A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

If you want a film that explores the work of Orson Welles, this film is well worth seeing. However, if you want to see a film about Welles himself and explores his psyche, then you should look further. I knew about most of his film projects but wanted to know what made him tick...what made him so successful but so self- sabotaging (both in films and in his relationships). Sadly, the documentary has very, very little to say about this and instead talks about his genius in a way that almost seems like supplication- --as if to even talk about his faults or psychological make-up was somehow sacrilege. I wanted deconstruction--the film just gives us adoration.So what question did I want to have answered? Well, most importantly why he never completed so many of his films and how this might be related to his personal life. A genius in some ways but also an incredibly flawed man who made a mess of so much promise. If you ever find a film that DOES explore Welles' psychological make-up, drop me a line. But a film that ONLY talks about his work but doesn't criticize or analyze it is interesting...mildly...but nothing more. To me, NOT to talk about his psychological state is like doing a film all about George Washington and never mentioning the Revolutionary War!

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles celebrates the centenary of the birth of the legendary Actor, Director, Raconteur and Foodie. The documentary has no narration, it just uses clips from Welles movies, footage from interviews and Welles himself ends up narrating his life through anecdotes and stories he told throughout his career.The problem is if you want to know about the man just watch the Arena documentary from the BBC that was made a few years before he died where you get Orson Welles, his life and career from the big man himself, many clips of which are used here.Magician feels like a tepid rundown of his career. There are some major contributors such as Steven Spielberg but the only interesting aspect I took from this is a man who became a low budget independent film-maker, forever looking to raise money so he could complete the many films he had in production at any one time, some of them going on for years, many never completed.Orson Welles was an important figure in cinematic history, this documentary is a starter not the main course.

Unintelligent documentary about a very intelligent man. No cohesive theme or statement about Orson Wells. Chunks of a better documentary edited together into a bad one. Has some interesting comments about how he made films, otherwise just sycophantic incantations about how great he was. Includes a montage of pictures of Orson Well's girlfriends and wives, how does this contribute to the story? Came off as sexist as these women are regulated to photographs without anything interesting to say about his personal life. Snips here and there of celebrities saying thins about Orson Wells without drawing any meaningful summations about Orson and his art. Smug, smarmy, and depressing in the way it cheapens Orson Wells legacy.

MAGICIAN is a dud - a less than mediocre run-through of the life and career of the legendary entertainment figure Orson Welles. I caught a theatrical screening Saturday that proved to be a complete waste of time.Contrast this loser with the 2007 documentary SPINE TINGLER!, which informatively and entertainingly profiled schlockmeister William Castle. Unlike Welles, Castle is a mere footnote in film history, but the portrait of him was lively, to the point, and even created an emotional connection (bordering on pathos) when looking at his declining years and premature death - the elements sorely lacking in MAGICIAN.Director Chuck Workman is famous and lauded in some circles (not mine) for his career in compilations (more accurately excerpts) -often responsible for the abbreviated Academy Awards show's highlight reels of great moments in film. I find him to be a master of trivializing, taking works of art ranging from a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon to any number of great feature films and extracting a cute or memorable moment from each, then juxtaposing them together for generally idiotic effect (e.g., a montage of famous screen kisses). I'm old-fashioned: I like to sit through an entire cartoon or movie, even endlessly long ones like BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, THE DECALOGUE or SHOAH. My dreaded "high-brow" satire would be a Saturday Night Live tribute to Jacques Rivette by Workman (or perhaps Tom Schiller, pick your poison) consisting of fleeting clips from his brilliant but notoriously long feature films.And so it is not surprising to me that Workman trivializes Orson Welles' life and career. Most of MAGICIAN consists of old interviews with Welles or other deceased witnesses, ranging from Sydney Pollack to John Houseman. Ken Burns has made a career treating subjects for whom living witnesses are few or nil but through eloquent narration and sometimes readings by talented actors has brought them to life. Where Workman does have a live testimonial the results are - you guessed it- trivial: Welles biographer Simon Callow is a terrific actor and erstwhile director himself, but his comments are unenlightening; Welles' longtime companion Oja Kodar (who I saw give a highly educational talk on Welles decades ago when she presented excerpts of his unfinished films including THE DEEP and THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND) is totally wasted in an interview that makes her out to be a flake; Welles experts Peter Bogdanovich and Joe McBride plus recently deceased Paul Mazursky briefly have minimal information to contribute; and Francis Coppola's longtime editor Walter Murch is strictly footnote material discussing the "improvements" (this seems to be a cottage industry) in Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL that have been made by re-editing the Universal re-edited picture. Perhaps meant to insult on purpose, Workman even works in comments by Wolfgang Puck (!) concerning Welles' famous appetite. Thanks a lot, Chuck.To further trivialize matters, Workman insists on including numerous film homages to Welles, such as clips from DAY FOR NIGHT, ED WOOD and the TV movie about KANE starring Liev Schreiber. There is more junk like this than attention to Welles' voluminous screen acting career which gets short shrift other than references to how "in demand" he was. The controversy regarding Welles vs. Herman Mankiewicz in apportioning authorship to CITIZEN KANE (screenwriting-wise) is obfuscated rather than clarified by this worthless documentary.For someone who knows little to nothing about Orson Welles the film hits the familiar clichés -his boy wonder achievements dating back to childhood and growing up in Woodstock; mercurial milestones in theater and radio, triumph and fall in Hollywood and latter years as true independent filmmaker. For me it amounted to a mass of generally misleading information (frequent claims that FALSTAFF not KANE is his true masterpiece) and significant omissions (his Kodar period sloughed off and his long collaboration with the late talented pornographer Gary Graver (more famous as Welles' cameraman) ignored. No need to worry - I suspect another filmmaker, perhaps even Burns or his brother Ric, will conjure up a suitable treatment of the renaissance man Welles. In the meantime MAGICIAN instantly belongs on the scrap heap of bad movies which, to paraphrase Theodore Sturgeon in his famous quote about science fiction, make up 90% of film history ("but then 90% of everything is crud").