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...
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...
- 5/4/2024
- by Zach Laws and Chris Beachum
- Gold Derby
"The Billy Crystal Comedy Hour" is likely not remembered by many people, except for Billy Crystal himself. The variety/talk show ran from January 30 through February 27 in 1982, lasting a grand total of five episodes. Crystal was already a successful comedian and beloved figure in the industry thanks to the popularity of his 1970s stand-up work and his role in the 1977 sitcom "Soap," so he had connections. He was able to secure guest appearances from many of his famous comedian friends, including Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas, Robin Williams, and John Candy for the debut episode. Subsequent guests included Morgan Fairchild, the Manhattan Transfer, Nell Carter, Shelley Duvall, Cindy Williams, Al Jarreau, and Smokey Robinson.
"The Billy Crystal Comedy Hour" fell right in between "Soap" and "Saturday Night Live" on Crystal's professional timeline, and it might be considered something of a dip in his career. The show was canceled after only two episodes aired,...
"The Billy Crystal Comedy Hour" fell right in between "Soap" and "Saturday Night Live" on Crystal's professional timeline, and it might be considered something of a dip in his career. The show was canceled after only two episodes aired,...
- 4/30/2024
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Maureen “Mo” Henry, the veteran negative cutter and a giant in the postproduction community, died Sunday of complications from liver failure in Los Angeles, her son, Logan, told The Hollywood Reporter. She was 67.
During her half-century in Hollywood, Henry cut negatives on hundreds of films, starting with Jaws (1975). She followed with such movies as Ghost (1990), Heat (1995), Casino (1995), Before Sunrise (1995), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), The Fifth Element (1997), Starship Troopers (1997), The Big Lebowski (1998), The Iron Giant (1999), The Sixth Sense (1999), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Babel (2006), The Blind Side (2009) and Intersteller (2014) and entries in the Matrix, Dark Knight, Shrek and Spider-Man franchises.
Hers was a family business, she explained in a 2020 interview for the Chicago Film Society.
“My family immigrated from Ireland, and my aunt was the oldest of several kids, she’s about 20 years older than my dad,” she said. “When they moved to Hollywood, she just walked up...
During her half-century in Hollywood, Henry cut negatives on hundreds of films, starting with Jaws (1975). She followed with such movies as Ghost (1990), Heat (1995), Casino (1995), Before Sunrise (1995), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), The Fifth Element (1997), Starship Troopers (1997), The Big Lebowski (1998), The Iron Giant (1999), The Sixth Sense (1999), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Babel (2006), The Blind Side (2009) and Intersteller (2014) and entries in the Matrix, Dark Knight, Shrek and Spider-Man franchises.
Hers was a family business, she explained in a 2020 interview for the Chicago Film Society.
“My family immigrated from Ireland, and my aunt was the oldest of several kids, she’s about 20 years older than my dad,” she said. “When they moved to Hollywood, she just walked up...
- 1/18/2024
- by Carolyn Giardina
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Franz Kafka’s The Trial seems straightforward enough as you read it, and yet the words don’t quite seem to take you anywhere. There’s an effect in the novel of dense nothingness: Kafka’s brilliance was for a pared-down prose with complex resonances that deliberately strand the reader. In a 1998 English translation issued by Schocken Books Inc., the translator in his preface discusses the thorniness of recreating in English from German how the word “assault” is used in various tenses to link the protagonist’s slander, his arrest, and his relationship to a typist. One could spend years attempting to parse the bottomless intricacies of The Trial, and people have. Kafka achieved a prose that deconstructs the convoluted legalese that societies adapt in an effort to divorce situations from common sense and decency via labyrinths of language, and thus controlling the populace.
Orson Welles is a counterintuitive fit for The Trial,...
Orson Welles is a counterintuitive fit for The Trial,...
- 9/20/2023
- by Chuck Bowen
- Slant Magazine
Exclusive: The hammer just went down over the weekend on the one and only Oscar win for Citizen Kane, a 1941 movie many still consider the crown jewel of Hollywood, the greatest ever made.
In a Heritage Auctioneers “Hollywood Entertainment” auction that among many other items featured several from the career of Kane’s star, director and co-writer Orson Welles, the prize get was his 1941 Oscar for Original Screenplay that he shared with Herman Mankiewicz. Of the film’s nine nominations including Picture, Director and Actor for Welles, it was the single victory for the movie (How Green Was My Valley won Best Picture). The Welles statuette had a starting bid of $250,000 and sold to an unknown bidder for $645,000 (inclusive of buyer’s premium).
It, uh, gets a little complicated from there.
Heritage Auctions
This is not the original Oscar statuette that Welles — who didn’t even attend the actual ceremony — won.
In a Heritage Auctioneers “Hollywood Entertainment” auction that among many other items featured several from the career of Kane’s star, director and co-writer Orson Welles, the prize get was his 1941 Oscar for Original Screenplay that he shared with Herman Mankiewicz. Of the film’s nine nominations including Picture, Director and Actor for Welles, it was the single victory for the movie (How Green Was My Valley won Best Picture). The Welles statuette had a starting bid of $250,000 and sold to an unknown bidder for $645,000 (inclusive of buyer’s premium).
It, uh, gets a little complicated from there.
Heritage Auctions
This is not the original Oscar statuette that Welles — who didn’t even attend the actual ceremony — won.
- 7/30/2023
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
Mr. Wilder And Me author Jonathan Coe on Billy Wilder’s Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes after speaking with Paul Diamond (Ial Diamond’s son): “They shot all the footage but a lot of it was never scored, never dubbed, never graded. So the three-hour-version, which so many of us yearn for, never did exist in fact.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In the second instalment, Mr. Wilder And Me author Jonathan Coe and I discuss how key scenes happen while characters are eating and why a dumpling was changed for the German edition of the novel. Also: Marthe Keller with her Bobby Deerfield (directed by Sydney Pollack) co-star Al Pacino and the infamous cheeseburger ordered at Bayerischer Hof in Munich; Billy Wilder’s Fedora, Greece, and brie; Bewitched, overdressing and underdressing; yearning for unattainable movies, Orson Welles and The Other Side Of The Wind (documented in Morgan Neville's They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead...
In the second instalment, Mr. Wilder And Me author Jonathan Coe and I discuss how key scenes happen while characters are eating and why a dumpling was changed for the German edition of the novel. Also: Marthe Keller with her Bobby Deerfield (directed by Sydney Pollack) co-star Al Pacino and the infamous cheeseburger ordered at Bayerischer Hof in Munich; Billy Wilder’s Fedora, Greece, and brie; Bewitched, overdressing and underdressing; yearning for unattainable movies, Orson Welles and The Other Side Of The Wind (documented in Morgan Neville's They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead...
- 7/21/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Mr. Wilder And Me author Jonathan Coe on Billy Wilder’s Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes after speaking with Paul Diamond (Ial Diamond’s son): “They shot all the footage but a lot of it was never scored, never dubbed, never graded. So the three-hour-version, which so many of us yearn for, never did exist in fact.”
In the second instalment, Mr. Wilder And Me author Jonathan Coe and I discuss how key scenes happen while characters are eating and why a dumpling was changed for the German edition of the novel. Also: Marthe Keller with her Bobby Deerfield (directed by Sydney Pollack) co-star Al Pacino and the infamous cheeseburger ordered at Bayerischer Hof in Munich; Billy Wilder’s Fedora, Greece, and brie; Bewitched, overdressing and underdressing; yearning for unattainable movies, Orson Welles and The Other Side Of The Wind (documented in Morgan Neville's They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead...
