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With Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited “Megalopolis” now playing in theaters, many cinephiles have been dazzled and baffled in equal measures by the sprawling passion project. But even if the film itself is polarizing, there’s no denying that it reflects Coppola’s unending passion for cinema and a lifetime spent studying history and art.

Those interested in learning more about Coppola’s unique tastes will be thrilled to find that the “Apocalypse Now” director is this month’s guest picker for Turner Classic Movies. IndieWire can exclusively reveal that the auteur has given his stamp of approval to four iconic films airing on the cable channel in October: James Whale’s “The Bride of Frankenstein,” Michael Curtiz and William Keighley’s “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” Orson Welles’ “The Magnificent Ambersons,” and Marcel Camus’ “Black Orpheus.”

Following in the footsteps of Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro, Coppola elaborated...

IndieWire has expanded our survey of cinematographers out into the fall film festivals this year, starting with Venice. We reached out to directors of photography with films playing in Competition, Out of Competition, and Horizons about the cameras, lenses, and formats they used — and, most importantly, the creative imperatives that informed their choices. More than 40 cinematographers responded, representing some of the biggest and most stylized swings at Venice and some of the smallest, most intimate stories at the festival.

One thing that stuck out among the responses is how much cinematographers with films at Venice wanted to be responsive to their environment, whether it meant giving the Scottish highlands their due and shooting with the richness of actual film, finding the right color and format to transport viewers into different time periods of the past, or figuring out how to evoke the same richness of the black and white of...

In a way, you can thank Orson Welles for "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music." Over 20 years before he directed either of those pictures, Robert Wise got his start as a film music and sound editor at Rko Pictures. He gradually moved on to editing films themselves, which led to his collaborations with Welles on "Citizen Kane" and "The Magnificent Ambersons." You can see a lot of Welles' influence in Wise's later output as a director, particularly his inclination to shoot with long depth of field and precise use of sound. Both of these were essential to Wise's musicals, which snagged Oscars for both Best Director and Best Picture upon their release in 1961 and 1965, respectively.

Beyond that, though, "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music" couldn't be less alike. "West Side Story" is an impassioned tale of warring New York street gangs and star-crossed lovers fueled...

Even if you have never seen “Chinatown” you are probably familiar with the celebrated final line “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.” But did you know that the line almost didn’t make it to the screen?

Set in a drought-ridden 1937 Los Angeles, “Chinatown” stars Jack Nicholson as a J.J. Gittes, a former-cop-turned private-detective with a lot of demons, who works as a successful private eye specializing in a divorce cases. One day, a woman (Diane Ladd) shows up in his office proclaiming she’s Evelyn Mulwray and wants to hire him because she suspects that her husband, the Los Angeles Water Commissioner, is having an affair. When he’s murdered, Gittes finds himself embroiled in a wide-ranging conspiracy involving control of L.A.’s water lead by John Huston’s ruthless businessman Noah Cross, who happens to be Evelyn’s father. Entering the picture is the real Evelyn...

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...

Every time a presumed-lost silent film is rediscovered, it’s cause for celebration. When elements were found to restore complete versions of “The Passion of Joan of Arc” and “Metropolis,” the resulting restoration premiere was a major cinematic event. For his part, the silent film historian Kevin Brownlow told me he thinks a treasure trove of lost silents is just awaiting rediscovery in the archives of the Cinemateca de Cuba.

One major new find occurred right in the United States, however. Filmmaker Gary Huggins was hoping to buy a celluloid reel for a cartoon as part of the auction of films an Omaha-based distributor had held, after the distributor folded. He had to purchase a number of other films as well in order to get the one he wanted, and among those other titles? A presumed-lost 1923 movie with silent film megastar Clara Bow called “The Pill Pounder.”

A fun broadcast...

As she strolls comfortably toward multiple Oscar nominations for “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig is on track to set several Academy Awards records tied to her age, gender and the movie’s financial success. In terms of more general achievements, perhaps the most impressive one in her reach is becoming the first filmmaker to have all of her initial three solo features contend for Best Picture. Over the past 95 years, many directors have had shots at earning that distinction and a few have come remarkably close, but none of their chances have been quite as strong as hers.

