory” further distinguished auteurs as filmmakers with distinct, recurring styles. Challenging him was a California-based writer named Pauline Kael.

Kael attacked Sarris’s obsession with trivial links between filmmaker’s movies, whether repeated shots or thematic preoccupations. This led critics to overpraise directors’ lesser films, as when Jacques Rivette declared Howard Hawks’ Monkey Business a masterpiece. “It is an insult to an artist to praise his bad work along with his good; it indicates that you are incapable of judging either,” Kael wrote.

She criticized auteurist preoccupation with Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock, claiming critics “work embarrassingly hard trying to give some semblance of intellectual respectability to mindless,...

Paul Henreid: From Eleanor Parker to ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ (photo: Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker in ‘Between Two Worlds’) Paul Henreid returns this evening, as Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of July 2013. In Of Human Bondage (1946), he stars in the old Leslie Howard role: a clubfooted medical student who falls for a ruthless waitress (Eleanor Parker, in the old Bette Davis role). Next on TCM, Henreid and Eleanor Parker are reunited in Between Two Worlds (1944), in which passengers aboard an ocean liner wonder where they are and where the hell (or heaven or purgatory) they’re going. Hollywood Canteen (1944) is a near-plotless, all-star showcase for Warner Bros.’ talent, a World War II morale-boosting follow-up to that studio’s Thank Your Lucky Stars, released the previous year. Last of the Buccaneers (1950) and Pirates of Tripoli (1955) are B pirate movies. The former is an uninspired affair,...

Eleanor Parker Now on TCM Palms Springs area resident Eleanor Parker, who turns 91 next June 26, is Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of June. One of the best actresses of Hollywood’s studio era, Parker isn’t nearly as well-remembered today as she should be despite three Best Actress Academy Award nominations (Caged, 1950; Detective Story, 1951; Interrupted Melody, 1955), a number of box-office and/or critical hits, and a key role in one of the biggest blockbusters of all time (The Sound of Music). Hopefully, the 34 Eleanor Parker movies TCM will be showing each Monday this month — beginning tonight — will help to introduce the actress to a broader 21st-century audience. Eleanor Parker movies "When I am spotted somewhere it means that my characterizations haven’t covered up Eleanor Parker the person. I prefer it the other way around," Parker once said. In fact, the title of Doug McClelland’s 1989 Eleanor Parker bio,...

Warner Archive Collection 4th anniversary DVD / Blu-ray releases The Warner Archive Collection (aka Wac), which currently has a DVD / Blu-ray library consisting of approximately 1,500 titles, has just turned four. In celebration of its fourth anniversary, Wac is releasing with movies featuring the likes of Jane Powell, Eleanor Parker, and many more stars and filmmakers of yesteryear. (Pictured above: Greer Garson, Debbie Reynolds, Ricardo Montalban in the sentimental 1966 comedy / drama with music The Singing Nun.) For starters, Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds play siblings in Richard Thorpe's Athena (1954), whose supporting cast includes Edmund Purdom, Vic Damone, frequent Jerry Lewis foil Kathleen Freeman, Citizen Kane's Ray Collins, Tyrone Power's then-wife Linda Christian, former Mr. Universe and future Hercules Steve Reeves, veteran Louis Calhern, not to mention numerology, astrology, and vegetarianism. As per Wac's newsletter, the score by Hugh Martin and Martin Blane "gets a first ever Stereophonic Sound remix for this disc,...

'I cautiously feel a touch of parental pride in my young self'

The other day, an intelligent young woman told me she had just watched Bleak Moments, my first film. Didn't she find it too slow, I asked – like watching paint dry? Oh no, she had loved every second – it was gripping, moving and funny. The veteran actor George Coulouris (Thatcher the lawyer in Citizen Kane) was in the cast when the rehearsals began. After three days, he walked out. He hated it. He would have played the father of the two sisters, but they became orphans instead. When the film was released and favourably received, George graciously came to a screening. Ungraciously, he walked out after half an hour, the last I ever saw of him. He was 70, my age now, nearly. I was 28, somewhat younger than my sons today. Inevitably, there is much I could criticise in my quirky old 1971 relic.

