Citizen Kane

“Day for Night,” a much loved, widely awarded, and truly joyous work about the trials and triumphs of making a film and the extraordinary power of motion pictures as objects of affection and obsession.

Part I. In 1963, Film Quarterly published an essay entitled “Circles and Squares.” It addressed the French auteur theory, introduced to America by The Village Voice’s Andrew Sarris. Auteurism holds that a film’s primary creator is its director; Sarris’s “Notes on the Auteur Theory” further distinguished auteurs as filmmakers with distinct, recurring styles. Challenging him …

Yes, The Lady from Shanghai is now a classic. But like so many Welles films, that current evaluation doesn’t save it from the studio tampering of its time.

The Conversation is a new feature at Sound on Sight bringing together Drew Morton and Landon Palmer in a passionate debate about cinema new and old. For their third piece, they will discuss Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up. **** Landon’s Take: The cultural impact of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up would be very difficult to overemphasize. Upon release, Andrew …

While William Randolph Hearst may not agree with the decision, it seems like the rest of his family are open to showing a movie that famously took a lot from his life. Variety reported on Friday that for the first time ever, Citizen Kane would be showing in the Hearst Castle. The film will screen …

#10. Chinatown (1974) Lost to: The Godfather Part II Well, no one will argue that it should have won, but still. Roman Polanski’s film made a true leading man out of Jack Nicholson. It grabbed eleven nominations, only taking home one. That being said, that one was for Original Screenplay, written by Robert Towne, which may …

The most enjoyable thing about F for Fake is that Orson Welles seems to be having such fun. It’s rare to see a filmmaker displaying, though his actual presence and through the tools of his trade, such an unadulterated delight in expression.

The movie journalist is always caught up in scandal, gossip and invasions of privacy. Though plenty of movies have been made about authors, poets, and other writers, the physical act of writing and editing rarely makes it into Hollywood journalism. Thankfully, the more sensational aspects of media have made for scathing satire and commentary, loathsome …

SIDNEY AND THE SIXTIES: REAL-TIME 1957-1966 Throughout the 1950s, Hollywood’s relationship with television was fraught: TV was a hated rival but also a source of cheap talent and material, as in the case of the small-scale Marty (1955), which won the Best Picture Oscar. These contradictions were well represented by the apparently “televisual” 12 Angry …

The term ‘Plot Hole’ has grown legs and begun a marathon sprint in the last few years. In most cases, the vast majority of accusations were false, revealing a common misunderstanding of what plot hole means.

I don’t remember when I’d first heard about the film adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s Y/A sci fi novel, Ender’s Game – a few weeks ago, a few months – but despite all the talk about the book being some sort of cult fave which has sold millions since it’d first been published in 1985, …

Some of you (hopefully) may have noticed my recent profile on the late, great Robert Mitchum.  In the course of researching the piece, I came across the fun tidbit that Mitchum had been a favorite of film critic Roger Ebert. The mind rarely works in linear fashion, and I suspect mine may even be more …

The Tumblr round-up is a compilation of images, links, posters, stories, videos and so on, taken from the Sound On Sight Tumblr account. We simply do not have the man power nor time to write articles on every interesting movie related goody we find, so this is our way of still promoting some of the stuff …

With the notion of film canonization once again at issue, we thought it might be an appropriate occasion to check in on our staff’s collective opinion of the greatest films of all time. We had no idea what to expect; our contributors come from all over the world and come from vastly different backgrounds and …

How do you measure the value of art? Influence, innovation, inspiration…  Every ten years since 1952, the London based magazine Sight & Sound has compiled the lists of the best critics and filmmakers in order to compile the ten best “greatest” films of all time. The 2012 edition marks the first time since 1962 that …

Not every film can be Citizen Kane. Deemed by many as a perfect film (i.e. Rotten Tomatoes), Hollywood has tried to emulate its critical success for decades, but as an industry that strives on generic formulas, some have come close while other have missed the mark. Now, thanks to the trustworthy Tomatometer, we have a …

If I may, I’d like to quote from Entertainment Weekly’s review of the just released 70th anniversary Blue-ray release of Casablanca (1942). According to Chris Nashawaty’s piece, when the script arrived at Warner Bros. in December of 1941 “…there wasn’t an ending yet…the movie was just one of 50 in Warner’s crowded pipeline at the …

Well it’s a new day and here is yet another montage, the second in two days. Lucky for us, it’s just as great. Yesterday we showed you A Brief History of Title Design. This time however, it’s the work of youtuber Hatinhand. He brings us a montage sequence of  amazing movie ending spoilers. Overall there …

Put together to compete in the SXSW Title Design Competition, Ian Albinson has edited a large mix of some of the greatest film and television titles ever made. Slashfilm reports that the websites mission is: A compendium and leading web resource of film and television title design from around the world. We honor the artists …

5. Brokeback Mountain vs. Crash (2005) A strong character has the privileged opportunity to reveal who we are, and sometimes whom we want to be, delivering a message linked to the consequences attached between the two.  Ang Lee’s tender love story between two homosexual ranchers in the American Midwest effectively demonstrated this harrowing reality. It …

1)Nashville (1975) Robert Altman’s Masterpiece captured America in the 70s like one else: All its confusion, disappointment, and uncertainty. The film follows 24 different characters over a period of as few days in Nashville just before a political fundraising concert. We take a peak in the lives of country music superstars, hippies, aspiring singers, mothers, …