Since Gerwig did not produce her first two independently-directed films – “Lady Bird” (2017) and “Little Women” (2019) – and, per academy rules, cannot officially share in a “Barbie” Best Picture nomination due to her screen credit of “executive producer” (rather than the qualifying “producer” or “produced by”), she does not and will not soon have any bids...

“Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within…and whatever walked there, walked alone.” – Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (1959).

Of all the subgenres of horror, the haunted house story has provided the most opportunities for slow and subtle terror that creeps and crawls its way under the skin and into the psyche. The Old Dark House (1932), The Uninvited (1944), The Innocents (1961), Burnt Offerings (1976), and The Changeling (1980) stand among the best that not only the haunted house film, but all of horror have to offer. For many, the absolute pinnacle of these films is Robert Wise’s 1963 masterpiece of suggestive horror The Haunting. Based on the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, the film owes much to the influences of the past while still carving a way toward the future, is populated by rich and relatable characters, and is a deeply felt...

One of the reasons "The Twilight Zone" endures today is its uncanny ability to tell any kind of story. Even the most classic episodes often feel like they were made for completely different reasons, and only share between them a whiff of the uncanny or supernatural. "The Night of the Meek" is one of the sweetest, kindest episodes of television ever filmed. "The Eye of the Beholder" is one of the most daringly experimental and powerful.

But sooner or later, "The Twilight Zone" always comes back around to the realm of absolute terror. Godlike children transforming hapless adults into Jack-in-the-Boxes, man-eating aliens from outer space, paranoid suburbanites ripping each other to pieces ... there's a frightening episode of "The Twilight Zone" for just about anybody.

And one of the scariest they ever filmed took place in a tiny cabin, with only one actor — one of the greatest of her generation — and she never says a word.

Abel Gance’s first sound film is among the most notorious what-ifs of cinema alongside The Magnificent Ambersons and much of Erich von Stroheim’s filmography. The version that was released in theaters back in 1931 and which survives today represents a tattered remnant of its maker’s original vision: a three-hour opus intended to spread a message of world unity and pacifism as Gance’s final word on the aftershocks and moral lessons of World War I. But producers immediately took out the pruning shears, reducing the film to half its intended length and, in the process, muddying its bold, operatic themes.

Compared to Gance’s towering silent epics, End of the World cannot help but feel like a curio. Still, it’s as if Gance knew the path that the film would take, as the first images of The End of the World consist of the director himself, as protagonist Jean Novalic,...

There are obscure treasures and there are holy grails. Of the latter, none is more mythic than the original 131-minute cut of Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, believed by many to be lost somewhere in Brazil. All others arguably belong to Erich von Stroheim. Born in Vienna in 1885 into a Jewish household, von Stroheim is mostly remembered for playing evil Germans in films like Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion. Cinephiles, though, know him as the unluckiest auteur in the history of cinema.

Intended to run anywhere between six and 10 hours, many of von Stroheim’s films, from Greed to the Gloria Swanson vehicle Queen Kelly, were severely bastardized by studio heads upon their release. In this context, the iris shot that opens 1922’s Foolish Wives feels especially poignant. This is no ordinary “fade into” effect, but an entrancing reinforcement of the sinister, insular, and constrictive nature of the film’s milieu.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSHam on Rye.Tyler Taormina, director of the idiosyncratic Ham on Rye (2019) and Happer's Comet (2022), has wrapped production on his next feature. Filmed on Long Island, Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point is a Christmas comedy that stars Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, and Gregg Turkington, plus the progeny of two prominent filmmakers in Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg.The Guardian reports that filmmaker Brian Rose is attempting to “recreate” the lost version of Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), which was altered significantly by Rko prior to its release. Using “the latest technology to reconstruct lost material and animate charcoal sketches,” Rose has reportedly spent four years recreating “around 30,000 frames” of Welles’s original rough cut in order that viewers can visualize what Welles intended in lieu of seeing the director’s original cut,...

