Criterion Month Day 2: Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane (1941)

Likely due to outside factors, Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ first film, struggled at the box office when it was released in May of 1941. Couple those small audiences with a tepid critical response and even an Academy Award couldn’t stop the movie from fizzling away by the year’s end. More than a decade later, RKO sold its library to television and Citizen Kane started lighting up the small screen, encouraging enthusiastic reassessment. This time its success was undeniable: by 1958, Citizen Kane appeared on its first “greatest films ever made” list (losing the top spot to Battleship Potemkin) and has remained in such high esteem ever since. Notably, BFI’s once-a-decade Sight & Sound Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, arguably the most prestigious ranking of this sort since it is compiled exclusively by critics and directors, had Citizen Kane in the number one spot five decades in a row, from 1962-2002.

However, in 2012 Citizen Kane lost the top spot on both lists, being surpassed by Vertigo with the critics and both Tokyo Story and 2001: A Space Odyssey with directors. Rumor has it that Citizen Kane won’t regain its crown and might tumble even further when this year’s poll is released. Today, IMDb’s top 250 movies ranks Citizen Kane at only #94 and on Letterboxd’s list of films by user rating it appears at a dismal #915 with an average user rating of just 4.18 out of five. Has Citizen Kane‘s star fallen? Is it time to radically reevaluate it once again and expose those film snobs once and for all?

lol no

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Criterion Month Day 1: The Cameraman

The Cameraman (1928)

Welcome to another Criterion Month! It often feels like July is one of the less convenient months to incur this much writing on ourselves when July is the month of summer vacations and getting out in the sun and whatnot. This year, that’s the case to some extent, since we just got back from a destination wedding for Mildly Pleased contributor Matt Carstens, but hopefully have had enough recovery time to dive into another month of reviewing movies in the Criterion Collection. As is the case most years, we start our month in the silent era as well as the lone entry in The Collection from one of silent cinema’s true geniuses, Mr. Joseph Frank Keaton. Continue reading →

Colin’s Favorite Albums of May 2022

This month saw quite a few familiar faces returning with both highly anticipated and mildly anticipated albums alike. Some of the ones that fell more into the latter category I just haven’t had much time to dig into despite being Colin favorites, since they came out toward the end of the month (like Wilco’s Cruel Country or Craig Finn’s A Legacy of Rentals). Also, as much as I always look forward to a new Sharon Van Etten album, for whatever reason, her new We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong hasn’t quite been hitting with me. Maybe this is because much like I found with 2014’s excellent Are We There, her music is just a little hard to embrace during the sunnier parts of the year, even if this summer has already manifested just how much we’ve been going about this all wrong. Continue reading →

The People’s Bonus Album: Falling Into You

Oh god. I keep taking so long in between installments of The People’s Albums that it’s hard for me to know when I’ll ever complete this journey through the best selling albums in the U.S. Guess my only goal is to finish it before I die or before we eventually lose interest in writing for this blog (whichever happens first). I know I’d have to do another one of these bonus installments in order to round it out to an even 50 before starting on the top ten, but maybe I’ll figure out a way to weasel my way out of another bonus entry since I really need to get started on that top 10.

Album: Falling Into You
Artist: Celine Dion
Release Date: March 11, 1996
Copies Sold In The U.S.: 11.8 Million Continue reading →

Colin’s Favorite Albums of April 2022

April wasn’t quite as hot of a month music-wise as the other two I’ve covered so far this year. Which is perfectly ok since March 25 saw the release of so many noteworthy albums that I’ll have plenty to talk about here. In addtion Destroyer’s last album (which I covered last month), the first three albums I’ll be covering actually came out on that release date and served as some of my most-listened-to albums throughout April. Continue reading →

Colin’s Favorite Albums of March 2022

This month was another strong one as far as albums go, so I guess I’ll once again talk about some of my favorites. I’ll also give a shout-out to albums that I liked, but I just didn’t get around to listening to enough to make sense of how much I liked them. Those include: Wild Loneliness by Superchunk, Squeeze by SASAMI, and Running with the Hurricane by Camp Cope. Meanwhile, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars by The Weather Station is a nice little companion piece to last year’s fantastic Ignorance, but feels a little too low-stakes for it to really stand out on its own. Continue reading →

Oscars Fortnight: West Side Story (2021)

West Side Story (2021)

94th Academy Awards (2022)
Nominations: 7
Wins: We’ll see…

It’s strange to remember that when this week began, just a few days ago, I had never seen West Side Story. I knew some of the songs, like “I Feel Pretty,” “Maria,” and “America,” but I’m not sure if I knew they were all in the same musical. I knew that it was inspired by Romeo and Juliet (“inspired” is an understatement) with the Montagues and Capulets replaced by dancey finger-snappin’ hoodlums called the Jets and the Sharks. And I knew from a 2007 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm that there was a character named Officer Krupke that inspires the phrase “Krup you!” I really think that’s it. That’s all I knew. Until my life changed forever on Monday when I finally watched the 1961 film adaptation and have had this extremely theatrical version of Manhattan playing on repeat in my head ever since.

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