Chicago – I have written about thousands of movies and yet I still feel daunted by addressing “Citizen Kane,” recently released in a stunning Ultimate Collector’s Edition Blu-ray for the 70th anniversary of what many still consider to be the best film of all time. What could I possibly add to the conversation? Pulitzer Prize winners have dissected the film down to every decision made by Orson Welles during its production. All I can tell you is that the movie has lost none of its power. It is still one of the most striking cinematic achievements of all time and the impressive Blu-ray box set does the film the justice it has long-deserved.

DVD Rating: 5.0/5.0

As I said, “Citizen Kane” is still mesmerizing. I watch it every few years and I go into it every time with the same trepidation — Will it hold up? Is it still powerful? Much to my amazement,...

Approaching Citizen Kane is like approaching the Mona Lisa or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Such are great works of art - they’re often encased in amber. And with whatever the innovations they’ve created or expanded upon, coming at them at a later time is often like solving a mystery – you know there’s a reason why they’re so important, but you have to understand the context. And then there’s the legacy of its writer/director/star Orson Welles. The man who directed the greatest film in cinema history only to be denied the chance to repeat himself. That’s a lot of baggage to sort through, so let’s unpack, shall we? Our review of Citizen Kane on Blu-ray follows after the jump. Welles stars as Charles Foster Kane. The film begins with the character’s death, uttering “Rosebud.” What that means the film hopes to understand.

Rank the week of September 13th’s Blu-ray and DVD new releases against the best films of all-time: New Releases Thor

(Blu-ray & DVD | PG13 | 2011)

Flickchart Ranking: #227

Win Percentage: 58%

Times Ranked: 18033

Top-20 Rankings: 90

Directed By: Kenneth Branagh

Starring: Chris Hemsworth • Natalie Portman • Anthony Hopkins • Jeremy Renner • Kat Dennings

Genres: Action • Adventure • Based-on-Comics • Comic-Book Superhero Film • Fantasy • Fantasy Adventure

Rank This Movie

Conan O’Brien Can’T Stop

(Blu-ray & DVD | Nr | 2011)

Flickchart Ranking: #5260

Win Percentage: 54%

Times Ranked: 719

Top-20 Rankings: 5

Directed By: Rodman Flender

Starring: Conan O’Brien

Genres: Comedy • Documentary

Rank This Movie

Incendies

(Blu-ray & DVD | Nr | 2010)

Flickchart Ranking: #4296

Win Percentage: 51%

Times Ranked: 947

Top-20 Rankings: 8

Directed By: Denis Villeneuve

Starring: Lubna Azabal • Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin • Maxim Gaudette • Rémy Girard • Abdelghafour Elaaziz

Genres: Drama • Foreign Language Film

Rank This Movie

The Tempest

(Blu-ray & DVD | PG13 | 2010)

Flickchart Ranking: #7784

Win Percentage: 37%

Times Ranked: 385

Top-20 Rankings: 2

Directed By: Julie Taymor

Starring: Helen Mirren • Djimon Hounsou • Alfred Molina...

Mikael Hafstrom’s latest feature The Rite, starring the legendary Sir Anthony Hopkins, newcomer Colin O’Donoghue and Alice Braga, gets its UK release on February 25th and to celebrate we thought we’d take a look at the Top 10 Movie Exorcists…

1/2) Max Von Sydow as Father Merrin & Jason Miller as Father Karras – The Exorcist

You couldn’t compile a Top 10 list of movie exorcists without the two most famous exorcists from The most famous exorcism movie of all time, The Exorcist. The frightening and realistic tale of an innocent girl inhabited by a terrifying entity, her mother’s frantic resolve to save her and two priests – one doubt-ridden, the other a rock of faith – joined in battling ultimate evil.