The studio ‘butchered’ the legendary director’s 1942 film. Now an ambitious project is under way to restore it

The idea of deleting scenes from a film by renowned actor-director Orson Welles would be sacrilege today. But just after he made his masterpiece Citizen Kane for Rko in 1941, studio executives butchered his next great movie, The Magnificent Ambersons, burning extensive footage without consulting him.

Welles was so devastated that he later lamented: “They destroyed Ambersons and it destroyed me.”...

Auteurs and Hollywood don't always mix. Stanley Kubrick put some considerable distance between himself and the studio system after being required to stick closely to Dalton Trumbo's "Spartacus" script in 1960 — heading to England to secure funding and creative control on 1962's "Lolita." But he wasn't the first American filmmaker to flee his homeland in search of artistic freedom and funding.

Orson Welles is perhaps the ultimate example of a director clashing with a filmmaking industry unaligned with his sophisticated artistic ambitions. After his first film, "Citizen Kane," debuted in 1941 and proved a financial failure, Welles had to fight for financing and artistic control on future projects. Rko, which had funded "Citizen Kane," renegotiated Welles' contract to remove the unprecedented creative control he was initially afforded. And even though the film would eventually become regarded as one of, if not the finest movie ever made, the director would regularly find...

Every March feels like Christmas for classic film fans as television’s home for timeless movie fare, TCM, finds a fresh way to package its massive slate of Oscar-worthy films in the annual 31 Days of Oscar marathon. How should it be organized? By decade? By award category? A to Z? For this mega-marathon’s 29th round, the 352 titles airing — all of them either a winner or nominee across Academy categories — are bundled under one of 55 genres. The viewing joys begin on Wednesday, March 1 at daybreak with the category of “Family Ties,” led by Orson Welles’ masterful 1942 period piece about wealthy Midwesterners The Magnificent Ambersons. Six more kinfolk classics run throughout the day: James Dean and Richard Davalos in 1955’s sibling rivalry drama East of Eden at 9:30am/8:30c and Judy Garland’s frothy 1944 musical Meet Me in St. Louis at 11:30am/10:30c make for quite a double feature!

The United States had been at war a little over a year when the 15th Academy Awards were presented on March 4, 1943. It was the last year that the awards were celebrated at a lavish banquet; they would be moved to a theater setting in the ensuing years. The impact of World War II can be seen in the films honored, as well as the ceremony itself.

Popular musical star Jeannette MacDonald sang the National Anthem, and newly enlisted military privates Tyrone Power and Alan Ladd unfurled a flag that listed over 25,000 film industry members who had joined the armed forces. Bob Hope hosted the event, which saw one big winner, numerous patriotic choices and the first win for one of the industry’s biggest record-makers. Let’s flashback 80 years to the Oscars ceremony of 1943.

SEEOscar hosts: Performers who have hosted the Academy Awards

Ten movies made the cut for a Best Picture nomination.

Director/Tfh Guru Allan Arkush discusses his favorite year in film, 1975, with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Rules of the Game (1939)

Le Boucher (1970)

Last Year At Marienbad (1961)

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)

Topaz (1969)

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Hollywood Boulevard (1976) – Jon Davison’s trailer commentary

The Innocents (1961) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary

The Earrings of Madame De… (1953)

Rope (1948) – Darren Bousman’s trailer commentary

Make Way For Tomorrow (1937)

The Awful Truth (1937) – Charlie Largent’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Duck Soup (1933) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Going My Way (1944)

Nashville (1975) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary, Dan Perri’s trailer commentary

M*A*S*H (1970)

Shampoo (1975) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Bonnie And Clyde (1967) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

The Nada Gang (1975)

Get Crazy (1983) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Night Moves (1975) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) – Katt Shea’s trailer...

