Monday, December 27, 2010

Post-Christmas Wishlist, Unlikely To Be Fulfilled Edition

I actually had a pretty decent Christmas, but as I get older, the more Christmas becomes about the joys of giving than getting something. Now that I've reached adulthood and have the internet at my disposal, there are fewer and fewer things that I can't buy or at least borrow/rent.

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:


  • the notorious Rolling Stone documentary Cocksucker Blues (which apparently paints them in a worse light than Gimme Shelter!). Forever in legal limbo, because apparently it could destroy the Stones' image in a way that their last 30 years of touring and recording have failed to.
  • the 1926 silent film version of W. Somerset Maugham's The Magician, assistant directed by Michael Powell (yes, of Powell & Pressburger fame!). From what I've read about it, it diverges significantly from the novel and is a possible visual and plot inspiration for several major horror films, including Svengali, and the Universal versions of Dracula and Frankenstein.
  • the famous "last" film of Orson Welles, The Other Side of the Wind. The cast includes Claude Chabrol (RIP), Dennis Hopper (RIP), John Huston, Edmond O'Brien, Susan Strasberg, Rich Little and Cameron Mitchell. It's mostly been edited/completed by Peter Bogdanovich, but it's held up by legal complications from Welles' estate (or more precisely, Welles' daughter).


What films do you guys wish to see, despite similarly impressive obstacles standing in the way of their release?

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