What makes a brilliant script? Is it quotable lines? Is it nuanced dialogue? Or is it just the ability to move the story along and not get in the way? When looking back through the history of screenwriting, there are plenty of iconic films based on previous work; the Writer’s Guild of America voted Casablanca …
Justine is in fact a mostly uncharacteristic Franco film, but as a movie that shows the genuine, often untapped talent that this eclectically erratic filmmaker possessed, it is exceptional.
Couple the recurrent Cronenberg motif of transformative physiological processes with the director’s private demons at the time of production, and the offspring is The Brood, one of his finest films.
The temporal and geographical distortions that characterizes Kafka’s prose seems particularly difficult to adapt to the language of cinema. The Trial, his best-known novel, is characterized by its lack of forward motion, sending its protagonist on frantic narrative loops that continuously frustrate his desire for progress. Aside from its opening chapter, the book is pointedly …
Standing up for the weak, taking down the corrupt, and seeking justice for all, Pam Grier in these films is the ultimate lone hero, fighting the good fight and looking great while doing it.
The Magnificent Ambersons LANDON’S TAKE: Orson Welles is celebrated as one of the foremost visionaries in the history of American filmmaking. He’s also renowned as the perennial artist against the system. While both of these factors make Welles perhaps the ideal auteur – someone satisfied with nothing less than a perfect articulation of his individual …
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 …
Christoph Waltz is prepping his directorial debut, The Worst Marriage in Georgetown, for which he will also produce and star. In the film, Waltz will play Albrecht Muth, a man who sought to enter the social elite and the privileged political circles by marrying the wealthy, 71-year-old Viola Drath when he was just 26. The …
Orson Welles is one of the greatest filmmakers and actors who ever lived, an icon in Hollywood and (especially later in life) a “massive” presence with myth and legend following him everywhere. Today marks what would’ve been his 100th birthday. Welles died at the age of 70 in October of 1985. To honor the great …
Yes, The Lady from Shanghai is now a classic. But like so many Welles films, that current evaluation doesn’t save it from the studio tampering of its time.
While William Randolph Hearst may not agree with the decision, it seems like the rest of his family are open to showing a movie that famously took a lot from his life. Variety reported on Friday that for the first time ever, Citizen Kane would be showing in the Hearst Castle. The film will screen …
#10. Chinatown (1974) Lost to: The Godfather Part II Well, no one will argue that it should have won, but still. Roman Polanski’s film made a true leading man out of Jack Nicholson. It grabbed eleven nominations, only taking home one. That being said, that one was for Original Screenplay, written by Robert Towne, which may …
The most enjoyable thing about F for Fake is that Orson Welles seems to be having such fun. It’s rare to see a filmmaker displaying, though his actual presence and through the tools of his trade, such an unadulterated delight in expression.
The biggest remaining treasure trove in the world of cinema is the long lost and destroyed ending to Orson Welles‘ The Magnificent Ambersons, his cynical director’s cut that he felt would’ve made it an even greater film than Citizen Kane. But anything having remotely to do with Welles may be just as great of a …
Knife in the Water Directed by Roman Polanski Poland, 1962 Certainly a stretch to categorize as horror, Roman Polanski’s debut feature anticipates the creeping dread and tense blocking that will characterize his later, truer films of the genre. Husband and wife Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) and Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) pick up a young hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz) …
Alejandro Jodorowsky, Michel Seydoux, Frank Herbert, Chris Foss, H.R. Giger, Moebius, Magma, Pink Floyd, Dan O’Bannon, David Carradine, Mick Jagger, Amanda Lear, Orson Welles, and Salvador Dali. Yes, that’s quite an array of figures, isn’t it? Frank Pavich’s historically illuminating and expertly constructed documentary on one of the greatest films never made, Jodorowsky’s Dune, screened at the Toronto International Film Festival today.
Is the film this bizarre because of what Columbia did after the original shoot or did they in fact make an utter mess somewhat comprehensible? A fascinating debate to be sure, sadly one for which the answer may be lost in the sands of time. That said, at least for the experience, The Lady from Shanghai is a must see.
After all the dust had settled and leaked blood had dried following the nightmare that was World War II, the Allied states co-organized a special commission for the purpose of investigating the details thought out by the sick minds of the Nazi regime who perpetrated the ghastly horrors in Europe.
The Lady from Shanghai Written and directed by Orson Welles USA, 1947 Long before the likes of Brangelina dominated the Hollywood gossip columns, figures such as Hedda Hooper and Louella Parsons were the all-powerful industry matriarchs whose withering wit could make or break film careers. The tumultuous romance between Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth on …
Touch of Evil Directed by Orson Welles Written by Orson Welles, from the novel by Whit Masterson U.S.A., 1958 Touted as one of the greatest films of all time, let alone one of the greatest American films of all time, Touch of Evil has had the misfortune of being bastardized by the studio system, in …
The Tumblr round-up is a compilation of images, links, posters, stories, videos and so on, taken from the Sound On Sight Tumblr account. We simply do not have the man power nor time to write articles on every interesting movie related goody we find, so this is our way of still promoting some of the stuff …
The Third Man Directed by Carol Reed Written by Graham Green U.K, U.S.A., 1949 *This review will avoid some of the story’s major details In the years immediately following the second World War, many of Europe’s countries were left in a pile of rubble, their economies destroyed, and their people still reeling from the all …
There are few more tantalizing stories than those of unfinished films from the greatest of directors. When it’s a director of Orson Welles’ stature, the stories only get bigger, the films more legendary. According to the Guardian, an unfinished film by Orson Welles (described as a masterpiece) will finally see a theatrical release nearly four …