One of Orson Welles’ best has arrived in 4K! Kino Lorber has revived Universal’s 3-version study of the bordertown crime & corruption drama, that knocks us out with Welles’ colorful, weird characters, intricate scene blocking and infinitely creative camera work. Almost all of the extras from the earlier DVD and Blu-ray editions are here, with added expert commentary (the tally of tracks is now five). The performances are superb — Welles won’t lay off the candy bars, Janet Leigh wisely avoids the motel shower and Charlton Heston is actually fine as a ‘pretty unlikely’ Mexican. We’ve seen this show ten times — it’s so dense that each viewing brings new revelations.

Touch of Evil 4K

4K Ultra HD

Kl Studio Classics

1958-1998 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 96, 109, 111 min. / Street Date March 15, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Ray Collins, Joanna Moore,...

Not many movie buffs have the chance to meet, let alone interview or become friendly with, their favorite moviemakers.

Peter Bogdanovich, who died January 6 at the age of 82, managed the trick many times over. First as a film scholar and magazine features writer, then as a filmmaker in his own right, Bogdanovich cozied up to the likes of directors like Ford, Hawks, and Welles, and actors like John Wayne, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart, among countless others.

By some combination of luck and persistence, Bogdanovich saw to it that these men, whose movies he had seen, inhaled, and studied as a youth in New York, became his teachers, mentors, and friends.

He accomplished what had been the dream of every movie buff since before the movies talked: to get to know, in flesh and blood, those icons of the silver screen.

It was with that model in the back of...

It’s a very musical episode! Director and Tfh Guru, Allan Arkush, returns to talk about his favorite rock and roll movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

No Nukes (1980)

Amazing Grace (2018) – Dennis Cozzalio’s Oscar nominee reactions

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Get Crazy (1983) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) – Eli Roth’s trailer commentary

Blackboard Jungle (1955) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Rock, Rock, Rock! (1956) – ​​Jesus Treviño’s trailer commentary

Mister Rock And Roll (1957)

Go, Johnny, Go! (1959) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Hail Hail Rock And Roll! (1987) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

The Girl Can’t Help It (1956) – Dan Ireland’s trailer commentary

Hellzapoppin’ (1941)

Innerspace (1987) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Almost Famous (2000) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Wayne’s World (1992)

The Graduate (1967) – Neil Labute’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Scorpio Rising...

If 2021 has been a calvacade of bad decisions, dashed hopes, and warning signs for cinema’s strength, the Criterion Channel’s monthly programming has at least buttressed our hopes for something like a better tomorrow. Anyway. The Channel will let us ride out distended (holi)days in the family home with an extensive Alfred Hitchcock series to bring the family together—from the established Rear Window and Vertigo to the (let’s just guess) lesser-seen Downhill and Young and Innocent—Johnnie To’s Throw Down and Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons in their Criterion editions, and some streaming premieres: Ste. Anne, Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over, and The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love.

Special notice to Yvonne Rainer’s brain-expanding Film About a Woman Who . . .—debuting in “Female Gaze: Women Directors + Women Cinematographers,” a series that does as it says on the tin—and a Joseph Cotten retro boasting Ambersons,...

Above: Justice League (2017) and Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)In a dual act of legal and artistic distinction from Gian Luigi Polidoro’s film Satyricon (1969), Federico Fellini named his own adaptation of Gaius Petronius’ novel Fellini Satyricon (1960). The accompanying tagline—”Rome. Before Christ. After Fellini.”—relished in the film’s indisputable authorship, which Fellini referred to as 20 percent Petronius, 80 percent Fellini. For his acolytes, the auteur served as the main attraction. Though Zack Snyder falls far below Fellini by measure of ingenuity, fans (especially those of his DC Extended Universe movies) praise him as a peerless virtuoso. Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021), an “entirely new thing" from the expurgated Justice League (2017), validates their defense by granting him the same mythic status as his god-like heroes. History affirms that the boast is well-earned. Through public interest alone, Zack Snyder’s Justice League has saved itself from joining a lineage of pictures...