In the second instalment, Mr. Wilder And Me author Jonathan Coe and I discuss how key scenes happen while characters are eating and why a dumpling was changed for the German edition of the novel. Also: Marthe Keller with her Bobby Deerfield (directed by Sydney Pollack) co-star Al Pacino and the infamous cheeseburger ordered at Bayerischer Hof in Munich; Billy Wilder’s Fedora, Greece, and brie; Bewitched, overdressing and underdressing; yearning for unattainable movies, Orson Welles and The Other Side Of The Wind (documented in Morgan Neville's They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead...
- 7/21/2023
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Exclusive: Veteran producer Stratton Leopold (Mission: Impossible III) and filmmaker Dax Phelan (The Other Side of the Wind) have teamed up to produce a new currently untitled limited series based on an infamous 19th-century prison escape known affectionately as The Catalpa Expedition.
Set in Ireland, the United States, and Australia during the 1860s and 1870s, the series will be based on the real-life plan members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood — a 19th-century republican group — made to free six political prisoners from a British penal colony in Western Australia while aboard the whaleship, The Catalpa. The writer, poet, and journalist John Boyle O’Reilly was among the political prisoners sent to a British penal colony in Australia.
The Whaling Ship, Catalpa.
Phelan will write the pilot episode and produce alongside Leopold and Eric M. Klein. Terence E. Groves (Jasmine), who first brought the idea to Leopold, will serve as executive producer along...
Set in Ireland, the United States, and Australia during the 1860s and 1870s, the series will be based on the real-life plan members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood — a 19th-century republican group — made to free six political prisoners from a British penal colony in Western Australia while aboard the whaleship, The Catalpa. The writer, poet, and journalist John Boyle O’Reilly was among the political prisoners sent to a British penal colony in Australia.
The Whaling Ship, Catalpa.
Phelan will write the pilot episode and produce alongside Leopold and Eric M. Klein. Terence E. Groves (Jasmine), who first brought the idea to Leopold, will serve as executive producer along...
- 3/20/2023
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
Netflix’s complex relationship with the French cinema world took another twist on Monday as the streamer said it was bolstering its support of the Cinemathèque Française to become a major sponsor of the institution over a three-year period.
The streamer has collaborated with the cinematheque since 2018, notably sponsoring the restoration of Abel Gance’s 1927 classic Napoleon in 2019 and showcasing its own originals such as Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery in the institution’s iconic Henri Langlois auditorium.
Under the new accord, Netflix will sponsor several Cinémathèque operations, including film programming and masterclasses, the Toute La Mémoire du Monde Festival (March 8-12) and its youth-focused Ma Petite Cinémathèque program.
The platform will also get behind the institution’s temporary exhibitions with curated online programs, kicking off with current show Top Secret: Film & Espionage and followed by Romy Schneider (March 16 to July 30) and the cinémathèque’s major Agnès Varda Viva Varda!
The streamer has collaborated with the cinematheque since 2018, notably sponsoring the restoration of Abel Gance’s 1927 classic Napoleon in 2019 and showcasing its own originals such as Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery in the institution’s iconic Henri Langlois auditorium.
Under the new accord, Netflix will sponsor several Cinémathèque operations, including film programming and masterclasses, the Toute La Mémoire du Monde Festival (March 8-12) and its youth-focused Ma Petite Cinémathèque program.
The platform will also get behind the institution’s temporary exhibitions with curated online programs, kicking off with current show Top Secret: Film & Espionage and followed by Romy Schneider (March 16 to July 30) and the cinémathèque’s major Agnès Varda Viva Varda!
- 2/6/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
"Citizen Kane" director Orson Welles was a highly prolific and influential filmmaker, to say the least. His obsession with exploring power through unconventional means has resulted in some of the most acclaimed films in the American movie canon. While some of his movies were not fully appreciated in their time, it's hard to overstate the influence Welles has had on filmmaking and filmmakers to this day.
However, for as many movies as he was able to make, there were just as many that he didn't couldn't to life. For a variety of reasons, many of Welles' projects wound up never seeing the light of day. These films have long been the subject of speculation and confusion, as there often isn't a lot of available details about them. However, that just makes these unfinished films that much more interesting to learn about. And you're looking for a guide to some of...
However, for as many movies as he was able to make, there were just as many that he didn't couldn't to life. For a variety of reasons, many of Welles' projects wound up never seeing the light of day. These films have long been the subject of speculation and confusion, as there often isn't a lot of available details about them. However, that just makes these unfinished films that much more interesting to learn about. And you're looking for a guide to some of...
- 8/15/2022
- by Erin Brady
- Slash Film
In Lviv, in western Ukraine, VideoGorilla senior developer/chief science officer Andrew Yakovenko is glued to his computer, not doom-scrolling but rather working on an AI-enabled software tool for a Hollywood entertainment company. The company’s senior developer Anton Linevich, holed up in a small village in the center of the country, is likewise focused on work, checking in with remote teammates via Slack. Senior developer Aleksey Sevruk, who stayed in Kyiv, just joined the Army and is fighting for that city.
Ukraine is home to crack coders who partner with U.S. studios, companies and productions in the Hollywood media and entertainment industry. VideoGorillas, founded in 2009, uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to automate remastering and restoration workflows. The company, which helped restore Orson Welles’ “The Other Side of the Wind,” has hundreds of credits and working relationships with Netflix, Disney and other studios.
Another Ukrainian company, ReSpeecher, created...
Ukraine is home to crack coders who partner with U.S. studios, companies and productions in the Hollywood media and entertainment industry. VideoGorillas, founded in 2009, uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to automate remastering and restoration workflows. The company, which helped restore Orson Welles’ “The Other Side of the Wind,” has hundreds of credits and working relationships with Netflix, Disney and other studios.
Another Ukrainian company, ReSpeecher, created...
- 3/18/2022
- by Debra Kaufman
- Variety Film + TV
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Sidney Poitier holding his best actor Oscar, won for his role in Lilies of the Field (1963). The singular actor, director, and civil rights activist Sidney Poitier died last Thursday. An immigrant from the Bahamas who rose to prominence through the American Negro Theatre, then Broadway, Poitier entered Hollywood when few complex roles for Black actors were available. He became the first Black man to win the best actor Oscar in 1963 for Lillies of the Field, but also frequently received criticism for playing roles perceived as overly chaste and stately. Poitier persisted nonetheless, and later directed his own films, such as Buck and the Preacher (1972), starring his friend Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee, and the Gene Wilder-Richard Pryor prison break comedy Stir Crazy (1980). The prolific critic, programmer, and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich also died on Thursday.
- 1/12/2022
- MUBI
Update: Martin Scorsese shared a statement reflecting on the passing of Bogdanovich on Sunday: ““In the 60s, at a crucial moment in the history of the movie business and the art of cinema, Peter Bogdanovich was right there at the crossroads of the Old Hollywood and the New. Curator, critic, historian, actor, director, popular entertainer…Peter did it all. As a programmer here in New York, he put together essential retrospectives of then still overlooked masters from the glory days of the studio system; as a journalist he got to know almost everybody, from John Ford and Howard Hawks to Marlene Dietrich and Cary Grant. Like many of us, he made his way into directing pictures by way of Roger Corman, and he and Francis Coppola broke into the system early on: Peter’s debut, ‘Targets,’ is still one of his very best films.
“With ‘The Last Picture Show,’ he...
“With ‘The Last Picture Show,’ he...
