Tag: Citizen Kane

The myth of the first feature is so damaging to any aspiring filmmaker. You look at Citizen Kane or Red Road or Blood Simple, and…

On the 6th May, it will be Orson Welles’ 103 birthday. There’s a very high chance that you have heard the name Orson Welles, and…

The most appropriate metaphor for the Oscar race is probably the image of a cattle drive, with PR staff working overtime to herd as many voters as possible into one’s own corral. What is the most effective strategy for this? Concentrating on the perception that one’s vote does not necessarily reflect what is best in film, but what best represents the collective self-image of AMPAS voters from selections of a particular season.

At the core of every protagonist in this genre is the seed of origin, that thing, that career, that idea that they either love so much that they dare not take their attention away from it, or a past so traumatically unsatisfying that they can’t reinvent themselves quickly enough.