You know how fans of Zack Snyder went crazy about all the cuts to “Justice League” that happened before that film was released in 2017, eventually demanding that Warner Bros. release the original cut of the film? Well, 75 years before that happened, there was a Snyder Cut situation involving Orson Welles and his 1942 film, “The Magnificent Ambersons.” And in honor of its upcoming 80th anniversary, there is a real effort being taken to see if the Welles Cut of the film can be located and released.

Continue reading TCM To Finance A Search For The Lost Cut Of Orson Welles’ ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ at The Playlist.

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.

MTV announced “Catfish: The TV Show” will return May 4 at 9 p.m.

Nev Schulman and Kamie Crawford are back to track down online impersonators who have been taking advantage of people just looking for someone to cuff up with. All over the world, people have been searching or connections online with all the extra free time and lack on in-person social interaction. The new episodes include a Florida adult film star, an Atlanta rapper and a Turkish role-playing Romeo. Watch a first look below.

Also in today’s TV news roundup:

Casting

Common has joined “Never Have I Ever” as a recurring guest star in the second season, which will debut this summer on Netflix. The multihyphenate will play Dr. Chris Jackson, described as a “suave and debonair dermatologist” who works in the same building as fellow dermatologist Dr. Nalini Vishwakumar (Poorna Jagannathan). Based in the suburbs of Los Angeles,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: The Cinerama Dome in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Decurion has announced that it won't be reopening its Arclight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres locations. The theater chain's most famous location is its Hollywood Arclight multiplex on Sunset Boulevard, home to the Cinerama Dome. Arte France Cinéma will be co-producing three new features: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's Les amandiers (starring Louis Garrel), Arnaud Desplechin's Brother and Sister (which stars Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud), and Pietro Marcello's L'envol (the filmmaker's first feature in France). The Workers of the Cinemateca Brasileira have released a manifesto calling attention to the many risks facing the Cinemateca's unattended collection, equipment, and facilities due to its "current state of abandonment" by the Ministry of Tourism. Backed by TCM, documentarian Josh Grossberg and his...

Director Orson Welles‘ 1942 movie The Magnificent Ambersons was taken away from him by Rko after it earned negative test scores, with the studio scrapping nearly an hour of his footage, reshooting additional scenes, and cooking up a completely different ending than Welles originally intended. The resulting Frankensteined version is still widely regarded as a great […]

The post TCM to Help Fund Documentary Searching For Orson Welles’ Original Cut of ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ appeared first on /Film.

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...

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.

Exclusive: It has only been about a quarter of a century since he started it, but filmmaker Joshua Grossberg’s Quixotic documented quest to find the original print of Orson Welles’ 1942 classic The Magnificent Ambersons has enlisted a powerful media partner to help in his long journey to solving one of cinema’s great mysteries.

Turner Classic Movies is teaming with Grossberg to finish his documentary on the search for what many film historians consider the “Holy Grail”: Welles’ original preview workprint of the film, his follow-up to the iconic 1941 Citizen Kane that got him fired by Rko Studios after reportedly disastrous test screenings. The studio then took control, cut 43 minutes and shot new scenes including a new ending, all without the approval or input of its director. The original excised footage was melted down for its nitrate for use in World War II.

The resulting film, even in its truncated form,...

Zack Snyder superhero movies are the black licorice of cinema: Those who like the taste can’t understand why everyone doesn’t, and those who don’t like the taste grimace at the thought. And now the streaming wars and online clamor have brought us “Zack Snyder’s Justice League.” It’s four hours of black licorice.

We’re never going to get the von Stroheim cut of “Greed” or the Welles cut of “The Magnificent Ambersons,” but thanks to Snyder’s let’s-call-it-enthusiastic fan base and AT&T/Warner Media’s desperation to get more subscribers to HBO Max, the filmmaker has been given the time and money to reshoot, recut and reconceive the film that he had to abandon because of a family tragedy.

The result is a superhero epic cropped for Imax screens but designed for at-home viewing, where audiences can either binge the entire 242-minute running time or...

The reviews for “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” are in, and the consensus about round two of DC’s epic superhero team-up is — mostly — that it’s an improvement of the 2017 theatrical release of the film.