3) Anthony Hopkins as Father Trevant – The Rite

Inspired by true events, The Rite follows skeptical seminary student Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue), who reluctantly attends exorcism school at the Vatican.

The fifth episode of Doctor Who sends our intrepid time and space travelers on a quest to recover the Keys of Marinus. It would not be the last time that the show would use the format. The Tardis deposits the Doctor (William Hartnell), Ian (William Russell), Barbara (Jacqueline Hill), and Susan (Carole Ann Ford) on the planet Marinus on an island of glass surrounded by a sea of acid. The travelers are forced by the elderly Arbitan (George Coulouris) to retrieve four of the five operating keys to a machine called the Conscience of Marinus, of which he is the keeper. These have been hidden in different locations around the planet to prevent them falling into the hands...

A schoolboy stumbles upon a major role in Welles's production of Julius Caesar in this sublime adaptation of Robert Kaplow's book

It is difficult to recapture the excitement Orson Welles generated 50 years ago among cinephiles and serious theatregoers. When George Coulouris joined the Bristol Old Vic Company in 1950 after a lengthy sojourn in the States my fellow sixth-formers and I were thrilled beyond measure to have in our city an actor who'd played Mark Antony opposite Welles in the Mercury company's fabled 1937 modern dress production of Julius Caesar and had a leading role in Citizen Kane. Yet none of us had seen Citizen Kane which had been out of distribution since shortly after its opening in 1941. We only knew of him through a few film appearances, most notably The Third Man, and his reputation for brilliance, wit and innovation, and what a few years later we'd learn to call charisma.

Chicago – In our latest drama edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 50 admit-two passes up for grabs to the advance Chicago screening of “Me and Orson Welles” with Claire Danes and Zac Efron from director Richard Linklater of “School of Rock”!

“Me and Orson Welles” also stars Imogen Poots, Eddie Marsan, Christian McKay, Ben Chaplin, Zoe Kazan, Kelly Reilly, James Tupper, Leo Bill, Al Weaver, Iain McKee, Simon Lee Phillips, Simon Nehan and Patrick Kennedy from director Richard Linklater (who also directed “School of Rock,” “Fast Food Nation,” “Bad News Bears,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Before Sunset” and “Before Sunrise”).

The film opens on Dec. 11, 2009. To win your free pass to the advance Chicago screening of “Me and Orson Welles” courtesy of HollywoodChicago.com, just answer our question below. That’s it! This screening will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. in downtown Chicago. Directions to enter...

Freestyle Releasing

Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten

Grade: A-

Directed by: Richard Linklater

Written By: Holly Gent Palmo, Vince Palmo, from Robert Kaplow.s novel

Cast: Zac Efron, Claire Danes, Christian McKay, Zoe Kazan, James Tupper, Leo Bill, Eddie Marsan, Ben Chaplin

Screened at: Broadway, NYC, 11/18/09

Opens: November 25, 2009

You might expect this low-budget recreation of Orson Welles.s New York stage production of Julius Caesar to be typical Sundance fare; amusing, but instantly forgettable. Lo and behold, however, .Me and Orson Welles,. under the direction of Richard Linklater (.Before Sunset,. .Dazed and Confused.), is a sensation blessed with remarkable acting, authentic-looking production values, and enough energy to turn a Cadillac gas-guzzler into a hybrid. To travel from Roland Emmerich.s bloated, $260 million .2012. to Linklater.s .Me and Orson Welles. is to go from the ridiculous to the sublime. While some would say that this movie is targeted to lovers of theater,...

Director: Richard Linklater Writer(s): Robert Kaplow (novel), Holly Gent Palmo, Vincent Palmo Jr. (screenplay) Starring: Zac Efron, Christian McKay, Claire Danes, Ben Chaplin November 1937 – Orson Welles, producer John Houseman and their theater company at the Mercury Theatre began working on their much fabled production of Julius Caesar (the first Shakespearian play to be presented on Broadway). The Mercury Theatre was founded by Welles and Houseman earlier in the same year after the duo resigned from the Federal Theatre. In 1938, the Mercury Theatre evolved into The Mercury Theatre on the Air – a radio series that included the most infamous and influential radio broadcasts of all time: The War of the Worlds (broadcast on October 30, 1938). Welles and Houseman then moved to Hollywood and made Citizen Kane. Director Richard Linklater shows us a fictionalized perspective of the Welles (Christian McKay) and Houseman (Eddie Marsan) 1937 production of Julius Caesar. We are introduced...