- 1/7/2022
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
The writer-director’s death at 82 leaves behind a legacy of impactful films, from The Last Picture Show to Mask, and also a deep love of the craft
Peter Bogdanovich: a life in picturesPeter Bogdanovich, acclaimed writer-director, dies at 82
Peter Bogdanovich was the blazing night-sky comet of the New Hollywood generation whose trajectory got knocked off course a little, by personal tragedy and the contingencies of show business, but kept hurtling onwards with brilliant work and passionate cinephilia to the very end. His first four hits, Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971), What’s Up Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973) were somehow both thrillingly and authentically modern and yet also instantly belonged to the classic pantheon. With the touch of restless young genius, he seemed to reinvent pulp crime, the western, the road movie and the screwball comedy – in short order.
I remember Bogdanovich in 2018, frail and unwell as he then reportedly was,...
Peter Bogdanovich: a life in picturesPeter Bogdanovich, acclaimed writer-director, dies at 82
Peter Bogdanovich was the blazing night-sky comet of the New Hollywood generation whose trajectory got knocked off course a little, by personal tragedy and the contingencies of show business, but kept hurtling onwards with brilliant work and passionate cinephilia to the very end. His first four hits, Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971), What’s Up Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973) were somehow both thrillingly and authentically modern and yet also instantly belonged to the classic pantheon. With the touch of restless young genius, he seemed to reinvent pulp crime, the western, the road movie and the screwball comedy – in short order.
I remember Bogdanovich in 2018, frail and unwell as he then reportedly was,...
- 1/6/2022
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Peter Bogdanovich, the actor, film historian and critic-turned-director of such classics as The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, What’s Up, Doc? and Mask, died today of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles. He was 82. Family members, who were by his side, said paramedics were unable to revive him.
His daughter, writer-director Antonia Bogdanovich, said of her father: “He never stopped working, and film was his life and he loved his family. He taught me a lot.”
Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery
While he would be best known later for his deadpan turn as the shrink’s shrink in The Sopranos, Bogdanovich exploded onto the cinematic scene in 1971 with The Last Picture Show, a box office hit he wrote and directed that drew comparisons to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and earned the filmmaker his only two Oscar noms — for Best Director and Adapted Screenplay. With a...
His daughter, writer-director Antonia Bogdanovich, said of her father: “He never stopped working, and film was his life and he loved his family. He taught me a lot.”
Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery
While he would be best known later for his deadpan turn as the shrink’s shrink in The Sopranos, Bogdanovich exploded onto the cinematic scene in 1971 with The Last Picture Show, a box office hit he wrote and directed that drew comparisons to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and earned the filmmaker his only two Oscar noms — for Best Director and Adapted Screenplay. With a...
- 1/6/2022
- by Erik Pedersen
- Deadline Film + TV
What classifies as a lost film? On one side, there are silent films that Hollywood studios dumped in the Pacific Ocean once talkies took over. On another, there is Jerry Lewis’ The Day the Clown Cried, which he suppressed for personal moral reasons, and there are also movies like Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, which was caught in legal trouble for years before it was finally edited and debuted in 2018.
Bill Morrison expands on these ideas of lost cinema with The Village Detective: a song cycle, a project about a recovered print of The Village Detective (1969) starring populist Soviet actor Mikhail Žarov—who acted in roles criticizing the bourgeoisie and socialism—and how the film is well known to Russians of a certain age but lost to many in post-Soviet Union Russia. By comparison, it’s like if network television stopped showing It’s A Wonderful Life...
Bill Morrison expands on these ideas of lost cinema with The Village Detective: a song cycle, a project about a recovered print of The Village Detective (1969) starring populist Soviet actor Mikhail Žarov—who acted in roles criticizing the bourgeoisie and socialism—and how the film is well known to Russians of a certain age but lost to many in post-Soviet Union Russia. By comparison, it’s like if network television stopped showing It’s A Wonderful Life...
- 9/24/2021
- by Joshua Encinias
- The Film Stage
This review of “Mosquito State” was first published in September 2020 after the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
On the film-festival circuit, Polish-American filmmaker Filip Jan Rymsza is best known for shepherding the unfinished, long-neglected Orson Welles movie “The Other Side of the Wind” to completion in 2018, and for producing two accompanying documentaries, Morgan Neville’s “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” and Ryan Suffern’s short “A Final Cut for Orson.”
“The Other Side of the Wind” and “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” both premiered two years ago at the Venice International Film Festival, so it makes sense that Rymsza’s debut as a feature director, “Mosquito State,” debuted at that same festival in 2020, alongside another Rymsza-produced Welles project, the documentary “Hopper/Welles.” The creepy, cerebral thriller is bold and weird and wildly unlike anything Welles might have done, though you could probably call it the “Citizen...
On the film-festival circuit, Polish-American filmmaker Filip Jan Rymsza is best known for shepherding the unfinished, long-neglected Orson Welles movie “The Other Side of the Wind” to completion in 2018, and for producing two accompanying documentaries, Morgan Neville’s “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” and Ryan Suffern’s short “A Final Cut for Orson.”
“The Other Side of the Wind” and “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” both premiered two years ago at the Venice International Film Festival, so it makes sense that Rymsza’s debut as a feature director, “Mosquito State,” debuted at that same festival in 2020, alongside another Rymsza-produced Welles project, the documentary “Hopper/Welles.” The creepy, cerebral thriller is bold and weird and wildly unlike anything Welles might have done, though you could probably call it the “Citizen...
- 8/26/2021
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
Grafting Cronenbergian body horror onto the 2008 financial crisis, Filip Jan Rymsza’s horror-tinged Mosquito State takes its title very literally, beginning with the up-close birth of a mosquito and ends, quite appropriately, with an insect apocalypse as the stock market collapses. In-between those potent images, however, is a work with plenty of grandiose ideas and little sense of how to communicate them. Thematically muddled but visually stunning, Rymsza’s film serves as a warning call for those who prioritize form over all else, elaborately staged shots doing little to hide the ever-growing narrative inconsistencies.
Its ostensible protagonist is Richard Boca (Beau Knapp), an investment-firm “golden goose” whose finance-bro colleagues openly disdain him. He’s awkward, introverted, and something of a wunderkind: his algorithm “Honeybee” is both incredibly lucrative for the firm and modeled on colony-collapse disorder, a phenomenon wherein the worker bees disappear, leaving the queen bee with outsize resources...
Its ostensible protagonist is Richard Boca (Beau Knapp), an investment-firm “golden goose” whose finance-bro colleagues openly disdain him. He’s awkward, introverted, and something of a wunderkind: his algorithm “Honeybee” is both incredibly lucrative for the firm and modeled on colony-collapse disorder, a phenomenon wherein the worker bees disappear, leaving the queen bee with outsize resources...
- 8/26/2021
- by Christian Gallichio
- The Film Stage
Body Horror Shocker Mosquito State – Available On Shudder Today! Check Out This Trailer and New Clip
Mosquito State Is Now Streamingexclusively On Shudder! Check out the trailer:
Mosquito State was the 2020 Venice Film Festival Winner: Bisato d’Oro for Best Cinematography and the 2020 Sitges Film Festival Winner: Best Visual Effects**
The critics love Mosquito State:
“Knapp gives a terrific performance… This highly original, visually torrid take onWall Street and last decade’s global financial crisis celebrates the truemasters of the universe: mosquitoes.”– Phil Hoad, The Guardian
“A haunting show of financial-crisis body horror… Knapp gives a stylizedperformance that recalls Nicolas Cage.”– Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine
“Cronenberg meets Kafka… Knapp commits fully to the hideous spectacle of a man steadily beaten by merciless nature.”– David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
“You could probably call it the Citizen Kane of Wall Street insect movies. Then again, it’s the only Wall Street insect movie. Knapp, in a performance of unnerving calmand unblinkered insanity… manages to get under your skin.