“We’re never going to get the von Stroheim cut of “Greed” or the Welles cut of “The Magnificent Ambersons,” but thanks to Snyder’s let’s-call-it-enthusiastic fan base and AT&T/Warner Media’s desperation to get more subscribers to HBO Max, the filmmaker has been given the time and money to reshoot, recut and reconceive the film that he had to abandon because of a family tragedy,” wrote TheWrap’s Alonso Dulrade in his review of the film.

“The new version is an improvement in some concrete ways. Its plot and tone are more coherent, with occasional puzzling exceptions. Its FX are substantially improved, though still sometimes fakey, and in general the photography looks...

Fanboy heaven or hell. Which is it? How many hours, precisely, do you want to spend with Superman and Batman and a bunch of other superfigures in a world where all humor has been banned and portentous droning music is played ceaselessly with no off-switch available? Whose superhero movies do you prefer, the heavy, ponderous ones of Zack Snyder or the untidy, playful ones of Joss Whedon? Which will it be? Judgment Day has arrived for Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

Whatever the verdict, the biggest victory was won by the die-hard fans. In the wake of widespread dissatisfaction with the aesthetic hodgepodge and financial shortfall of the 2017 Justice League, the customary Hollywood...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Lee Isaac Chung's Minari. Nomadland, Minari, Soul, and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm are among this year's Golden Globe winners. Find our complete list of nominees and winners here. Canyon Cinema Foundation has announced a new curatorial fellowship, Canyon Cinema Discovered, that will offer four fellows the opportunity to curate programs from Canyon's collection of films. Applicants can be based in anywhere in the world. Spike Lee and HBO will be teaming up for the multi-part documentary NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021½, described as “an epic chronicle of life, loss and survival in the city of New York over the twenty years since the September 11th attacks.” The film will include first-hand stories told by over 200 New Yorkers. Recommended VIEWINGThe official teaser trailer for Barry Jenkins' series The Underground Railroad, an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's novel,...

The director of Palmer helps us kick off our new season by walking us through some of his favorite movies.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Bloodhounds Of Broadway (1989)

Salvador (1986)

True Believer (1989)

Palmer (2021)

Wonder Wheel (2017)

A Face In The Crowd (1957)

On The Waterfront (1954)

No Time For Sergeants (1958)

The Confidence Man (2018)

Lolita (1962)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

The Ghost Of Peter Sellers (2018)

The Marrying Man (1991)

The Ruling Class (1972)

The Krays (1990)

Let Him Have It (1991)

The Changeling (1980)

On The Border (1998)

Murder By Decree (1979)

Bigger Than Life (1956)

The Night of the Iguana (1964)

Fat City (1972)

Angel (1984)

Animal House (1978)

My Science Project (1985)

Lucía (1968)

Paper Moon (1973)

Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

The Great McGinty (1940)

I Married A Witch (1942)

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Raging Bull (1980)

Once Upon A Time In America (1984)

The Rider (2017)

The Mustang (2019)

Nomadland (2020)

Murmur of the Heart (1971)

Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

The Conversation (1974)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part III (1990)

The Magnificent Ambersons...

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.

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...

The Covid-19 crisis has devastated cinema attendance. Several major cinema chains have closed around the world. In the face of adversity, this year’s 12th edition of the Lumière Festival in France’s Lyon, which runs Oct. 10-18, aims to fly the flag of cinema even more forcefully than ever, through its on site mix of career tributes, restored classics, world premieres of new films and a classic film market.

Veteran French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier (“My Journey through French Cinema”) has played a key role in organizing this year’s line-up, including the tribute to the classic French screenwriter Michel Audiard, who would have turned 100 this year, the award of the Lumière Award to Belgian directing duo, the Dardenne brothers, tributes to Oliver Stone and Viggo Mortensen, and a career tribute to French actress Sabine Azéma, who starred in two films by Tavernier. The Festival also pays homage to American...

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...

