Born May 6, 1915

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• Mr. Gittes says:

  May 6, 2011 at 1:27 pm

  Saw “It’s All True” last night on Netflix Instant Watch. Beautiful work. Now I’ll go back to watch­ing three minute clips of “The Magnificent Ambersons” on you­tube and read­ing Vanity Fair’s inside piece on Ambersons for the tenth time. Can we use Navy Seal Team Six to find the lost cut of Ambersons? I sup­pose, how­ever, that would be viol­at­ing Brazil’s sov­er­eignty. Or Hollywood’s.

• jbryant says:

  May 6, 2011 at 2:56 pm

  A few months ago, I read Chris Welles Feder’s “In My Father’s Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles,” and found it very nicely done; surely the new mod­el for this sort of thing. Gets just a tad sticky toward the end as Feder belatedly embraces becom­ing an act­ive part of her father­’s leg­acy via trib­ute screen­ings and the like, but over­all a heart­felt, beau­ti­fully writ­ten por­trait from someone who lived both inside and out­side the Orson whirlwind.

• lipranzer says:

  May 6, 2011 at 5:52 pm

  Really wish more of Welles’ movies were on Region 1 DVD, par­tic­u­larly his Shakespeare movies.

• MovieMan0283 says:

  May 6, 2011 at 6:51 pm

  Interestingly, also the 70^th anniversary of Kane’s première last week.
  On the sub­ject of Ambersons, I find the ter­rible­ness of the stu­dio cut actu­ally kind of fas­cin­at­ing in a “meta” way – as the fam­ily onscreen declines, so does the qual­ity of the film itself.

• Frank McDevitt says:

  May 6, 2011 at 9:53 pm

  Not related to this post, but since you and I both con­sider PJ Harvey to be with­in an untouch­able pan­theon, what are your thoughts on Christgau call­ing her a “minor artist”?

• Gordon Cameron says:

  May 6, 2011 at 10:37 pm

  In its astound­ing pre­co­city, Citizen Kane is almost a Mozartean achieve­ment. I don’t know how many “authen­t­ic geni­uses” have come along with­in movies, but he was surely one of them.
  Thanks for the dreams, Orson.

• Dan Coyle says:

  May 7, 2011 at 2:19 am

  “I have summoned you here for a purpose…”
  “NOBODY SUMMONS MEGATRON!”
  “Then it pleases me… to be the FIRST.”

• Kent Jones says:

  May 7, 2011 at 10:41 am

  “Well, it’s not even cre­at­ive, because it is an instinct­ive thing, like the ques­tion of pitch for a sing­er. Where the cam­era goes. If you’re abso­lutely sure, you may be wrong but at least it’s one thing you can hang on to. Because I’m filled with doubts all the time about a movie: that the whole tone is wrong, that the level of it is wrong, that all the text, the per­form­ances, the emphas­is, what they say, what it should be about – I’m con­stantly reach­ing and fish­ing and hop­ing and try­ing and impro­vising and chan­ging. But the one thing I’m rock­like about is where it’s seen from, what lens and so on. That to me does­n’t seem to be open for dis­cus­sion. And it’s some­thing I must be grate­ful for: even if I’m wrong, I don’t have that worry.”
  – ran­domly selec­ted quote from THIS IS ORSON WELLES

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  May 7, 2011 at 12:06 pm

  Kent, that’s a fas­cin­at­ing quote—thanks!

• Glenn Kenny says:

  May 7, 2011 at 4:46 pm

  @ Frank McDevitt: I haven’t seen Bob’s ref­er­ence to The Peej as “minor,” but since, in his 1995 piece “The Ballad of Polly Jean Harvey,” he wrote that “To Bring You My Love” “marks her gradu­ation from the College of Brilliant Newcomers. She’s now a major artist,” I can only con­clude that “Let England Shake” musta ticked him off real bad. I’ll look into it. But as Bob was my first edit­or of note and is an old friend and ment­or, I’m not likely to pile on him for whatever he says. We dis­agree on Beefheart and Van Der Graaf, too, so it’s not like I’m not used to hav­ing dif­fer­ences with him…

• Grant L says:

  May 7, 2011 at 8:42 pm

  I get the feel­ing that his use of that term is a com­bin­a­tion of his frus­tra­tion with the new album (which he details quite clearly) and his frus­tra­tion with the errat­ic qual­ity of her work in the last 11 years.
  What are the dis­agree­ments about Beefheart? He’s giv­en him quite a few high marks over the years, as the Beefheart page on his site can attest to.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  May 7, 2011 at 9:13 pm