Mosquito State was the 2020 Venice Film Festival Winner: Bisato d’Oro for Best Cinematography and the 2020 Sitges Film Festival Winner: Best Visual Effects**
The critics love Mosquito State:
“Knapp gives a terrific performance… This highly original, visually torrid take onWall Street and last decade’s global financial crisis celebrates the truemasters of the universe: mosquitoes.”– Phil Hoad, The Guardian
“A haunting show of financial-crisis body horror… Knapp gives a stylizedperformance that recalls Nicolas Cage.”– Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine
“Cronenberg meets Kafka… Knapp commits fully to the hideous spectacle of a man steadily beaten by merciless nature.”– David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
“You could probably call it the Citizen Kane of Wall Street insect movies. Then again, it’s the only Wall Street insect movie. Knapp, in a performance of unnerving calmand unblinkered insanity… manages to get under your skin.
- 8/26/2021
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Swarms of bloodsucking insects mirror the volatility of the markets in this thrilling drama of financial crisis
This highly original, visually torrid take on Wall Street and last decade’s global financial crisis celebrates the true masters of the universe: mosquitoes. Richard Boca (Beau Knapp), head analyst for investment firm Abbott Werner, is a gauche social misfit tolerated because he developed the algorithms that keep the company ahead. But, in the autumn of 2007, he’s getting twitchy about bizarre market fluctuations that his broker colleagues dismiss, while back at his granite-lined penthouse an infestation of another kind of bloodsucker is taking hold. Are the teeming swarms, whose bites inflict disfiguring boils on Richard, a manifestation of some kind of mental breakdown?
Polish director Filip Jan Rymsza – who in 2018 helped complete Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind – refuses the stock options here. Mosquito State is neither a Big Short-style takedown of finance-world iniquity,...
This highly original, visually torrid take on Wall Street and last decade’s global financial crisis celebrates the true masters of the universe: mosquitoes. Richard Boca (Beau Knapp), head analyst for investment firm Abbott Werner, is a gauche social misfit tolerated because he developed the algorithms that keep the company ahead. But, in the autumn of 2007, he’s getting twitchy about bizarre market fluctuations that his broker colleagues dismiss, while back at his granite-lined penthouse an infestation of another kind of bloodsucker is taking hold. Are the teeming swarms, whose bites inflict disfiguring boils on Richard, a manifestation of some kind of mental breakdown?
Polish director Filip Jan Rymsza – who in 2018 helped complete Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind – refuses the stock options here. Mosquito State is neither a Big Short-style takedown of finance-world iniquity,...
- 8/25/2021
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
Changes in Oscar’s music rules, as announced today, will make a lot of film composers happy.
The major change is that an original score no longer needs to consist of at least 60% of the total music in the film. That number has been substantially lowered, to 35%, potentially increasing the number of eligible scores each year.
This has been an issue in recent years, as filmmakers have increasingly relied on pre-existing, licensed music as well as music specifically composed for their movies.
Last year, for example, Thomas Newman’s “Let Them All Talk” and Howard Shore’s “Pieces of a Woman” were among the high-profile film scores disqualified as failing to meet the 60% threshold. Terence Blanchard’s music for “One Night in Miami” and the Mark Isham-Craig Harris “Judas and the Black Messiah” score were not even entered, probably because both were deemed likely to be disqualified due to brevity.
The major change is that an original score no longer needs to consist of at least 60% of the total music in the film. That number has been substantially lowered, to 35%, potentially increasing the number of eligible scores each year.
This has been an issue in recent years, as filmmakers have increasingly relied on pre-existing, licensed music as well as music specifically composed for their movies.
Last year, for example, Thomas Newman’s “Let Them All Talk” and Howard Shore’s “Pieces of a Woman” were among the high-profile film scores disqualified as failing to meet the 60% threshold. Terence Blanchard’s music for “One Night in Miami” and the Mark Isham-Craig Harris “Judas and the Black Messiah” score were not even entered, probably because both were deemed likely to be disqualified due to brevity.
- 6/30/2021
- by Jon Burlingame
- Variety Film + TV
The Criterion Collection have unveiled their August 2021 lineup and while it’s a bit of a lighter month with only four releases, there are a few stand-outs. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s greatest achievement After Life, which imagines the single memory one would take with them into eternity, will arrive in the collection.
D. A. Pennebaker’s immersive documentary Company, exploring the making of Stephen Sondheim’s musical, is also coming in August. Michael Snydel and Kyle Turner recently discussed the film on Intermission, and one can listen to the conversation below.
Andrzej Wajda’s landmark Polish war drama Ashes and Diamonds will receive a Blu-ray upgrade and, lastly, just in time for No Time to Die, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation will mark another Netflix release for Criterion. Here’s hoping the promised release of Mati Diop’s Atlantics and the potential debut of Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind...
D. A. Pennebaker’s immersive documentary Company, exploring the making of Stephen Sondheim’s musical, is also coming in August. Michael Snydel and Kyle Turner recently discussed the film on Intermission, and one can listen to the conversation below.
Andrzej Wajda’s landmark Polish war drama Ashes and Diamonds will receive a Blu-ray upgrade and, lastly, just in time for No Time to Die, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation will mark another Netflix release for Criterion. Here’s hoping the promised release of Mati Diop’s Atlantics and the potential debut of Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind...
- 5/18/2021
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The long-awaited release of The Other Side of the Wind wasn’t the only piece of Orson Welles history that cinephiles have been clamoring for in the decades since the legendary director’s passing. While many directors are still obsessed with recreating moments of his life on the big screen, one of his actual films has yet to see the light of day in its fully realized form. The film in question is, of course, The Magnificent Ambersons, and now the best chance yet of finding the lost footage is on the horizon.
For a quarter of a century, Joshua Grossberg has attempted to track down the footage, amounting to 43 minutes in length, cut by Rko when Welles lost control of post-production. Now, as others attempt to recreate some of the footage using animation, Grossberg has received the backing of none other than TCM to actually find the lost prints.
For a quarter of a century, Joshua Grossberg has attempted to track down the footage, amounting to 43 minutes in length, cut by Rko when Welles lost control of post-production. Now, as others attempt to recreate some of the footage using animation, Grossberg has received the backing of none other than TCM to actually find the lost prints.
- 4/15/2021
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
In an era where the Snyder Cut exists, the possibilities are endless that some of the best lost works in filmdom could see the light of day. If all goes well, the next one on the docket could be the most tantalizing one of all: Orson Welles’ original version of “The Magnificent Ambersons.”
Welles’ feature, released in 1942, saw the temperamental director film a 131-minute cut only to have home studio Rko add new scenes (including a completely new ending) and excise 43 minutes. Welles said about the finished production, “They destroyed ‘Ambersons’ and it destroyed me.”
Allegedly, the missing 43 minutes was melted down so the nitrate could be utilized for the war effort. But filmmaker Joshua Grossberg, with the help of Turner Classic Movies, are on the hunt to find footage that might have been saved so a restoration of Welles’ original vision can take place. TCM will sponsor Grossberg’s...
Welles’ feature, released in 1942, saw the temperamental director film a 131-minute cut only to have home studio Rko add new scenes (including a completely new ending) and excise 43 minutes. Welles said about the finished production, “They destroyed ‘Ambersons’ and it destroyed me.”
Allegedly, the missing 43 minutes was melted down so the nitrate could be utilized for the war effort. But filmmaker Joshua Grossberg, with the help of Turner Classic Movies, are on the hunt to find footage that might have been saved so a restoration of Welles’ original vision can take place. TCM will sponsor Grossberg’s...
- 4/13/2021
- by Kristen Lopez
- Indiewire
One of the biggest lost treasures of cinema history is the missing, destroyed footage of Orson Welles’ follow-up to “Citizen Kane,” “The Magnificent Ambersons.” And Turner Classic Movies is now working on a documentary about the search for that lost footage.