If you’re looking to dive into the best of independent and foreign filmmaking, The Criterion Channel has announced their August 2020 lineup. The impressive slate includes retrospectives dedicated to Mia Hansen-Løve, Bill Gunn, Stephen Cone, Terry Gilliam, Wim Wenders, Alain Delon, Bill Plympton, Les Blank, and more.

In terms of new releases, they also have Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’ Bacurau, the fascinating documentary John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, the Kenyan LGBTQ drama Rafiki, and more. There’s also a series on Australian New Wave with films by Gillian Armstrong, Bruce Beresford, David Gulpilil, and Peter Weir, as well as one on bad vacations with Joanna Hogg’s Unrelated, Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, and more.

See the lineup below and explore more on their platform. One can also see our weekly streaming picks here.

25 Ways to Quit Smoking, Bill Plympton, 1989

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, Roy Rowland,...

The Oscar winning co-writer and producer of Brokeback Mountain takes us on a cinematic journey through her life, and talks about the pleasures of writing with Larry McMurtry and Joe Bonnano, and what Ken Kesey’s favorite movie was.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Good Night, And Good Luck (2005)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Red River (1948)

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Hud (1963)

Piranha (1978)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

They Drive By Night (1940)

Kings Row (1942)

The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)

The Grapes of Wrath (1942)

Buffalo Bill (1944)

Laura (1944)

Where The Sidewalk Ends (1950)

The Day of the Triffids (1963)

Moby Dick (1956)

Village of the Damned (1960)

Written on the Wind (1956)

Magnificent Obsession (1954)

There’s Always Tomorrow (1956)

All That Heaven Allows (1955)

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

Brazil (1985)

Lost In La Mancha (2002)

The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys (1996)

The Fisher King (1991)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

The Deer Hunter (1978)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

A History of Violence...

The BBC has snapped up 23 gems from the Rko vaults, from Fred and Ginger to salty romcoms and rousing westerns

Many a friend and family member has told me they’re watching more classic cinema than usual in lockdown, and not just because they’ve binged every bit of new content Netflix has to offer. Nostalgia, however rosy and selective, is all the more inviting when present-day reality has so little comfort to offer. In spite of this drawcard, the selection of films made before, say, 1970 on most streaming outlets remains spotty at best.

Which is why the BBC iPlayer’s recent acquisition of 23 films from the vault of Rko Pictures – one of Hollywood’s “Big Five” studios in the golden age, bankrupted by the 1960s – has been received with palpable excitement. Suddenly I find enthusiastic responses to the likes of The Magnificent Ambersons and King Kong popping up all...

Thanks to our current situation, there aren’t many new movies being released at the moment. And while that’s a sad state of affairs for cinephiles, it does at least provide a good opportunity to look back and check out some golden oldies that might have so far slipped under your radar.

Luckily, the good old Beeb has you covered. Streaming service BBC iPlayer has acquired a bunch of big-screen masterpieces for your lockdown delectation, all produced by the legendary Rko Pictures – one of the “big five” studios of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

From powerhouse dramas to technicolour marvels, toe-tapping musicals to weird and wonderful B-movies, Rko produced some of Tinseltown’s all-time classic movies, and boasted some of the period’s biggest star signings – including Orson Welles, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Joan Fontaine and Robert Mitchum.

BBC iPlayer currently has 26 “silver screen classics” available to stream or download,...

Right now, in this galaxy… featuring Lloyd Kaufman, Brad Simpson, Gilbert Hernandez, Grant Moninger and Blaire Bercy.

Please support the Hollywood Food Coalition. Text “Give” to 323.402.5704 or visit https://hofoco.org/donate!

