DVD Tuesday When Charlton Heston met Orson Welles in praise of Touch of Evil one wild and sleazy ride through the darkness at the edge of border townsWhen you think Charlton Heston you think Ben-Hur Planet of the Apes The Omega Man the nuttier of two precursors to Will Smiths I Am Legend The Ten Commandments and Soylent Green spoiler alert Soylent Green is people But one of my favorite Heston movies is one of his less well-known the thriller Touch of Evil directed by and costarring Orson Welles along with Janet Leigh Marlene Dietrich Joseph Cotten and Zsa Zsa Gabor now thats a cast And it opens with one of the most justly famous tracking shots in movie history a sinuous three-minute and 20-second glide through the crowded streets of seedy Los Robles following behind a white convertible en route to the US border with an ominous tick tick tick always audible through the clamor of ambient noise and Henry Mancinis ominously jazzy
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Zac Efron by Barry King/WireImage.com
High School Musical emo-boy Zac Efron will star in Me and Orson Welles, an adaptation of Robert Kaplow's novel about a student who stumbles into a bit part in the 1937 staging of Julius Caesar that launched the big guy's career. Newbie Christian McKay is tackling Welles.... The life of legendary fashion designer Valentino is en route to theaters in the form of the documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor.Related:• Zac Efron Sidelined in Hospital• Zac Efron Makes a Friend, and More Movie News
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Citizen Kane courtesy Turner Home Entertainment
Orson Welles Citizen Kane A pop masterpiece that plays like breaking news Send your movie questions to FlickChickSee Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this weeks new flicks in Movie TalkEveryones heard that Citizen Kane 1941 is the best of the best It just topped the AFIs most recent list of the all-time greatest films and critics academics and movie buffs all genuflect before its flawless mix of technical invention and lacerating dissection of the American Dream gone wrong But what sometimes gets lost in the adulation is the fact that its a blast and thats why its this weeks DVD Tuesday pickTell people youre a movie critic and they want to know your favorite movie of all time There are a lot of ways you can go at that one After flailing embarrassingly at the question on more than one occasion I decided to come up with an answer and a rationale So now I say my favorite movie is the one Id take to a desert island if I knew Id be stuck there for years and
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Peter Bogdanovich; John Ford on the set
Director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon) pays tribute to a cinema giant in Turner Classic Movies' Directed by John Ford (premiering tonight at 8 pm/ET), an update of Bogdanovich's 1971 profile with new commentary from such filmmakers as Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese. TV Guide spoke with Bogdanovich about remembering Ford, the state of today's Westerns, and his own fate on
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Stacy Keach, Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America
What if an outbreak of an avian flu actually mutated into a virus transmittable from human to human? That is the very scary proposition explored in the ABC TV-movie Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America (premiering tonight at 8 pm/ET). Among the brave hearts attempting to impede the pandemic are Stacy Keach as Collin Reed, Secretary of Health of Human Services. Here, the veteran actor reveals how Fatal Contact came together in such a timely manner, ponders the uncertain fate of his Prison Break warden, and serves up a choice
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Stacy Keach, Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America
What if an outbreak of an avian flu actually mutated into a virus transmittable from human to human? That is the very scary proposition explored in the ABC TV-movie Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America (premiering Tuesday at 8 pm/ET). Among the brave hearts attempting to impede the pandemic are Stacy Keach as Collin Reed, Secretary of Health of Human Services. Here, the veteran actor reveals how Fatal Contact came together in such a timely manner, ponders the uncertain fate of his Prison Break warden, and serves up a choice
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Question: In the "Meeting Mr. Kurtz" chapter of Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost, he writes that of the three movie versions of the book Heart of Darkness, two weren't even set in Africa. He notes Apocalypse Now as one and I e-mailed him asking whether Werner Herzog's excellent Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972) was the other. He said it wasn't but couldn't remember the other title, though he said it was set in the time of the Spanish Civil War. Do you know what Hochschild was referring to?
Answer: I don't know and my research didn't turn up what I would call a definitive answer. But I think it might be Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón's El Corazón del Bosque (1979), which is set 10 years after the Spanish Civil War. It revolves around a young man who sets out on a journey deep into the heavily forested Spanish hills in search of a legendary loyalis
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Question: When Pedro Almodovar won the best original screenplay Oscar for Talk to Her (2002), the announcer said as he was walking up to the stage that it was his second nomination, the other being for best director for the same film. But didn't he win an Oscar for All About My Mother (1999) in the foreign-language-film category? I know that the nominees in that category are actually the countries where the films were released and produced, but why does the director get to accept the award, not the producers? Do Oscar winners who are absent the night they win still get to receive their statuettes even if it's long after they won? And finally, what happens if your Oscar is stolen or broken — can you get a new one?
Answer: Wow, you are full of questions! The director gets to accept the award because the Academy say
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Question: A strange subject came up at work the other day. Who was the actor on the Paul Masson wine commercial of several years ago who said, "Drink no wine before its time?" Thank you.
Answer: Actually, Chris, that's sell no wine, as in, "We will sell no wine before its time." And that was no mere actor, mind you. That was the late, great Orson Welles, who, together with writer Howard Koch, scared the bejesus out of the entire country by convincing listeners of the too-real radio production War of the Worlds that we really were being invaded by aliens in 1938.
Welles, who was overweight and being treated for a heart condition and diabetes at the time of his death in 1985, was an actor, producer, writer and director who worked on 60 movies in his lifetime after kicking off his long showbiz career on the stage. He shilled for Masson and other companies for what he termed "grocery
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Robert Wise, who netted four Academy Awards as producer and director of West Side Story and The Sound of Music, died on Wednesday of heart failure. He was 91. All told, Wise was nominated for seven Oscars over his 50-plus year career, including one for editing his idol Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. Other accolades bestowed upon Wise include the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, an Oscar for sustained achievement, and the Directors Guild's highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award.
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