Tag / janet leigh

by Jaime Rebanal

Touch of Evil – Review

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Amidst the final years of Hollywood’s classical era, Orson Welles provided another one of the last examples of film-noir to define the era with Touch of Evil. Much has been made of the film’s already troubled production on the count that on its theatrical release, Welles’s original vision never got its time to shine on the big screen but in subsequent years, traces of his vision that have been eliminated from the theatrical cut whether it be in the 1976 release that runs 108 minutes and unfortunately with the complete loss of Welles’s original rough cut, there is no true “director’s cut,” although the closest we have is a 111 minute long restoration as supervised by Welles himself released in 1998. Yet none of this ever hides a master at work, especially for as close to his vision as we can find ourselves, and what shines out is one of the most self-reflexive examples of the craft to have come out from the system.

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by Jaime Rebanal

The Manchurian Candidate – Review

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It has been more than fifty years since John Frankenheimer’s Cold War classic The Manchurian Candidate was first released and it still has retained its relevance when it comes to the current state of politics. Adapted from Richard Condon’s novel of the same name, there was never a more perfect time for a film like The Manchurian Candidate to come out, given as it was released amidst the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet perhaps that was a small part of why The Manchurian Candidate was so frightening of an experience, it was timed so perfectly to that degree it still feels as if it were something that could have come out only recently with the turn of current events. Or maybe it might have been something made as a warning for what was set to come. Continue reading →