TCM is teaming with filmmaker Joshua Grossberg, who is leading a search to Brazil to locate the missing reels of the 1942 film “The Magnificent Ambersons” in the hopes of restoring the film for the big screen. TCM will sponsor the latest leg of Grossberg’s search and produce a documentary titled “The Search for the Lost Print: The making of Orson Welles’ ‘The Magnificent Ambersons” about the 25-year process Grossberg has already endured to attempt to find it.
Film historians know the story well, but after disastrous test screenings of “The Magnificent Ambersons,” the film studio Rko cut 43 minutes from Welles’ second feature and tacked on a new, more optimistic ending.
TCM is teaming with filmmaker Joshua Grossberg, who is leading a search to Brazil to locate the missing reels of the 1942 film “The Magnificent Ambersons” in the hopes of restoring the film for the big screen. TCM will sponsor the latest leg of Grossberg’s search and produce a documentary titled “The Search for the Lost Print: The making of Orson Welles’ ‘The Magnificent Ambersons” about the 25-year process Grossberg has already endured to attempt to find it.
Film historians know the story well, but after disastrous test screenings of “The Magnificent Ambersons,” the film studio Rko cut 43 minutes from Welles’ second feature and tacked on a new, more optimistic ending.
- 4/13/2021
- by Brian Welk
- The Wrap
Richard Rush, the director of “The Stunt Man,” died April 8 at the age of 91, and if you look up his credits he has only 14 of them (and one was an episode of “The Mod Squad”). In a career that spanned 35 years, he made just a dozen features. Yet to an unusual degree, he meant every one of them. Maybe to a fault: As he noted in “The Sinister Saga of Making ‘The Stunt Man,'” his documentary look back at the fabled cult film about filmmaking, Rush gave away the rights to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and turned down “Jaws.” He was very choosy. Yet when you watch his movies, you always see them peering around corners and glancing ahead, anticipating the world that was coming.
In the most famous sequence in “The Stunt Man,” Steve Railsback, as a fugitive hired to be a Hollywood stunt man (though...
In the most famous sequence in “The Stunt Man,” Steve Railsback, as a fugitive hired to be a Hollywood stunt man (though...
- 4/13/2021
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Photo: 'They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead'/Netflix Orson Welles was a filmmaker known for being ahead of his time, quirky, and experimental. Of course, Citizen Kane (1941) will forever be his most revered work, but there’s much more to his legacy. His catalog includes several other classics, such as the historical dramas Macbeth (1948) and Othello (1951). In the later years of his career, he tried his hand at experimental films such as the docudrama F for Fake (1973) that followed the world of art forgery. However, even with so much output, his drive to create never wavered. There was one film that he desperately wanted to finish before he died: The Other Side of the Wind (2018). Related article: Bigger than Ant-Man: A Tribute to Paul Rudd – The Winner’s Journey Related article: Video | The Artist Evolves: All Leonardo DiCaprio Roles & Performances, 1980s to 2020 Filmography Director Morgan Neville’s documentary...
- 1/29/2021
- by Joshua Valdez
- Hollywood Insider - Substance & Meaningful Entertainment
Gregory Sierra, best known for his roles as Sgt. Miguel “Chano” Amanguale on “Barney Miller” and Julio Fuentes on “Sanford and Son,” died on Jan. 4 in Laguna Woods, Calif., according to Orange County Health Dept. records. He was 83.
The New York-born-and-raised actor, of Puerto Rican descent, found success in his recurring role as Fred G. Sanford’s neighbor. His career remained steady through the end of the ’90s, often finding Sierra playing law enforcement roles. He appeared on “Miami Vice,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Hill Street Blues” and “MacGyver.” His TV roles included guest spots on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “The X-Files.”
Before making it to “Sanford and Son,” Sierra had ties to Norman Lear. He appeared in one episode of the beloved sitcom “All in the Family” as Paul Benjamin, a Jewish extremist. Paul and Archie Bunker strike up a friendship after someone paints a swastika on the family’s front door.
The New York-born-and-raised actor, of Puerto Rican descent, found success in his recurring role as Fred G. Sanford’s neighbor. His career remained steady through the end of the ’90s, often finding Sierra playing law enforcement roles. He appeared on “Miami Vice,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Hill Street Blues” and “MacGyver.” His TV roles included guest spots on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “The X-Files.”
Before making it to “Sanford and Son,” Sierra had ties to Norman Lear. He appeared in one episode of the beloved sitcom “All in the Family” as Paul Benjamin, a Jewish extremist. Paul and Archie Bunker strike up a friendship after someone paints a swastika on the family’s front door.
- 1/23/2021
- by Haley Bosselman
- Variety Film + TV
Gregory Sierra, the actor known for his roles on “Barney Miller” and “Sanford and Son,” has died at the age of 83, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
A family spokesperson told THR that Sierra died earlier this month after a long battle with cancer.
Sierra was best known for co-starring on the first two seasons of “Barney Miller” as the emotionally volatile Sgt. Miguel “Chano” Amanguale. He also appeared on three seasons of “Sanford and Son” as the Sanfords’ Puerto Rican neighbor Julio Fuentes.
His other TV credits include “Hill Street Blues,” “Soap,” “Miami Vice,” “Murder, She Wrote” and the short-lived “A.E.S. Hudson Street.” His film credits include “The Flying Nun,” “The Towering Inferno,” “The Trouble with Spies” and “Mafia!”
Gregory Sierra’s final acting credit was the long-delayed Orson Welles film “The Other Side of the Wind,” which was released on Netflix in 2018 with footage shot by the late director in the 1970s.
A family spokesperson told THR that Sierra died earlier this month after a long battle with cancer.
Sierra was best known for co-starring on the first two seasons of “Barney Miller” as the emotionally volatile Sgt. Miguel “Chano” Amanguale. He also appeared on three seasons of “Sanford and Son” as the Sanfords’ Puerto Rican neighbor Julio Fuentes.
His other TV credits include “Hill Street Blues,” “Soap,” “Miami Vice,” “Murder, She Wrote” and the short-lived “A.E.S. Hudson Street.” His film credits include “The Flying Nun,” “The Towering Inferno,” “The Trouble with Spies” and “Mafia!”
Gregory Sierra’s final acting credit was the long-delayed Orson Welles film “The Other Side of the Wind,” which was released on Netflix in 2018 with footage shot by the late director in the 1970s.
- 1/23/2021
- by Reid Nakamura
- The Wrap
Gregory Sierra, who was a key part of two major 1970s sitcoms as Julio Fuentes on Sanford and Son and Sgt. Miguel “Chano” Amenguale on Barney Miller, has died. He was 83.
Sierra died Jan. 4 in Laguna Woods, California, from cancer, according to a family spokesman. His death just became public today.
Born in New York’s Spanish Harlem, Sierra worked with the National Shakespeare Company and in the New York Shakespeare Festival. He also appeared in off-Broadway plays and was a standby on Broadway for The Ninety Day Mistress in 1967.
Moving to Los Angeles, Sierra had guest appearances on such shows as It Takes a Thief, Medical Center, The High Chaparral, Mod Squad, The Flying Nun and Kung Fu.
In films he was also a supporting actor in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Getting Straight (1970), Papillon (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974) and the Orson Welles project The Other Side of the Wind.
Sierra died Jan. 4 in Laguna Woods, California, from cancer, according to a family spokesman. His death just became public today.
Born in New York’s Spanish Harlem, Sierra worked with the National Shakespeare Company and in the New York Shakespeare Festival. He also appeared in off-Broadway plays and was a standby on Broadway for The Ninety Day Mistress in 1967.
