IN WHICH JOSEPH CONRAD AND ORSON WELLES GIVE RALPH EMERSON A RICHLY-DESERVED BACKHAND.

A CHRISTMAS WISH LIST FROM GEEK CORNUCOPIA: "But there are things that are either in legal limbo or hard-to-find (even on the gray market or in archives) that I'd like to see...." Oh man, that second one sounds amazing.

"TOP 12 THINGS I NOTICED FOR THE FIRST TIME UPON SEEING CITIZEN KANE IN A THEATER." My old post about CK noir-as-horror is here.

THE TRIAL: Orson Welles-directed Kafka adaptation. This is amazing. Wildly-angled noir atheology--one of the most consistent, and consistently persuasive, atheist movies I've ever seen. (In case you're thinking of a film festival, off the top of my head I'd put Cube and maybe Nobody Knows on that list, for very different reasons.) Anthony Perkins is a shivery, wrong-jointed Joseph K, as uncomfortable as a snake trying to shed its skin. I honestly don't know what to tell you except that it's Welles without self-indulgence, and Kafka noir. If that doesn't make you want to see it, I don't know what will!

THE OLD DARK HEARST: Two points on re-watching Citizen Kane: 1) The fashionable consensus now is that it's overhyped. I suppose if you mean that it's not the best movie ever made, then okay. But it is about as good as The Bride of Frankenstein--and if you know me, you know that's very high praise. It's a terrific, engaging movie, and it's not Orson Welles's fault that you already know about Rosebud. I'll go ahead and say that even though it rips off and cheapens Heart of Darkness (I owe that connection to Ratty) it still attains a weird tinsel greatness of its own.

2) Perhaps more interestingly: Val Lewton's Seventh Victim is a horror movie made with the techniques of noir. Citizen Kane is the opposite. From the spooky old-dark-house opening to the extreme camera angles to the Chute de la Maison d'Usher-ish sequence with the jigsaw puzzle, this movie is made like a horror film where the monumental horror image is the poster of Kane's face. (Not Kane himself--he isn't the monster at the end of this book.)