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Kane!

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Speaking of content-creation conundra and cool/fake movie trailers, get a load of the new Citizen Kane remake:

Hat tip to Scott Ross.

NEXT: Psst, State & Federal Gov'ts: Wanna Save About $15 Billion a Year? And Look Better Than Poland While Doing It?

Matt Welch is an editor at large at Reason.

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  1. +1 for the use of Nine Inch Nails.

    1. ClubMedSux

      +2 for the use of the Pixies (even if it ripped off Fight Club in the process).

  2. sage

    Hat tip to Scott Ross.

    At least it wasn’t another Vanneman flare-up.

  3. SugarFree

    MOAR DICK KICKING! MOAR, I SAY!

  4. Spoiler alert:

    Rosebud was the name of his Glock.

  5. John

    I would bet money this will happen in my lifetime. You know Leo DiCaprio is dying to play Kane. And it is not like anyone under 40 has seen the original anyway.

    1. skr

      c’mon it’s a classic. I’m under 40 and have it on DVD. Sure I went to art school but it’s a great movie.

    2. JEP

      Seen it 3 times. Wrote a paper on it in high school.

      I hate Leo. Ever since Titanic I’ve refused to watch anything he’s starred in. Which is a shame because some of the movies he’s acted in could have been good. He’s just such a little bitch.

      1. The Gobbler

        He was fantastic in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. After that, all downhill.

      2. ClubMedSux

        I’ve got to say I have a new-found respect for DiCaprio ever since The Departed.

  6. Benjamin

    Please let that trailer be fake. Citizen Kane is one of those movies that shouldn’t be remade, sorta like the Day the Earth Stood Still. A remake would be a pale imitation of the original.

    1. Astrid

      Why settle as being called the best film of all time when you could also be called the best remake of all time? Mark Potts (Simmons on Vinyl) and Singletree Productions have created a faux movie trailer for a proposed remake of Orson Welles’ 1941 cinematic masterpiece Citizen Kane.

      RTFA

      1. ClubMedSux

        In fairness to Benjamin, maybe he thought Welch was just saying that the movie is being produced by 20th Century Faux.

  7. Ragin Cajun

    Needs more booty.

  8. ?

    Kane has already been defiled. Velvet Goldmine is Citizen Kane and Eddie &The; Cruisers mashed together into the gayest movie Joan Crawford isn’t in. It’s great.

  9. ?

    I’d like to see a remake of The Birth Of A Nation, but with whites being oppressed by Chinese.

    1. The Gobbler

      +1,000 yuan

    2. Leonard

      Actually John Hershey (Hiroshima) wrote a book called White Locust that should put a chill in your spine. It’s been a number of years since I read it but in the past few years he may have been on to something.

  10. Aresen

    Thankfully, there is no real plan to remake Citizen Kane.

    YET.

    I would like to modestly propose that every studio director that wants to remake a classic film be employed as extras on the next “Titanic” movie. And allowed to actually go down with the ship.

    1. John

      You remake bad movies like Titanic. You don’t remake good ones. But that doesn’t stop Hollywood. The remade the Manchurian Candidate for Christ’s sake.

      1. Episiarch

        The one saving grace, John, is that when they remake something great, whether it’s The Manchurian Candidate, The Wicker Man, etc., the remake is usually so bad that it fails miserably, which means losing a shitload of money, which is the worst thing you can do in Hollywood.

        1. Pro Libertate

          Hasn’t stopped them yet.

          I don’t mind some off-center remakes, where it’s really just the plot line that’s being reused, not the whole business, but remaking some films just offends me. Like Psycho.

        2. John

          I love to see them lose money. It makes me so happy when a big budget movie flops.

        3. Hugh Akston

          Actually, the best thing about those godawful remakes is that they are usually attended by the original getting a new release on video.

    2. Pro Libertate

      Remake? No, they’d never do that.

      Reboot? Fuck yeah, they’d do that.

      For the record, I think Citizen Kane is a great movie. “Best ever” is subjective and isn’t something I say about any film, even for me, but it’s definitely a great flick.

  11. John

    I never got why it was considered so great. I watched it and enjoyed it. But I have only seen it twice. I really don’t see the big deal.

    1. WTF

      There be no help for ye, then.

      Maybe you need to read up on the movie and how Orson Welles made it. The thing I find most impressive is that Orson Welles convinced the studio to give him unprecedented freedom and control over the entire project, co-wrote the screenplay, directed and starred in the movie, and invented cinematographic techniques that others then copied – all at the age of 25. And ever since, it generally has been considered the “greatest movie ever made.”