Moving to Los Angeles, Sierra had guest appearances on such shows as It Takes a Thief, Medical Center, The High Chaparral, Mod Squad, The Flying Nun and Kung Fu.
In films he was also a supporting actor in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Getting Straight (1970), Papillon (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974) and the Orson Welles project The Other Side of the Wind.
- 1/23/2021
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
Sometime during the rickety, rollicking production of Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind in 1974, the 1942 Oscar statuette for Best Original Screenplay (which Welles had won for Citizen Kane) disappeared. Only three decades later did cinematographer Gary Graver reveal that he’d placed the Oscar, blasphemously used as a prop for The Other Side of the Wind, in his storage. “Here, keep this,” Welles had told him. And so he did. The filmmaker’s daughter, Beatrice Welles, then sued Graver, and sold the statue herself. Because her father had “loathed everything that [the Citizen Kane] Oscar represented,” she argued, “To sell the one thing that had no value to him, but was of great value to others, perhaps was not so bad after all.”This award, however, held immense value for the other winner, the screenwriter and producer Herman J. Mankiewicz (nicknamed “Mank”), who threatened Orson Welles—with rumors and...
- 12/14/2020
- MUBI
Joseph McBride, the veteran film historian, biographer, screenwriter and professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University, has written three critical studies on Orson Welles including “What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career” (2006). He knew the legendary filmmaker and even appears as a young film critic in “The Other Side of the Wind,” Welles’ infamous unfinished film, which was completed and released in 2018.
He’s also been a staunch defender of the filmmaker’s authorship of 1941’s “Citizen Kane” since the publication of Pauline Kael’s controversial 50,000 word “Raising Kane,” which first appeared in two consecutive New Yorker articles in Feb. 1971. Kael praised the contributions to the Oscar-winning script by Herman Mankiewicz, who has the first position in the screen credit, while denigrating Welles’ contribution.
And the argument is back in the news with David Fincher’s new film, “Mank”,’ currently streaming on Netflix,...
He’s also been a staunch defender of the filmmaker’s authorship of 1941’s “Citizen Kane” since the publication of Pauline Kael’s controversial 50,000 word “Raising Kane,” which first appeared in two consecutive New Yorker articles in Feb. 1971. Kael praised the contributions to the Oscar-winning script by Herman Mankiewicz, who has the first position in the screen credit, while denigrating Welles’ contribution.
And the argument is back in the news with David Fincher’s new film, “Mank”,’ currently streaming on Netflix,...
- 12/10/2020
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
Polish-born filmmaker Filip Jan Rymsza, the producer of Venice Film Festival entry “Hopper/Welles,” which he is presenting this week at Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival, will follow his latest directorial outing “Mosquito State” – also a Venice premiere this year – with “Object Permanence,” Rymsza tells Variety. Partially set in Berlin and shot in English, it will be another Polish co-production, most likely with Germany.
“’Object permanence’ is something that people were aware of already, they just didn’t know how to define it: It’s the understanding that objects continue to exist even if you can’t see them or hear them, or otherwise sense them,” he says, adding that while “Mosquito State” looked at the recent past, this will look into the near future.
With another project, set in Japan, currently put on hold due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, Rymsza will once again try to focus on one protagonist.
“’Object permanence’ is something that people were aware of already, they just didn’t know how to define it: It’s the understanding that objects continue to exist even if you can’t see them or hear them, or otherwise sense them,” he says, adding that while “Mosquito State” looked at the recent past, this will look into the near future.
With another project, set in Japan, currently put on hold due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, Rymsza will once again try to focus on one protagonist.
- 10/23/2020
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
At the time, in November 1970, it must have seemed like an ideal match, a meeting of renegade titans: Orson Welles, the long-ago boy genius of theater and films who never got a job directing in Hollywood after 1958, and Dennis Hopper, whose out-of-nowhere smash with Easy Rider in 1969 made him the boy wonder of the hippie age and ostensible leader of a new wave of counterculture movies.
Just as Welles had cratered from a Hollywood-career perspective, Hopper hit the rocks with his second film — the hopelessly pretentious, financially ruinous The Last Movie, which the younger man was editing when he sat down with Welles one night to film five hours of chatty material that ended up as mere snippets in Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, which was only finished and released in 2018 courtesy of Netflix.
Why Orson Welles’ ‘The Other Side Of The Wind’ Took Half A Century To...
Just as Welles had cratered from a Hollywood-career perspective, Hopper hit the rocks with his second film — the hopelessly pretentious, financially ruinous The Last Movie, which the younger man was editing when he sat down with Welles one night to film five hours of chatty material that ended up as mere snippets in Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, which was only finished and released in 2018 courtesy of Netflix.
Why Orson Welles’ ‘The Other Side Of The Wind’ Took Half A Century To...
- 10/13/2020
- by Todd McCarthy
- Deadline Film + TV
Producer Filip Jan Rymsza, editor Bob Murawski, along with Peter Bogdonavich and Frank Marshall, surprised the film world in 2018 when they finished Orson Welles’ final project The Other Side of the Wind. Two documentaries about making the film accompanied Wind’s release and a moment in film history was made. We spoke with the team during the New York Film Festival that year and thought their journey was over. So it was a surprise to learn Rymsza and Murawski had a fourth project from the material, debuting at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
Gary Graver, Welles’ cinematographer for Wind, shot nearly five hours of footage on two cameras when Orson Welles met Dennis Hopper for dinner in November 1970. Only thirty seconds of the footage appears in The Other Side of the Wind, but the conversation shows Welles curious about this alleged leader of the New Hollywood, a maverick like Welles,...
Gary Graver, Welles’ cinematographer for Wind, shot nearly five hours of footage on two cameras when Orson Welles met Dennis Hopper for dinner in November 1970. Only thirty seconds of the footage appears in The Other Side of the Wind, but the conversation shows Welles curious about this alleged leader of the New Hollywood, a maverick like Welles,...
- 10/8/2020
- by Joshua Encinias
- The Film Stage
The American Film Institute has unveiled its lineup of 124 films, adding notable titles including the documentaries “Belushi,” “Citizen Penn” and “Hopper/Welles” and the Albert and Allen Hughes thriller “Dead Presidents.”
AFI Fest, which is going virtual this year without the usual glitzy Hollywood premieres at the Tcl Chinese Theatre, had announced previously that Rachel Brosnahan’s crime drama “I’m Your Woman” had been selected as its opening night title on Oct. 15. The festival also announced last month that it would close Oct. 22 with “My Psychedelic Love Story,” and host the world premieres of Kelly Oxford’s “Pink Skies Ahead” and Angel Kristi Williams’ “Really Love,” in addition to special presentations of Florian Zeller’s “The Father,” Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer’s “Fireball” and Mira Nair’s “A Suitable Boy.”
“Belushi” is directed by R.J. Cutler and features interviews with John Belushi, Jim Belushi, Chevy Chase, Carrie Fisher, Dan Aykroyd and Penny Marshall.
AFI Fest, which is going virtual this year without the usual glitzy Hollywood premieres at the Tcl Chinese Theatre, had announced previously that Rachel Brosnahan’s crime drama “I’m Your Woman” had been selected as its opening night title on Oct. 15. The festival also announced last month that it would close Oct. 22 with “My Psychedelic Love Story,” and host the world premieres of Kelly Oxford’s “Pink Skies Ahead” and Angel Kristi Williams’ “Really Love,” in addition to special presentations of Florian Zeller’s “The Father,” Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer’s “Fireball” and Mira Nair’s “A Suitable Boy.”
“Belushi” is directed by R.J. Cutler and features interviews with John Belushi, Jim Belushi, Chevy Chase, Carrie Fisher, Dan Aykroyd and Penny Marshall.
