âCitizen Kaneâ Is No âPaddington 2,â Says Rotten Tomatoes
After an 80-year-old pan resurfaced, the website Rotten Tomatoes recalculated and found that only 99 percent of critics had praised âCitizen Kane.â
Orson Welles in his film “Citizen Kane.”Credit.Hulton Archive/Getty Images
There is perfect. And then there is almost perfect.
And as anyone whoâs ever gotten a 99 percent on a test can tell you, the two are not the same thing.
âCitizen Kane,â the 1941 Orson Welles classic about the rise and fall of the publishing magnate Charles Foster Kane, long had a perfect criticsâ score on the film website Rotten Tomatoes, which had aggregated 115 reviews. Until last month.
A Great Reed: A Carol Reed Profile (Part 2)
October 28, 2009 by admin
Trevor Hogg profiles the career of legendary British filmmaker Carol Reed in the second of a two-part feature… read the first part here.
“I don’t think people care what sort of curtains I have,” stated the British filmmaker. “I don’t think they care about the technical people. Stars are the draw. They earn their publicity. It brings people in. But no one would go to see a film because it was directed by Carol Reed.” However, the director also observed that a star-studded cast does not necessarily guarantee commercial success. “The future of British films depends on how they are made; if the standard is high then the future is rosy,” remarked Reed. “There is no reason why the British film world should not become a big industry like its American counterpart. We have a wealth of good actors. The trouble here is that we do not make enough good pictures to keep them occupied. We must a
Although West Side Story was named the best picture of 1961 and won 10 Academy Awards, it is not much mentioned by movie fans these days, and the old warhorse Singin in the Rain is probably more seen and certainly better loved. West Side Story was the kind of musical people thought was good for them, a pious expression of admirable but unrealistic liberal sentiments, and certainly its street gangs at war one Puerto Rican, one the descendants of European immigrants seem touchingly innocent compared to contemporary reality.
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I hadn t seen it since it was released in 1961, nor had I much wanted to, although I ve seen Singin in the Rain, Swing Time, Top Hat, My Fair Lady and An American in Paris countless times during those years. My muted enthusiasm is shared. Although West Side Story placed No. 41 in the American Film Institute s list of the greatest films of all time, the less industry-oriented voters at the Internet Movie Database don t even ha
We now know what is apparently the price the New York Times is willing to pay in order to keep its correspondents in Communist China: the loss of any sense of journalistic integrity. The latest example of this comes in the form of a glowing paean to the Covid efforts of the Chinese Communist Party.