Orson Welles

"Callow appreciates Welles’s post-Kane film work without neglecting its flaws or denying Welles’s own share of responsibility for the shambles in which studios tended to release what he had shot. The culprit was not inevitably crass commercialism but often an absent Welles, who had already sped off towards his next project, leaving editing and sound, for which radio had sharpened his ear, to underinstructed colleagues."

http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25352-2277138,00.html

His Dylan biography is worthless as criticism but extremely entertaining.

Also great outtake of Welles directing Arkadin's daughter (OW's future wife) while acting in a two-shot with her: "Again, warmer, chin a little higher, don't pause..."

I watched half of it, one day

Got the Arkadin box after Christmas and have so far just watched the Corinth cut. Good lord what a loopy (and loopily wonderful) movie. I did like the appearance of Goldfinger as the "Christmas Merry" guy.

Hope the third volume comes out before I'm 65.

I have it on a couple of DVD-R's someone in the UK burned for me. Wish I could share it but, unfortunately, I don't own a DVD burner. They're also Region 2. I'll let you know if I can get them copied somehow. It's a wonderful, often hilarious and also very touching interview. One of my fave parts is when he's asked about his being a child prodigy and he denies it by saying something like " I wasn't one of those precocious little monsters you hear about." And his fascination with the LED clapboard they were using between commercials: "Amazing. Technology has finally caught up with the movies. I need to get one of those."

Imagine if he had lived even a decade or so more.

"An Avid, you say? Hmmm..."

obviously i understand if this is too much trouble however...

I'm so swamped at the moment that my getting them copied would take awhile. However, the person I got them from - can't remember her real or ILX name - posted/posts a bunch on I Love Film and I Love Comics and is a Welles fan. I got them over 2 years ago so I can't remember her details. I'll keep digging around for you, though, and see what comes up!

http://brightlightsfilm.com/55/windiv.htm

Gregg Toland on shooting KANE:

http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=178

It's a hundred degrees out right now... Currently watching F For Fake and drinking beer.

I can't wait to have this baby arrive in the mail this week.

I picked up on the cheap a French box set of Welles films and a TV series he made. So far I've watched a couple, The Stranger and Confidential Report.

The Stranger is a watchable thriller about a Nazi on the run in small town America. There's a bravura, Hitchcock-esque finale in a clocktower, but on the whole it's a very run-of-the-mill Hollywood thriller. I find it amazing he turned out something so very conventional just a few years after Kane and Ambersons.

Confidential Report = British release of Mr Arkadin, supposedly a superior cut to the U.S. release. An enjoyable caper, the first half hour in particular very good, but then it loses steam and focus in a whirlwind of different locations (The Riviera, Spain, Paris, Munich, Amsterdam, Mexico... it's all too much), and a neverending series of campy cameos. The whole thing is too rich, the underlying plot not really up to the job. He's recycled themes from Kane I guess (investigation into past life of larger-than-life tycoon, flashback structure) but played it for laughs. Enjoyable, but no masterpiece.

Last film is Malpertuis, which I've yet to see and know nothing about. The TV series looks like it might be interesting.

Just like everyone else it seems, I've wandered onto this thread to say I've just watched F for Fake and OMG it's fun. Best bit is the fit girl wandering around and being ogled - I'm being fucked with, but I know I'm being fucked with, and OW knows I know I'm being fucked with, or so it seemed to me. Oh yeh, and the quick cuts between the two dudes when the old guy said he'd never signed any of his paintings, O RLY? YA RLY.

I really have to get round to watching Citizen Kane.

uh ya

shenanigans:

http://www.tribecafilm.com/news-features/features/Orson_Welles.html

I thought it was gonna be about Lady From Shanghai.

Shanghai-igans

The 1982 Arena special on Welles gets an airing on BBC4 tomorrow night, essential viewing.

I hope I'm in to watch Magnificent Ambersons on Sunday. I've decided this year to give in and watch it, bastardized though it may be.

The special's in 2 parts with the second on the 27th, also on Sunday 'Orson Welles over Europe' a new documentary looking at his exile in Europe presented by Simon Callow.

Alright, watching the Arena special now and being reminded of how depressing the changes to Ambersons are I've gone right off watching it on Sunday. Convince me otherwise?

also lols at Bogdanovich totally dicking Kael. and RIP Robert Wise.

Raising a glass to the man right now: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm queer for the Caribbean. ."

I hope I'm in to watch Magnificent Ambersons on Sunday. I've decided this year to give in and watch it, bastardized though it may be.

― moron oil (Gukbe), Thursday, December 24, 2009 2:28 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

obviously it would be better to have his cut, but dude... most films are bastardized. even some classics like 'rules of the game' are very dodgy (iirc the version we have is a 1958 edit).

the first 20-30 minutes are still perfect, and there's good stuff throughout (except the very last scene).

“My doctor told me not to have intimate dinners for four,” he once famously quipped, “unless there are three other people there.”

hero

there's batardized and then there's lopping out 45 minutes and changing the ending. echoes of the cut version of Brazil come to mind. I'll probably watch it.

however, there's a new problem. the second part of Arena airs right afterwards, but I'm meant to be going out. since part 1 isn't available on iplayer, i can't imagine the second part will be. /distressed

was glad to have seen 'journey into fear', whatever welles's involvement. i would definitely steal the opening shot if i were a maker of hitman movies. (probably been done.)

i watched his "macbeth" the other week. shit is weird. dude was weird.

granted, macbeth is a weird play. but this was new kinds of weird.

also, has anyone ever heard an orson welles story that wasn't fairly entertaining? was reading about his shenanigans on the set of "the long, hot summer"--pretty much standard-issue welles shenanigans, really--and was duly amused.

yeah.

any opinions on the best welles biography? i've only read david thomson's, many years ago, which a) i can't remember, and b) well, i can remember it was afraid of being a boring old "biography".

Thomson's has some of the best critical insights into Welles' work even when I disagree often.

i forget which one i read, it was a super-defensive post-"raising kane" one clearly out to make a point but otherwise pretty good

isn't there a definitive three-volume set, the guy currently writing the third? sorry that this isn't tremendously helpful but i maybe gathered this from an old welles thread.

that'd be simon callow's, i guess. not read anything by him (he's best known as a very actory-y actor).

but shd look up reviews.

I have the first 2 Callow vols and have only skimmed. Look good.