In honor of William Shakespeare’s Birthday and the on-going Shakespeare Blog-a-Thon, here is the moving conclusion of Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight (aka Falstaff), based on Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and a bit of Henry V. Once more, as in so many Welles-directed films, a male friendship is betrayed. Once more, director-star ... read more »

See Jim Emerson’s post at Scanners. UPDATES 2/23: Christian Liemke offers some 1.33:1/1.85:1 Touch of Evil frame comparisons here. (Via Jim Emerson.) Jonathan Rosenbaum, in a comment to the previous Touch of Evil post, argued that: “We (I, Murch, and producer Rick Schmidlin) went out of our way to insist in all the press materials ... read more »

[The following is Bright Lights After Dark ’s contribution to the Contrarianism Blog-a-Thon hosted here.] Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958) is a noir masterpiece. For some, it represents Welles’ greatest achievement as a director. At the very least, it is Welles’ greatest contribution to genre filmmaking (most of his other films – Citizen Kane, ... read more »

Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai (1948) is one of the most anti-noir of classic noirs. “Shanghai” in The Lady From Shanghai means the same thing as “Chinatown” in Chinatown. It is a synonym for “Noirville,” a place where no one has control over their destiny, and passive acceptance of the world’s corrupt, fallen nature ... read more »

In a prior post, I referred to the films of Richard Linklater as “logocentric,” by which I mean – in a good way – that no matter how visual Linklater’s films may be, they are fundamentally word-centered. (The same could be said of Godard’s.) The term is appropriated from the late Columbia professor, literary theorist, ... read more »

Time to get this blog rolling. “Let loose the Kraken!” as Larry Olivier would say. (Clash of the Titans – 1981.) On June 18, 2006, a Father’s Day, Isabella Rossellini’s short film, My Dad is 100 Years Old, made its American television premiere on the Sundance Channel. The film is about Isabella’s father, Roberto Rossellini, ... read more »