      1. John

        I have seen the whole thing about how it was made. It was Wells and John Houseman. But in truth Wells and Houseman were assholes. Hearst wasn’t anything like Kane. They put in a million inside jokes (rosebud is what Hearst called his g/f’s gentiles) to make clear to everyone who knew Hearst that the movie was about him. But, it was really unfair hit job to Hearst. He didn’t die old and bitter and alone. He was a fairly well adjusted decent person.

        The final irony is that it was Wells who died old, alone and embittered not Hearst. Wells was really making the movie about himself. He just didn’t know it.

        And I am not saying it is a bad movie. I just in no way see it as the greatest ever. It wouldn’t make my top 50.

        1. Paris, TX

          What did he call his g/f’s jewish friends?

          1. Pro Libertate

            Nice–didn’t catch that.

            Hearst may have been personally okay, but he did some bad, bad things as a newspaper guy.

            1. The Widow White

              Damn straight.

          2. John

            At least in his wiki entry, there is no mention of Hearst being an anti-semite.

            He was very hard on socialists. But, I don’t see that as a flaw.

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst

            1. I, Kahn O'Clast

              John, you missed that you called his g/f’s genitals, “gentiles” that’s what they are on about.

              1. John

                I am dense today.

      2. ClubMedSux

        Personally, I think you should evaluate art as art, independent of how it was created. While I may be impressed by Orson Welles for almost single-handedly creating “Citizen Kane,” that doesn’t make me enjoy the movie any more or less. I’m no cinephile but I agree with John. There are certain old movies that strike me as great works of art (“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and “Duck Soup” come to mind) but others such as “Citizen Kane” are movies I’m glad to have seen once but I don’t really find myself wanting to watch again.

  12. SugarFree

    Trailer for a remake Gore Vidal’s Caligula

    NSFW

    1. Aresen

      I can’t imagine how a remake of Caligula could be worse or more gross than the original.

      I saw the movie when it first came out and couldn’t believe that porn could be so boring.

      1. Pro Libertate

        Greatest cast/movie quality differential ever?

        1. ?

          NSFW

          And yet, the trailer opens with: THE FOLLOWING PREVIEW HAS BEEN APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES…

          Somebody was asleep at the wheel. Or it’s later than we think.

        2. Episiarch

          Guiccione got the cast to come on board, and then inserted the porn afterward. So it’s really more like two mostly unrelated movies turned into a mashup.

          1. Pro Libertate

            I’ve heard that. It’s still an awesome cast.

            1. Aresen

              Well, I do have to admit it was the best film Malcolm McDowell ever made.

          2. Pro Libertate

            What’s funny is that I bought the novelization, thinking it was an original Gore Vidal novel (I really like his Julian and Creation, which are both set at different times in the Classical period). Oops.

  13. Resident Smartass

    OT: Involves stadiums, eminent domain, and said stadiums being a raw deal for most.

    http://consumerist.com/2010/06/stadium-status.html

    Curiouser and curiouser.

  14. Esoteric

    “The AP Stylebook doesn’t say anything about letting your sources die.”

    AWESOME.

    1. Esoteric

      Also, the use of the Pixies’s “Where Is My Mind?” is a straight-up tribute to “Fight Club,” methinks.

  15. Matt F

    Nice spoof — the “Citizen Kane 3000” (CK3K) trailer, which is available on youtube- is better.

  16. Jeff P

    Needs an emo remake of a 70s classic to feel authentic.

    God I hate movies.

    1. Kolohe

      an emo remake of a 70s classic

      They did this. It starred Hayden Christensen.

      1. Jeff P

        I meant a 70s song. Like Modest Mouse doing 10CCs “I’m Not in Love”

        1. Modest Mouse isn’t emo.

          1. Jeff P

            Sorry. I pulled out a name I had heard.
            I am old and listen to Hawkwind.

  17. Jeff P

    FYI, Wind in the Willows is being remade as a post-apocalyptic fable

    http://www.aintitcool.com/node/45425

    Hollywood needs to die die die

  18. Brandon

    I clicked this article name hoping it might be about Glenn Jacobs (wwe’s kane), who himself is a libertarian irl. Pity

  19. ???

    I like it very much, thank you
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  20. I’d like to see a remake of The Birth Of A Nation, but with whites being oppressed by Chinese.

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