  I still have to look for the piece. I under­stand a few people have prob­lems with the new record, I think she’s so far ahead that it con­fuses people, but I’ll have to read the entirety of Bob’s com­plaint. Like I said, I’ll prob­ably have not much to say about it.
  The Beefheart thing I had in mind were his uncom­pli­ment­ary obser­va­tions on the “Grow Fins” box set, a for-fanatics-only item in any case, which he com­pared unfa­vor­ably to some Ornette Coleman work, which may have been “right” but which I took to be entirely beside the point.

• lazarus says:

  May 7, 2011 at 11:23 pm

  From what I’ve read, Christgau has nev­er been a fan of any­thing TOO British. His essen­tial avoid­ance of some pretty note­worthy Britpop artists (how can one write so little about bands as import­ant as Blur, Super Furry Animals, or Supergrass, for example?), or going back even fur­ther, his dis­missive rat­ings of pretty much the entire Kinks dis­co­graphy, etc.
  It’s one bias I’ve been pretty annoyed by.
  I also love how he still man­ages to give the new PJ a B+, in keep­ing with his strict auteur­ism. This is a guy who raved every Michael Jackson album, and the post-sellout Liz Phair albums as well, more eye-rolling moves.

• Grant L says:

  May 8, 2011 at 10:15 am

  Glenn, I can cer­tainly under­stand your being bothered by that review in gen­er­al and the Ornette line in par­tic­u­lar. Lazarus, I’d agree that Christgau does get prickly around a lot of overly Brit-centric stuff (while at the same time he’s per­fectly OK with his own NY-centrism).
  However, I think his dis­en­chant­ment with the Kinks (after glow­ing marks for “Greatest Hits,” “Face to Face” and “Kink Kronikles”) had far more to do with Davies’ ever-growing self-pity and ali­en­a­tion, and I think he was dead-on in nail­ing him for it. I still love the Renaissance-era stuff to death, but can barely listen to much after “Muswell Hillbillies.”
  Also, IMO the Liz Phair albums you men­tion are only “sellout“s if you have a prob­lem with excel­lent pop music, which I think they are. Same with Michael Jackson.

• lazarus says:

  May 8, 2011 at 12:37 pm

  Grant, regard­less of wheth­er or not those Liz albums are excel­lent pop music (I don’t think they are com­pletely suc­cess­ful on those terms, and FWIW I con­sider myself a big fan of fel­low pop artists Aguilera, Timberlake, and Furtado), how is it not a sellout?
  Also, Christgau’s view is pretty far out­side the crit­ic­al con­sensus. I’m not say­ing Phair’s self-titled deserved the 0.0 it got from Pitchfork, but to give it the same rat­ing as Exile In Guyville (and a bet­ter one than Whip-Smart) just comes of as reac­tion­ary to me.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  May 8, 2011 at 1:15 pm

  I gotta say I come down pretty much 100% with Christgau on the “Liz Phair” issue. A good record is a good record, wheth­er in the semi-popular mode or the aspiring-to-popular mode. The crit­ic­al con­sensus might have been a con­sensus, but it was hardly what you’d call legit­im­ately crit­ic­al; more like howls of out­rage from people who had taken “Flower” and “Fuck and Run” at their lit­er­al word in col­lege and now felt betrayed. (The alt-rock equi­val­ent of Bob’s ideal early ’70s Billy Joel fan, the per­son who likes to sit in front of his or her ste­reo “feel­ing sens­it­ive.”) Good times, that skir­mish was.
  And as for “selling out?” That just depends, does­n’t it? As I get older and older I’m more in favor of get­ting paid, and exor­bit­antly if pos­sible. When I encounter people who are mak­ing moves to get into the more luc­rat­ive branches of the lively arts and they avow that they have “zero interest” in money I assume they’re either full of shit or utter morons.

• lazarus says:

  May 8, 2011 at 1:55 pm

  You guys are both miss­ing the point, which is that the songs on Liz Phair’s eponym­ous release just wer­en’t very good out­side of a few tracks. Especially com­pared to Whitechocolatespaceegg, which was def­in­itely more “pro­duced” than its pre­de­cessors and had some poten­tial hit singles on it, but still man­age to dis­play the range of her talents.
  I’d also add that an addi­tion­al crime is that she barely plays any gui­tar on the album (a shame con­sid­er­ing her dis­tinct approach), some­thing made doubly appalling by the fact that she poses with one on the front and back covers.