- 10/6/2020
- by Dave McNary
- Variety Film + TV
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
12 Hour Shift (Brea Grant)
Any professional dealing with routine levels of stress and trauma is bound to develop a morbid sense of humor–and the funny horror-comedy 12 Hour Shift might become a cult classic amongst nurses. Written and directed by Brea Grant and set in a small rural hospital in Arkansas in 1999, the film finds cynical ER nurse Mandy (Angela Bettis) about to start what she thinks is a routine twelve-hour shift. Her definition of routine involves a scheme to poison patients with bleach while shift supervisor Karen (Nikea Gamby-Turner) harvests their organs for a local black market dealer. Things don’t go as planned when Mandy’s cousin by marriage,...
12 Hour Shift (Brea Grant)
Any professional dealing with routine levels of stress and trauma is bound to develop a morbid sense of humor–and the funny horror-comedy 12 Hour Shift might become a cult classic amongst nurses. Written and directed by Brea Grant and set in a small rural hospital in Arkansas in 1999, the film finds cynical ER nurse Mandy (Angela Bettis) about to start what she thinks is a routine twelve-hour shift. Her definition of routine involves a scheme to poison patients with bleach while shift supervisor Karen (Nikea Gamby-Turner) harvests their organs for a local black market dealer. Things don’t go as planned when Mandy’s cousin by marriage,...
- 10/2/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
by Jason Adams
Picture it: the year is 1970 and the director Orson Welles has just recently begun filming his experimental film The Other Side of the Wind, the production of which would ultimately outlast the director himself (Welles died in '85) and many of the people he put in front of his camera. (Wind was finally released by Netflix in 2018 after nearly 50 years of tinkering.) One such person Welles filmed was actor-turned-director Dennis Hopper, who was fresh off his counter-culture sensation Easy Rider. Strange bedfellows, these two, but they sat down for over two hours of filmed and oft-antagonistic conversation, and now producer Filip Jan Rymsza and editor Bob Murawski, who finally got Wind across the finish line, have gifted us with Hopper/Welles, the fly-on-the-wall footage of that moment screening at NYFF. It's something!
Full disclosure: I went in to Hopper/Welles expecting to find Welles a bit of...
Picture it: the year is 1970 and the director Orson Welles has just recently begun filming his experimental film The Other Side of the Wind, the production of which would ultimately outlast the director himself (Welles died in '85) and many of the people he put in front of his camera. (Wind was finally released by Netflix in 2018 after nearly 50 years of tinkering.) One such person Welles filmed was actor-turned-director Dennis Hopper, who was fresh off his counter-culture sensation Easy Rider. Strange bedfellows, these two, but they sat down for over two hours of filmed and oft-antagonistic conversation, and now producer Filip Jan Rymsza and editor Bob Murawski, who finally got Wind across the finish line, have gifted us with Hopper/Welles, the fly-on-the-wall footage of that moment screening at NYFF. It's something!
Full disclosure: I went in to Hopper/Welles expecting to find Welles a bit of...
- 9/28/2020
- by JA
- FilmExperience
An annual celebration in the finest cinematic offerings, the New York Film Festival has been a treasure trove of the latest work from seasoned auteurs along with new discoveries throughout its storied history. Now in its 58th year, the festival’s slate will be available to a wider audience than ever before. Due to the pandemic forcing theaters in New York to continue with their shutdown, Film at Lincoln Center has reimagined the event, offering nationwide virtual screenings with limited rentals as well as drive-in screenings in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens.
Kicking off this Thursday with the world premiere of Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock (to be followed by two more films in his Small Axe anthology), we’ll be providing reviews of the premieres and beyond, but to begin our coverage we’re highlighting the recommended films coming to the festival we’ve seen at Sundance, Venice, TIFF,...
Kicking off this Thursday with the world premiere of Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock (to be followed by two more films in his Small Axe anthology), we’ll be providing reviews of the premieres and beyond, but to begin our coverage we’re highlighting the recommended films coming to the festival we’ve seen at Sundance, Venice, TIFF,...
- 9/16/2020
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Choose your fighter: Orson Welles, recently back in LA after a decade of European exile, and embarking on a project so meta he will emulate the film’s director-protagonist and die at 70 never having finished it; or Dennis Hopper, mere days after the end of an 8-day marriage, struggling to edit the metafiction that will kill his directorial career for nearly a decade? The documentary, “Hopper/Welles,” cutely credited to Welles as director, but put together by “The Other Side of the Wind” producer Filip Jan Rymsza, is a recording of a conversation between two (in)famous Hollywood game-changers at oddly analogous moments in their careers, despite their twenty-year age gap.
Continue reading ‘Hopper/Welles’: The Lost Conversation Between Two Fascinatingly Flawed Legends [Venice Review] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Hopper/Welles’: The Lost Conversation Between Two Fascinatingly Flawed Legends [Venice Review] at The Playlist.
- 9/14/2020
- by Jessica Kiang
- The Playlist
Exclusive: Dax Phelan has acquired the rights to UK author Mark Turley’s boxing book Journeymen: The Other Side of the Boxing Business, a New Perspective on the Noble Art, and will be shopping the project during Toronto.
The novel follows an alcoholic, drug-abusing, past-his-prime journeyman boxer, who, after being diagnosed with neurological damage, continues his career on the small-hall circuit at grave risk to himself, in the hope that he can reach the rare achievement of one hundred professional bouts.
Phelan will direct and co-write the adaptation with Turley. The pic will be produced by Phelan and Eric M. Klein (Jasmine) and executive produced by Turley. The team are searching for a lead actor now; they are planning to hire real-life boxers to round out the cast.
“I’ve been looking for a way to tell a different kind of boxing story...
The novel follows an alcoholic, drug-abusing, past-his-prime journeyman boxer, who, after being diagnosed with neurological damage, continues his career on the small-hall circuit at grave risk to himself, in the hope that he can reach the rare achievement of one hundred professional bouts.
Phelan will direct and co-write the adaptation with Turley. The pic will be produced by Phelan and Eric M. Klein (Jasmine) and executive produced by Turley. The team are searching for a lead actor now; they are planning to hire real-life boxers to round out the cast.
“I’ve been looking for a way to tell a different kind of boxing story...
- 9/11/2020
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
Above: City HallIt was the first time this year I heard people clap before the film began, and the applause lived on with an energizing aftershock. The theatre was the Lido’s Sala Darsena, the time 19:45, and the film City Hall, Fredrick Wiseman’s new documentary, a foray into the workings of Boston’s city government that would keep us in the theatre for the following four and a half hours. City Hall, which premiered out of competition, follows Wiseman’s previous Venice entry, Monrovia, Indiana (2018), an anguished study of small-town America. But it feels closer in scope and tone to that film’s predecessor, the extraordinary Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (2017), a journey that shuttled you across the institution’s many branches as they sought to adjust to the digital age. Much of what made that film so stupefying to me was the way Wiseman...
- 9/10/2020
- MUBI
It doesn’t take long to explain a film like Hopper/Welles in relative detail. In 1970, Dennis Hopper took a break from editing The Last Movie and flew to Los Angeles to be interviewed by Orson Welles. Welles was working on what would later––much, much later––become The Other Side of the Wind. During a boozy candlelit dinner party, surrounded by a small group of friends, Welles’ cameras rolled on Hopper for a little over two hours as they discussed politics and filmmaking. This is exactly what we see.
The timing of the interview could hardly be more enticing. By 1970 Welles (who was only turning 55) had already begun to slip into the notorious talk show appearances and novelty roles that would define the late part of his career. Hot on the epoch-shifting success of Easy Rider, Hopper was at the peak of his career, but he was also just...
