Jonathan Rosenbaum and I have recorded a commentary track for the new 4K Criterion edition of Citizen Kane. This box set is crammed with interesting extras.
News and Notes
In July 2020, I gave a video talk organized by Professor Charlotte Crofts at the University of the West of England, Bristol. The talk was based on a book I’m writing, Some Versions of Cary Grant, which will be published by Oxford University Press. The talk can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/442473720.
My British Film Institute “Film Classics” volume on Max Ophuls’s Letter from an Unknown Woman will be published in early 2021.
In late April 2019, the new Criterion Channel is featuring a tribute to Charles Burnett. It includes an essay by me, “You Don’t Win, You Survive,” which is devoted to five of Burnett’s short or lesser-known films. It can be found at
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6313–you-don-t-win-you-survive-a-guide-to-charles-burnett-s-shorter-films
The Winter 2018-19 issue of Cineaste (Vol. XLIV, No. 1) contains my essay, “The Death of the Auteur: Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind.”
Johnathan Rosenbaum and I have recorded the commentary track for Criterion’s release of The Magnificent Ambersons, which has a stellar list of contributors.
Nelson Pereira dos Santos, the father of Brazil’s cinema novo and one of that country’s most important directors, died in April 2018. Among his many important films were Vida Secas (Barren Lives, 1963) and Como era gostoso o meu frances (How Tasty was my Little Frenchman, 1972). My wife, Darlene J. Sadlier, wrote a fine book about him in 2003 for the University of Illinois Press series on contemporary directors, and through her, I had the honor of meeting him several times. Here we are in Los Angeles in 2013.
In Fall 2017, I had the honor of delivering a talk about Charles Burnett for the Motion Picture Academy in Los Angeles. For details about the event, see https://www.ucpress.edu/blog/31092/charles-burnett-wins-2017-honorary-oscar/
In 2017, the Belgian film journal Sabzian invited me to contribute an article about Vincente Minnelli, based on the book I wrote about him. You can find the article here: www.Sabzian.be/article/minnelli-the-aesthete-in-the-factory.