• Grant L says:

  May 8, 2011 at 5:15 pm

  I don’t think that “the songs on Liz Phair’s eponym­ous release just wer­en’t very good” is a point at all – it’s an opin­ion, peri­od. And you may not believe him, but after fol­low­ing Xgau closely for many years I fully take him at his word when he says his grades aren’t based on any­thing except, y’know, what he actu­ally thinks and feels about the par­tic­u­lar album in ques­tion. As any true crit­ic worth their salt does.

• lazarus says:

  May 8, 2011 at 6:38 pm

  If that’s the case, Grant, then why does Christgau go out of his way to acknow­ledge the exist­ing neg­at­ive recep­tion? The review is reac­tion­ary, and because it begins as defens­ive, I don’t know how one can describe it as a purely from the gut response to the album.

• Victor Morton says:

  May 8, 2011 at 9:46 pm

  I was reminded about anoth­er Welles quote re his assess­ment of his dir­ect­ori­al skills: “In hand­ling a cam­era I feel that I have no peer. But what De Sica can do, I can­’t do. I ran his SHOESHINE recently and the cam­era dis­ap­peared, the screen dis­ap­peared; it was just life.”

• Grant L says:

  May 8, 2011 at 9:57 pm

  Glenn, I envy you. There’s no way I’d have the patience and energy to run a blog – I’m already feel­ing exhausted by Mr. Lazarus here. If I try and refute I’m guess­ing that yet again the argu­ment will be shif­ted and I’ll be miss­ing the point. Especially since this is such small pota­toes and Xgau’s art­icle is entirely clear (to me any­way), I’m outta here.

• Kent Jones says:

  May 9, 2011 at 12:29 am

  Victor, you’ll also find that Welles was a great admirer of GOLD OF NAPLES.
  Another related quote: “I think that abso­lutely sol­id cam­era sense is NOT a sign of a great dir­ect­or. It’s just some­thing you have or you don’t have. I think you can be a very great dir­ect­or and have only a very vague notion of what the cam­era does at all. I hap­pen to think I have total mas­tery of the cam­era. That may be just mega­lo­mania, but I’m abso­lutely cer­tain of that area. And everything ELSE is doubtful.”

• Frank McDevitt says:

  May 11, 2011 at 2:20 pm

  @Glenn: Oh, don’t get me wrong, I was­n’t look­ing to pile on the guy, he’s my favor­ite rock crit­ic. I was, frankly, a bit baffled at him call­ing Harvey “minor” because I knew from past read­ing that he had once called Harvey “the artist of the 90’s’ which is about as high praise as it gets. I was also aware of your rela­tion­ship with him and just wanted to get your per­spect­ive on it. Anyway, for my money, “Let England Shake” still rules, but I still found Christgau’s cri­tiques interesting.

• Unkle Rusty says:

  May 11, 2011 at 6:55 pm

  And in I come, chan­nel­ing my inner John Mendolshon, to defend the Kinks’ late out­put. Grant, the self-pity thing I just don’t get. True, the Lola etc. album is cer­tainly, at least in part, about the per­ils of rock star­dom, as Cristgau nailed in the 70’s RG, but is, on the whole, more inter­ested in auto-biography than self-pity. Certainly there is noth­ing self-pitying about that album’s title cut, per­haps one of the 4–5 greatest achieve­ments in pop music.
  So Davies became increas­ingly inter­ested in the rock opera form. So what? He cer­tainly was­n’t alone in that hubris. Yeah, there were mixed res­ults (Arthur was great, the Preservation albums fre­quently silly for all their ambi­tions), but at least his attempts had the sav­ing grace of humor.
  But self-pity and ali­en­a­tion? Again, there are few artists as inter­ested in the inter­rog­a­tion as the self than Davies, but without it there is no Waterloo Sunset, Sunny Afternoon, the afore­men­tioned Lola, and, from later, allegedly dis­rep­ut­able albums, jew­els like the heart­break­ing (and almost pain­fully auto-biographical) Art Lover, the delight­ful Come Dancing, the excor­i­at­ing Destroyer. Self-aware, yeah, but self pity­ing? I don’t see it.