PeterBogdanovich Tagged Articles at Cinematical

There are plenty of examples to choose from when you think about the lost potential of Orson Welles. From being the young genius behind Citizen Kane, to a hammered "has-been" in a wine commercial, clearly his career ran the gamut. Welles.net recently posted that filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich announced that he would be completing Welles' "lost masterpiece," The Other Side of the Wind, which is something we've been hearing about for a while now. Bogdanovich apparently made the announcement during a press event in Florida, saying that a deal had finally been struck with Showtime for the project and said, "We now have a lot of work ahead of us." The film was the story of an aging director (John Huston) in the midst of an artistic and personal crisis.

Bogdanovich is planning on taking inventory of the completed footage that has been sitting in a vault in Paris for the past 30 years. From there, he hopes to collaborate with Welles' former partners and said that "The idea would be to try and get as close as we can to what Orson had in mind." Bogdanovich also said the film could hit theaters as early as 2008. Between piecing together a film with 30-year-old footage and new material based on second hand recollections, it appears that Bogdanovich has his work cut out for him -- he might want to start brushing up on those old interview notes just in case.

Did you say "set in the world of competitive science?" Oh, I am SO there.

Peter Bogdanovich has agreed to direct The Broken Code, a movie about Rosalind Franklin, the only woman involved in cracking the DNA code. What's that you say? Haven't heard of her? Exactly! Arguments can and have been made that she was instrumental in discovering and understanding DNA, and was screwed out of a piece of the Nobel Prize, at least partially because James Watson and Francis Crick downplayed her contributions to their discovery. Bastards.

The screenplay, which was written by David Baxter, is the first product of Tribeca/Sloan Development, a very cool-sounding (at least if you're a nerd like me) program set up four years ago to develop "realistic stories about science and technology that challenge existing stereotypes." Casting for the film will begin in May, and it's hoped that production will start this fall.

Boris Karloff was born William Henry Pratt in the Camberwell district of London, thousands of miles from the place that would make him a star of such magnitude that, for a time, he was known merely by his (fake) last name. Though he appeared in dozens of silent films, Karloff shot to fame with his moving portrayal of The Monster in James Whale’s Frankenstein, and went on to star in a slew of other mostly horror films, from The Mask of Fu Manchu to Edgar G. Ulmer’s Poe adaptation, The Black Cat.

Next week, in recognition of the 75th anniversary of the release of Frankenstein, New York’s Film Forum is presenting a week of Karloff features. The series includes the trio of films mentioned above, as well as Bride of Frankenstein, Targets and a pair of virtually unseen pre-Frankenstein rarities: Graft and The Guilty Generation, in addition to seven others.

Thought of primarily as a looming, sinister screen presence, Karloff was in fact an actor of remarkable skill and subtlety, traits that were never more fully realized than in Frankenstein. Despite having not a single line to speak, Karloff infused the Monster with such a profound melancholy that even today the movie, despite its otherwise often dated acting, remains deeply affecting. Though he had never worked with the actor before, Whale clearly understood the power at his disposal: instead of portraying the monster as the pitiless beast he had been in previous screen incarnations, he instead gave us a massive, awkward creature who, from the very beginning, is abused and misunderstood. And in Karloff’s hands, the creature’s suffering is abundantly clear; a sense of solemnity comes over the movie when he first appears on screen after nearly 30 minutes of buildup, and it refuses to relinquish its grasp until the credits roll. Given the restrictions placed on his character by the creature’s awkward body and wordlessness, Karloff was able to use only his face to convey emotions. Despite this, he created a being that, by turns, is befuddled, desperate to please, terrified, and filled with explosive rage.