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Mondo Keazunt (1955)

The Human Tornado (1976)

Gigot (1962)

The Hustler (1961)

How to Commit Marriage (1969)

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

Citizen Kane (1941)

Touch of Evil (1958)

The Last Man On Earth (1963)

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

The Omega Man (1971)

I Am Legend (2007)

Panic In Year Zero! (1962)

Dogtooth (2009)

The Entity (1983)

Shelf Life (1993)

The Killers (1964)

The Next Voice You Hear… (1950)

Donovan’s Brain (1953)

Talk About A Stranger (1952)

Julius Caesar (1950)

They Saved Hitler’s Brain (1968)

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

The Jerk (1979)

Kings Row (1942)

Santa Fe Trail (1940

Bedtime For Bonzo (1951)

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (19468)

Point Blank (1967)

House of Wax (1953)

Black Shampoo (1976)

A History Of Violence (2005)

Return To Oz (1985)

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987)

The Anderson Tapes (1971)

Psycho (1960)

Two Evil Eyes (1990)

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform. Stream “Night of the Hunter” here.

What’s left to say about “The Night of the Hunter,” beyond the brilliance of Charles Laughton’s direction, Robert Mitchum’s horrific and hypnotizing screen presence, and the timeless badassery of a shotgun-wielding Lillian Gish? How about this: If this masterpiece remains a blind spot for you, now’s the time to catch up, before the planned remake threatens to ruin its memory.

More from IndieWireAnother 'Hellraiser'? Yawn. Hollywood, Original Horror Movies Are Nothing to FearStream of the Day: 'Notes on a Scandal' Is a Campy Battle of the Divas

That may sound like a harsh assessment of a project that has yet to come to fruition, but the very notion that “The Night of the Hunter...

With movie theaters having to close their doors to curb the spread of coronavirus, it also meant many previously scheduled festivals had to cancel, postpone, or improvise. The latest to still make things work during these strange circumstances is Turner Classic Movies, whose annual TCM Classic Film Festival was set to take place in mid-April in Los Angeles, celebrating their 11th edition.

They’ve now announced a Special Home Edition to take place April 16-19 on the channel, featuring new restorations of films that previously played at the festival as well as ones slated for this year. They are also featuring interviews with talent from years past, showing both on the channel and on YouTube and social media.

The lineup offers no shortage of cinema history landmarks with The Seventh Seal, North by Northwest, Metropolis, Grey Gardens, They Live by Night, Network, Casablanca, and The Magnificent Ambersons (with Peter Bogdanovich...

Orson Welles would’ve celebrated his 104th birthday on May 6, 2019. After making what many people cite as the greatest film ever made, “Citizen Kane” (1941), the multi-talented actor, writer, director and producer 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. In honor of his birthday, 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...

Have you ever wondered what are the films that inspire the next generation of visionary filmmakers? We look back at the incredible launch year for Sandi Tan who began her festival win and year end accolades with the Directing Award World Cinema Documentary at Sundance and landing six nominations (and three wins) at the Cinema Eye Honors for Shirkers. We asked Sandi to identify the films with the mostest. She mentions deserving films such as The Magnificent Ambersons, Sunset Boulevard and Apocalypse Now (Redux), but in A to Z order, here are Tan’s top ten films as of March 2019.…...

“Dear Orson Welles…” — that’s the first thing you hear in Mark Cousins’ essay-cum-tribute to the man who gave us Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, some of the most baroque screen adaptations of the Bard ever made and the template for the modern maligned-maestro filmmaker. There have been more than a few documentaries on Welles, not to mention dozens of bios, hundreds of monographs and deep-dive articles on his movies, endless dissections of specific scenes and shots, and gallons of ink spilled in the name of recounting his rise and fall.

Joe Cornish's follow up to Attack The Block came out this week! Check out The Casual Cinecast's review of The Kid Who Would Be King! 

As always, before diving into their feature review, The Casual Cinecast does their "What's On Our Minds?" segment where they discuss the film/TV they've been consuming over the last week. Mike saw the bizzarely fascinating and trainwreck-y Serenity starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway! Chris has started and is loving the Starz series Outlander! Justin watched a ton over the last week including the 2016 anime A Silent Voice, the recent Best Picture nominee Vice and then watched Orson Welles' follow up to Citizen Kane and notoriously "butchered by the studios" film, The Magnificent Ambersons! 

Then the guys jump into the feature review of Joe Cornish's The Kid Who Would Be King which stars Louis Ashbourne Serkis and, as usual, features a spoiler-free...