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Week in Review: Orson Welles’ last film arriving in 2015

Week in Review: Orson Welles’ last film arriving in 2015

F for Fake

The biggest remaining treasure trove in the world of cinema is the long lost and destroyed ending to Orson WellesThe 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 find.

In 2015, Royal Road Entertainment will release Welles’s last film The Other Side of the Wind in accordance with Welles’s 100th birthday. The New York Times reported Wednesday how Welles spent the last 15 years of his life shooting and editing the picture, a meta story about an aging, legendary director played by John Huston. The cast includes Lilli Palmer, Dennis Hopper, Susan Strasberg and Peter Bogdanovich playing an up-and-coming film director, who at the time was essentially playing himself.

The film has been blocked in legal rights battles for years, with sole decisions belonging to Beatrice Welles, his daughter and only heir. But now Bogdanovich, who Welles lived with for many years late in his life, and line producer Frank Marshall, will be completing the film, adding music and editing some unfinished scenes all according to Welles’s notes.

If The Other Side of the Wind does finally come out, producers are aiming for May 6 with hopes that next month at the American Film Market in Santa Monica, the film will get picked up for distribution.

The Times piece describes this film as “art imitating life and life imitating art,” and the meta nature of the film sounds very much like Welles’s swan song documentary F for Fake from 1973. Frankly everything about The Other Side of the Wind sounds wonderful, and Bogdanovich is the perfect person to get the job done. If only Welles actually appeared in this film as well. Now THAT would be a find.

Watch WE THE ECONOMY – Series Trailer on Vimeo.

Morgan Spurlock, the documentarian behind Super Size Me, is making learning about the economy digestible. He’s recruited 20 filmmakers to make 20 short films about the economy, each one asking a simple, yet pertinent question about the economy, healthcare, the National Deficit vs. The National Debt, and more. We the Economy: 20 Short Films You Can’t Afford To Miss features films by Spurlock, Adrien Grenier, Ramin Bahrani, Adam McKay, Catherine Hardwick and more, and the films star the likes of Patton Oswalt and Judah Friedlander. Watch them all at WeTheEconomy.com.

More Arrested Development?!?!?  The fourth season of Arrested Development that aired on Netflix created an unprecedented level of hype. The resulting season, featuring one character per episode, was hailed by some as brilliant and by many others as quickly forgettable. Now creator Mitch Hurwitz may be rectifying the disappointing fourth season with an edit of the show that will tell the story chronologically, according to an interview. No word on when or if that season might actually become available.

In almost Arrested Development news, Jason Bateman will be directing and starring in IPO Man, a film about a man who sold shares of stock in himself to help him make life decisions, but that eventually got in the way of major ones like moving in with his girlfriend or deciding to get a vasectomy. The story is based on a Wired article about Mike Merrill and his decision to divide himself into 100,000 shares. Bateman’s directorial feature debut was the spelling bee comedy Bad Words, and he’s wrapping up production on The Family Fang, starring Nicole Kidman and Christopher Walken.

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