The Critics' Choice seal is a recognition given to new movies receiving a high Critics' Choice Ratings score in the weekly voting by the Broadcast Film Critics Association which I'm a proud member, yay!

If you're an Oscar fan, you may want to pay attention to the films receiving the Critics' Choice seal. It's a great barometer of the Academy Awards.

The latest films to receive the Critics' Choice seal are:

"Precious: Based On The Novel 'Push' By Sapphire

Precious

Release Date November 5, 2009

MPAA Rating R

Directed By Lee Daniels

Starring Mo?Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Sherri Shepherd, Lenny Kravitz, and introducing Gabourey Sidibe

Official Site http://www.weareallprecious.com/

Synopsis

Set in Harlem in 1987, it is the story of Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), a sixteen-year-old African-American girl born into a life no one would want. She's pregnant for the second time by her absent father; at home,...

Filed under: Drama, Images

It was a pretty big surprise when news broke that Zac Efron was going to star in Richard Linklater's new film, Me and Orson Welles. The High School Musical star just didn't seem like the Linklater sort. But the dancing shoes have been put away and Efron has gone back in time. Four pictures from the film have been released over at Twitch, and you can check out one of them above -- that is Efron as the young aspiring actor Richard, and Christian McKay as the one and only Welles.

Based on Robert Kaplow's coming-of-age novel, the film focuses on a 17-year-old aspiring actor who is discovered by Orson Welles while walking past the Mercury Theater. He scores a bit part in Julius Caesar, and is thrust into that world we call show. Now if only we could get a glimpse of Ben Chaplin...

LONDON -- Claire Danes, Eddie Marsan, Leo Bill and Imogen Poots have joined the cast of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, an adaptation of the period coming-of-age novel by Robert Kaplow.

They join Zac Efron and Ben Chaplin in the cast for the 1937-set movie, which centers on a high school student (Efron) who, while strolling the streets of New York, happens upon the yet-to-open Mercury Theatre and is noticed by its mercurial founder, Orson Welles.

He lands a bit part in Julius Caesar, the production that catapulted Welles to the top, and spends the next week learning about life and love.

Newcomer Christian McKay plays Welles, and Chaplin (Water Horse The Legend of the Deep) has been cast as English film and stage actor George Coulouris.

The script was penned by Holly Gent Palmo, who worked on Linklater's Dazed and Confused, and Vince Palmo, who is a long time collaborator with the director.

Ann Carli is producing the film, which is scheduled to shoot on the Isle of Man, London and New York beginning in February.

Zac Efron will star in Me and Orson Welles, an adaptation of the period coming-of-age novel by Robert Kaplow that Richard Linklater will direct.

Set in 1937, the story centers on a high school student (Efron) who, while strolling the streets of New York, happens upon the yet-to-open Mercury Theatre and is noticed by its mercurial founder, Orson Welles. The man lands a bit part in Julius Caesar, the production that catapulted Welles to the top, and spends the next week learning about life and love.

Newcomer Christian McKay will play Welles. Ben Chaplin ("Water Horse: The Legend of the Deep") has been cast as English film and stage actor George Coulouris.

The script was written by Holly Gent Palmo, who was a production coordinator on Linklater's Dazed and Confused, and Vince Palmo, who was first assistant director on several of the helmer's films.

Anne Carli, who worked on Linklater's Fast Food Nation, is a producer on the project, which is independently financed.

With Welles, Efron continues to show that he is more than a one-trick pony by rounding out his acting curriculum vitae beyond his High School Musical identity.