'Citizen Kane', A 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collectors Edition For An Orson Welles Masterpiece

Will this set be sitting atop your movie collection sometime soon?

What's that I hear? Is it the gracious sacrifrices film buffs will be offering as a thank you to the movie gods? Well, I think Warner Home Video will accept your cash as an equivalent. Either way, its a win-win situation.

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Orson Welles Returns to the Movies...From the Grave

Even Orson Welles is getting in on the 3-D bonzanza, only 25 years after his death. A recording of Welles narrating a children's Christmas novel will be the jumping off point for a new live-action/CG flick called Christmas Tails. It will be the first film production for digital effects and makeup shop Drac Studios.

The Hollywood Reporter has the vital information about the project, and it's an interesting story. The book Christmas Tailes was self-published by Robert Leed, who convinced Welles to record the text in the last few months of his life. Incidentally, Welles worked right to the end; he died just hours after taping an interview with Merv Griffin. But after the initial recordings, Leed didn't do much with them and they sat in his Las Vegas home untouched for many years.

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Movie Review - 'Me and Orson Welles'

Me and Orson Welles Starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes Directed by Richard Linklater Rated PG-13

Orson Welles was 25 when he directed Citizen Kane. It’s hard to fathom how anyone could make a film with such bravura at 25, to say nothing of doing it the first time he walked behind a camera or without acknowledging that this little feat - creating a cinema landmark still cited by many as the best film ever - was undertaken in 1941. Prior to Kane, Welles worked in radio and theater, shocking the country with War of the Worlds while only 23, and staging legendary adaptations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Julius Caesar when he was even younger. Me and Orson Welles presents The Man Who Would Be Kane during rehearsals for his Mercury Theatre’s Caesar, which he updated as an allegory for Mussolini’s Italy. By this time (1937), Welles was already a well-paid radio personality, contributing his voice to any number of weekly radio dramas and serving as a voice of the classic crime fighter The Shadow. One of his earliest productions, a kind of mini-series take on Les Miserables Welles adapted in 1937, indicates quite clearly his facility with voices (often portraying multiple characters within scenes) and the red pen. Welles' edits were and are controversial. For example, this version of Julius Caesar, a play that runs about 20,000 words, was 100 minutes on stage with no intermission. Some critics hailed the new approach as well as the modernity of the presentation, while others thought it was akin to sacrilege. And behind it all was a kid, a 22-year-old kid. If this film does one thing wrong in its depiction of Welles it is not addressing the character's age, worth noting since the “Me” in Me and Orson Welles is portrayed by Zac Efron, who is also 22. Behind one of the year’s best performances is British actor Christian McKay, and his is a flawless piece of work. Capturing Welles as equal parts artist, genius, and charlatan, McKay creates a man whose domineering nature barely masks his fragility. It also does not foretell the future, a now threadbare piece of Hollywood lore starring one of its most talented writers, actors, and directors all rolled into one as a cautionary tale, a man who could only find work hawking Paul Masson wine at the end of his career. McKay is in that moment in 1937, though, and never looks to the old, fat Welles, the intermediate Touch of Evil Welles, or even Orson a handful of years later.

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Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds' Online Friday Night

I know a thing or two about the legendary War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938. It served as the initial inspiration for my master's thesis covering what was called "First Person Singular," the then-revolutionary narrative technique Orson Welles employed in his radio dramas, and how his later film writing owed such a debt to those early days of radio. Before Welles, only 23 at the time of War of the Worlds, almost all radio dramas employed a narrator separate from the story, but Orson figured rightly that you could tell those stories more efficiently by giving the exposition to a central character.

Because of that, the approach allowed for the device in War of the Worlds of advancing the story through fake news reports. Problem was, even though there was a disclaimer before the broadcast that it was a work of fiction, roughly two million people thought it was a real alien invasion. Imagine if the show had more listeners: The radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (with Charlie McCarthy) attracted roughly 35% of the radio audience that night; War of the Worlds was heard by less than 4% of people with a radio. But there was panic in the streets of New York, FCC investigations, and more. War of the Worlds returns Friday night, marking its 71st anniversary. The original radio drama will be streamed live on WaroftheworldsTribute, and it's all made possible by the new film Me and Orson Welles (thanks to First Showing for finding this earlier today). The stream will begin at 8pm Eastern.

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DiCaprio, Maguire to Remake 'The Third Man'

There's a rumor floating around, one CHUD says is pretty strong, that Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire may team up to remake Carol Reed's The Third Man, one of the best movies of the 1940s, and that's saying something. The film is primarily known for Orson Welles' Harry Lime, mentioned in nearly every scene in the movie for about an hour without ever being seen, and then making one of the most memorable appearances in cinema.

Steven Knight (Eastern Promises) is apparently working on a screenplay, and the project is real; it's happening. THe rumor is whether or not Leo and Tobey will actually be involved, and if they are, who would play Lime and who would play the everyman Holly Martins (originally portrayed by Joseph Cotten). My instinct is that Leo would play Lime. It's a showcase role, it's the one that moves the chains. My instinct is also that this movie won't take place in post-WWII Vienna, but rather post-invasion Baghdad. That's a theory CHUD also pushes, and I can't think of a better way to bring the story forward.

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