Citizen Kane courtesy Turner Home Entertainment
Orson Welles Citizen Kane A pop masterpiece that plays like breaking news Send your movie questions to FlickChickSee Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this weeks new flicks in Movie TalkEveryones heard that Citizen Kane 1941 is the best of the best It just topped the AFIs most recent list of the all-time greatest films and critics academics and movie buffs all genuflect before its flawless mix of technical invention and lacerating dissection of the American Dream gone wrong But what sometimes gets lost in the adulation is the fact that its a blast and thats why its this weeks DVD Tuesday pickTell people youre a movie critic and they want to know your favorite movie of all time There are a lot of ways you can go at that one After flailing embarrassingly at the question on more than one occasion I decided to come up with an answer and a rationale So now I say my favorite movie is the one Id take to a desert island if I knew Id be stuck there for years and
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As revealed during Wednesday night's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies 10th Anniversary Edition special, Citizen Kane held onto the top spot on the 100-best-movies list, followed by The Godfather (up a notch from the 1998 countdown). Casablanca slipped from No. 2 to a third ranking. Among the pics making big leaps were John Wayne's The Searchers (from No. 96 to 12), Raging Bull (from No. 24 to 4), Vertigo (No. 61 to 9) and Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (No. 76 to 11).
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Question: In the "Meeting Mr. Kurtz" chapter of Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost, he writes that of the three movie versions of the book Heart of Darkness, two weren't even set in Africa. He notes Apocalypse Now as one and I e-mailed him asking whether Werner Herzog's excellent Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972) was the other. He said it wasn't but couldn't remember the other title, though he said it was set in the time of the Spanish Civil War. Do you know what Hochschild was referring to?
Answer: I don't know and my research didn't turn up what I would call a definitive answer. But I think it might be Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón's El Corazón del Bosque (1979), which is set 10 years after the Spanish Civil War. It revolves around a young man who sets out on a journey deep into the heavily forested Spanish hills in search of a legendary loyalis
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Question: When Pedro Almodovar won the best original screenplay Oscar for Talk to Her (2002), the announcer said as he was walking up to the stage that it was his second nomination, the other being for best director for the same film. But didn't he win an Oscar for All About My Mother (1999) in the foreign-language-film category? I know that the nominees in that category are actually the countries where the films were released and produced, but why does the director get to accept the award, not the producers? Do Oscar winners who are absent the night they win still get to receive their statuettes even if it's long after they won? And finally, what happens if your Oscar is stolen or broken — can you get a new one?
Answer: Wow, you are full of questions! The director gets to accept the award because the Academy say
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Question: A strange subject came up at work the other day. Who was the actor on the Paul Masson wine commercial of several years ago who said, "Drink no wine before its time?" Thank you.
Answer: Actually, Chris, that's sell no wine, as in, "We will sell no wine before its time." And that was no mere actor, mind you. That was the late, great Orson Welles, who, together with writer Howard Koch, scared the bejesus out of the entire country by convincing listeners of the too-real radio production War of the Worlds that we really were being invaded by aliens in 1938.
Welles, who was overweight and being treated for a heart condition and diabetes at the time of his death in 1985, was an actor, producer, writer and director who worked on 60 movies in his lifetime after kicking off his long showbiz career on the stage. He shilled for Masson and other companies for what he termed "grocery
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Robert Wise, who netted four Academy Awards as producer and director of West Side Story and The Sound of Music, died on Wednesday of heart failure. He was 91. All told, Wise was nominated for seven Oscars over his 50-plus year career, including one for editing his idol Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. Other accolades bestowed upon Wise include the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, an Oscar for sustained achievement, and the Directors Guild's highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award.
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