WELLESNET MESSAGE BOARD

Release specs are up: http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=322 Orson Welles’s Mr. Arkadin (a.k.a. Confidential Report ) is one of cinema’s great mysteries. How did a globetrotting narrative of espionage, amnesia, and backstabbing come to be itself marked by these qualities? In the film, sm...

Out of interest, full specs are up at HVE's site here : Disc One: The Film New, restored high-definition digital transfer Audio commentary by star and co-writer Oja Kodar and director of photography Gary Graver Introduction by director Peter Bogdonavich Extended 9-minute trailer English subtitles fo...

That's about right - when I e-mailed them a few months back, I was told 2004 was a "strong possibility" for Welles' directorial debut into the collection. The fact that Criterion and Janus Films have struck a new print of F for Fake for the upcoming Film Forum retrospective would seem to indicate so...

if they had the proper inviroment to store the film, spent that kind of dough to preserve it, why would they keep it secret. i refuse the notion that some one has it, knows what they have, and screens it secretly. If "they" have any business sense whatsoever, they'll have kept it stored in optimal ...

How Green Was My Valley 's received an extremely raw deal over the years, simply for the great crime of "robbing" the best picture and director Oscar from Kane , as if it was directly responsible. Valley is a genuinely great film in its own right; a moving, beautiful farewell to a lost society of n...

There are two other cues (three if you count the end credits arrangement) that exist in the film and sound decidedly like Herrmann, but are missing from the CD. The first is the arrangement for the Major's fireside armchair scene, which sounds far more ominous and less mournful than either First or ...

I asked Jon Mulvaney at Criterion whether they were going to finally stop Orsen around (forgive me) and get some of his stuff into the collection, and received this encouraging response:

We hope to introduce Welles to the DVD collection next year, but nothing is certain at the moment.

To carry on the theme, I saw the Munich Filmmuseum assembly of excerpts from THE DREAMERS yesterday evening at the National Film Theatre. I actually bought my ticket to see the new print of SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, but begged them to change it when I realised that it was the last screening of THE IMMO...

To add another heart-warming tale of long-lost footage recovered, Ken Russell's delirious mass-hysteria classic The Devils recently had all the censored footage restored (including the near-legendary "Rape of Christ" sequence), after several long-deleted sequences were found in the dingiest, darkest...

The first review is in, and the DVD looks every bit as good as anyone could hope for.

Mondo Digital's review

This is shaping up to be my favourite release of the year, bar none.

Thinking about it, the "Friends of the Ace" scene not only establishes the social context, but also explains George's uncomfortability with them at the ball, and his fury at them intruding upon his daydream with Lucy on the porch. The scene with the chemist also adds a little local colour which migh...