The timing of the interview could hardly be more enticing. By 1970 Welles (who was only turning 55) had already begun to slip into the notorious talk show appearances and novelty roles that would define the late part of his career. Hot on the epoch-shifting success of Easy Rider, Hopper was at the peak of his career, but he was also just...
- 9/10/2020
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Dennis Hopper meets Orson Welles: That sounds like an oil-and-water match-up of legendary filmmakers. Welles, for all his renegade gusto, was a defrocked classicist — maybe (or maybe not) the greatest film director who ever lived, and one who became the ultimate high-toned Hollywood dropout. Whereas Hopper, the scraggly counterculture bad boy, launched his career as a director with “Easy Rider,” at which point he had already, in essence, dropped out. (He made dropping out seem the aesthetic cutting edge of the New Hollywood.) Yet for one long, boozy rambling evening in November 1970, these two men who barely knew each other sat around the dingy brick-walled den of a rented home in Beverly Hills, lit by hurricane lamps and a flickering fire, shooting the breeze and sizing each other up as cross-generational kindred spirits.
“Hopper/Welles” is a fascinating curiosity. It’s two hours and 11 minutes long, and the entire...
“Hopper/Welles” is a fascinating curiosity. It’s two hours and 11 minutes long, and the entire...
- 9/10/2020
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Orson Welles doesn’t waste time searching for the truth. Moments into “Hopper/Welles,” he declares, “Fuck the audience!” Meanwhile, a bemused Dennis Hopper allows for a dutiful grin. Such are the joys of this glorified behind-the-scenes feature, cobbled together from footage produced for Welles’ long-delayed swan song, “The Other Side of the Wind.” Assembled by producer Filip Jan Rymsza and editor Bob Murawski one year after they conjured “Wind” from Welles’ archives, this two-hour conversation from 1970 . It’s a long, drunken party conversation that allows you a seat at the table.
With Welles sitting just off-screen, cameraman Gary Graver sticks with Hopper’s bearded face for the duration, and the pair just go at it. The gorgeous black-and-white conversation was one of the many fragments produced for the “Wind” production, much of which takes place over the course of a long party hosted by the Wellesian protagonist and fictional...
With Welles sitting just off-screen, cameraman Gary Graver sticks with Hopper’s bearded face for the duration, and the pair just go at it. The gorgeous black-and-white conversation was one of the many fragments produced for the “Wind” production, much of which takes place over the course of a long party hosted by the Wellesian protagonist and fictional...
- 9/8/2020
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Intriguing but long-winded, this restored relic from 1970 reveals the two directors holding forth on everything from sex to Elvis
In November 1970, Dennis Hopper flew from Taos in New Mexico to dine with Orson Welles in LA. Hopper was in the midst of producing The Last Movie; Welles was busily prepping The Other Side of the Wind. Both these productions would later famously combust, but on that evening in late fall, their creators were feeling optimistic, all-powerful. Welles flattered Hopper and said that he should one day play Jesus. They broke bread together in what now looks very much like a film-makers’ last supper.
Hopper/Welles is the periodically fascinating, generally exasperating record of that meeting, an unearthed black-and-white home movie in which the two men get drunk and speak their minds on everything from Buñuel to Visconti, John Wayne to the Fondas. The order of the title’s star billing is intentional and unavoidable,...
In November 1970, Dennis Hopper flew from Taos in New Mexico to dine with Orson Welles in LA. Hopper was in the midst of producing The Last Movie; Welles was busily prepping The Other Side of the Wind. Both these productions would later famously combust, but on that evening in late fall, their creators were feeling optimistic, all-powerful. Welles flattered Hopper and said that he should one day play Jesus. They broke bread together in what now looks very much like a film-makers’ last supper.
Hopper/Welles is the periodically fascinating, generally exasperating record of that meeting, an unearthed black-and-white home movie in which the two men get drunk and speak their minds on everything from Buñuel to Visconti, John Wayne to the Fondas. The order of the title’s star billing is intentional and unavoidable,...
- 9/8/2020
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
For almost 40 years, the 100 hours of surviving footage that Orson Welles shot in the early 1970s for the movie “The Other Side of the Wind” remained largely unseen. First the director struggled in vain to finish the film, then its rights were tied up after his death. But that four decades of frustration has turned into a flurry of activity: In the last two years, that footage has been used not only in the completed version of “The Other Side of the Wind” that finally premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2018, but in two different documentaries about the film, Morgan Neville’s “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” and Ryan Suffern’s short doc “A Final Cut for Orson.”
And now it’s serving as the basis for yet another side of “The Other Side of the Wind,” and another posthumous film on which Welles is credited as director.
And now it’s serving as the basis for yet another side of “The Other Side of the Wind,” and another posthumous film on which Welles is credited as director.
- 9/8/2020
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
The sound design of “Mosquito State” takes the title as a mission statement. Across much of its running time, the sonic backdrop is a veritable chorus of mosquitoes whining in high, overbearing harmony, providing their own sinister vocal track to a more conventionally orchestrated score. You have to be confident in your film’s power to transfix its audience even as it’s liable to drive any anopheliphobics in the room to delirium, and Polish-American director Filip Jan Rymsza seems to be: His body horror-tinged allegory for the global financial crisis of 2007 swaggers with slick, nasty formal showmanship designed to get under the viewer’s skin. But it’s all in service of pretty thin ideas about capitalist decline and masculinity in crisis, played out by thinner characters still: The longer it needles, the more one is inclined to swat it away.
As it happens, “Mosquito State” is the first...
As it happens, “Mosquito State” is the first...
- 9/8/2020
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Whenever you hear about a famous meeting of the minds, many people will say they wish they were a fly on the wall to listen in to what was being said. So, when you find out that Dennis Hopper and Orson Welles had a marathon chat, during the production of “The Other Side of the Wind,” about everything film, as well as religion, sex, politics, and culture, in general, who wouldn’t want to eavesdrop?
Continue reading ‘Hopper/Welles’ Exclusive: Here’s A First Look At The Beautiful Poster For This Venice Doc at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Hopper/Welles’ Exclusive: Here’s A First Look At The Beautiful Poster For This Venice Doc at The Playlist.
- 9/4/2020
- by Charles Barfield
- The Playlist
You wait the best part of 30 years for one and then two come along at once…Orson Welles movies.
Pieced together from the 1,083 reels of footage for The Other Side Of The Wind (which debuted in 2018), Hopper/Welles is the latest ‘new’ feature from the industry titan, who died in 1985.
Ahead of its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, we spoke to producer Filip Jan Rymsza about the backstory behind the movie, on which he re-teamed with The Other Side Of The Wind editor Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker).
The intimate and revelatory documentary captures a 1970 meeting between the Citizen Kane director and the then-rising star Dennis Hopper, who had just made Easy Rider. The encounter came about when Hopper agreed to a cameo role in Welles’ troubled The Other Side Of The Wind. Welles flew Hopper from New Mexico to Los Angeles, where he cooked him a pasta...
Pieced together from the 1,083 reels of footage for The Other Side Of The Wind (which debuted in 2018), Hopper/Welles is the latest ‘new’ feature from the industry titan, who died in 1985.
Ahead of its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, we spoke to producer Filip Jan Rymsza about the backstory behind the movie, on which he re-teamed with The Other Side Of The Wind editor Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker).
The intimate and revelatory documentary captures a 1970 meeting between the Citizen Kane director and the then-rising star Dennis Hopper, who had just made Easy Rider. The encounter came about when Hopper agreed to a cameo role in Welles’ troubled The Other Side Of The Wind. Welles flew Hopper from New Mexico to Los Angeles, where he cooked him a pasta...
- 9/4/2020
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
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