Citizen Kane (1941): 70 Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition

I've been dreading the task of writing a review of Orson Welles's masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941).  For years, I've avoided writing about it.  I've done so by favoring other Welles pictures when it comes to reviews (The Immortal Story, Touch of Evil) simply because the scholarship produced by André Bazin, Peter Bogdanovich, Pauline Kael, Laura Mulvey, James Naremore, and Jonathan Rosenbaum (amongst others!) leaves me with little to say.  It's a great film and far greater writers and thinkers than I have spent the past decades discovering its secrets and disclosing them to cinephiles and potential cinephiles.  That said, this review will be more focused on the features on the new 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition Blu-Ray than the film itself.  If you really want to learn about Citizen Kane, read one of those books.  If you know nothing about Kane and want a quick gloss, this is for you.  

Contagion (2011)

Contagion (2011) is much like Steven Soderbergh’s Academy award winning chronicle of the drug war Traffic (2000) except this one is about a deadly virus.  Soderbergh, acting once again as his own DP, still provides ice blue and warm yellow monochromatic shots of various plot threads focusing on a government bureaucracy that is - ideally – in a position to help but also has structures and protocols that get in the way.   Moreover, like Traffic, Contagion features an electronic score by frequent Soderbergh collaborator (and former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer) Cliff Martinez, slick editing by Stephen Mirrione, and another Vanity Fair Oscar Party of an ensemble cast.   The key difference between the former and the latter is characterization and unfortunately Contagion takes the form of its subject:  a detached, calculated, killer. 

The Rapture-In the Grace of Your Love (2011)

The Rapture's latest album, In the Grace of Your Love (2011), sounds like it may have been produced by a different band when played along side the dance-punk rockers "Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks" and "House of Jealous Lovers."  That's bound to upset fans of the band's blend of the Cure and the Talking Heads that was highlighted by their early EP and their beloved album Echoes (2003).  It may not be as shiny sounding as the Danger Mouse co-produced album Pieces of the People We Love (2006), but it puts the majority of it's emphasis on the dance side of the dance-punk equation, making it a worthy, albeit lesser, aural companion of DFA labelmate LCD Soundsystem's This is Happening (2010).  

Green River Killer: A True Detective Story (2011)

Writer Jeff Jensen (AKA Entertainment Weekly's Lost fanatic "Doc" Jensen) and artist Jonathan Case's Green River Killer:  A True Detective Story (2011) is the graphic novel equivalent of David Fincher's Zodiac (2007).  It is a tale of obsession, on behalf of both Jensen's father, Green River Killer Task Force Member Tom Jensen, and the Green River Killer (GRK) himself, Gary Leon Ridgway, the most deadly serial killer in American history (nearly fifty women were confirmed to have been killed by Ridgway).  It's chilling, gripping, and rises to the best levels of what sequential art can achieve.  

A Trip to the Moon (1902)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosted an extraordinary program entitled "A Trip to the Moon in Color, and Other Travels Through Time, Color, and Space" the other night.  The program, hosted by Serge Bromberg (film historian and archivist) and Tom Burton (head of preservation at Technicolor) featured more than ten short films ranging from the San Francisco city symphony/actuality A Trip Down Market Street (1906) to early experiments in hand-colorization (Gwalior, 1907), sound (one of the first sound print shorts was shown), 3-D (Méliès had a camera that shot two lenses and negatives side by side for quick duplication, which actually created rudimentary 3-D prints), and Deco animation (Joy of Living, 1934).  The evening culminated with the screening of a restoration of a handcolored print of Méliès's famous A Trip to the Moon (1902).  

The House That Dripped Blood (1971)

Anthology films are often hit and miss.  Using 90 to 120 minutes to introduce new sets of characters and separate plots leaves a filmmaker - or filmmakers - with very little cinematic canvas to work with and, as a result, a miniscule margin for error.  To further complicate the construction, anthology films often utilize a framing plot to bridge the short films together, eating up further screen time to provide the narrative glue to a diverse set of stories that can, on occasion, embrace a wide range of aesthetic options.  Peter Duffell's The House that Dripped Blood (1971), a British horror anthology produced by Hammer rival Amicus Productions (who also produced anthologies based off of the EC Comics series Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror), is no exception to the hit and miss rule.  Yet, it comes in - for the most part - on the winning side of the equation. 

Fright Night (2011)

Tom Holland’s Fright Night (1985) is one of those films I’ve seen bits and pieces of on cable but I’ve never bothered to sit down and watch entirely.  After watching Craig Gillespie’s remake (2011), the cinematic equivalent to the contents of a pumpkin shaped trick or treat pail, I may need to remedy that blind spot.   Fright Night may not be F.W Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) or Guy Maddin’s Dracula:  Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002) when it comes to great vampire movies but it is, like Sam Raimi’s romp Drag Me to Hell (2009), a hell of a funny, scary time.