Posts Tagged ‘Citizen Kane’
“I want people to walk into a movie theater and be transported to a different world”*…
In the fall of 1997, a blurb appeared in the Atlanta Business Chronicle. AMC Theaters was launching a “brand new concept… a fancy interior that transforms the otherwise plain theater into a science-fiction, high-tech experience,” replete with decorative planets, the colors teal, purple, and yellow, and a “generally upbeat design.” Its name: the Odyssey…
If you went to the movies around this time anywhere in the United States, you might’ve registered a similar aesthetic. Like cartoon corporatism and hypermodernism getting smashed through a cultural particle collider. It was ambient and nearly universal, and yet absolutely the opposite of timeless. One year into life without movie theaters and you might begin to wonder: What was that?
You might start thinking first about the carpets. Those frenzied, high-octane, blacklight carpets that took over movie theaters for a small, fixed period of time and then mostly just… went away. Like an obscure one-hit-wonder earworm, the carpets might keep bugging you, prompting you to wonder: How is it that we, as a society, spent that much free time in these bizarre wall-to-wall settings without ever wondering what acid-doused party monster’s fever dreamt them up? Who decided this is what movie theaters should look like? What was this “style” even called?
Do you think what you’re about to read is simply, like, an etymology of carpet? If only. If those carpets could talk, they’d tell you a story about late-90s economics, showbiz, multiplexes, and an era of world-building that changed moviegoing as we know it—maybe more than any other…
“If Y2K-Era Movie Theater Carpets Could Talk“: behind the ecstatic aesthetic of squiggles, stars, and confetti.
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As we settle on the extra-large tub of popcorn, we might might recall that it was on this date in 1941 that Orson Welles’ first feature film, Citizen Kane, premiered at the Palace Theater in New York. A quasi-biography (based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, with elements of those of Joseph Pulitzer and Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick), it was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories, winning Best Writing (Original Screenplay) for Herman Mankiewicz and Welles.
Considered by many critics and filmmakers to be the greatest film ever made, Citizen Kane was voted number 1 in five consecutive British Film Institute Sight & Sound polls of critics, and it topped the American Film Institute’s 100 Years … 100 Movies list in 1998, as well as its 2007 update.
Citizen Kane is particularly praised for Gregg Toland‘s cinematography, Robert Wise‘s editing, Bernard Herrmann‘s music, and its narrative structure, all of which were innovative and have been precedent-setting.
“First impressions are often the truest”*…
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The opening shots from 32 notable films. It’s fun to see how many one can recognize… it’s more fun to call out the films that aren’t in the supercut and should be, for instance…
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* William Hazlitt
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As we settle back into our seats, we might recall that it was on this date in 1929 that the Hollywood Sign was officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles. It originally read “Hollywoodland ” (a promotion for a housing subdivision), but the four last letters were dropped after renovation in 1949. Recently threatened with demolition for want of maintenance funds, the icon was saved by a donation from Hugh Hefner.
The sign in its original form, as seen from Beachwood Canyon
The External World…
Young LA- based animator David O’Reilly has created a lovely short that is, at once, a history of animation and a glimpse at its future. More amazement on his web site.
[Thanks to CE]
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As we watch out for sentient banana peels, we might send bombastic birthday greetings to actor, director, writer and producer Orson Welles; he was born on this date in 1915. Welles was a pioneer in the theater (e.g., his Broadway adaption of Julius Caesar, the debut of the Mercury Theatre) and on radio (e.g., his 1938 The War of the Worlds, the most famous broadcast in the history of the medium). But it was his films (his first, Citizen Kane, is regarded by many to have been the greatest American film) that gave lie to his own observation that ” movie directing is the perfect refuge for the mediocre.”
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