Quick Takes: ‘Vertigo’ edges out ‘Kane’

Alfred Hitchcock has finally usurped Orson Welles.

Hitchcock’s”Vertigo”took the top spot in the 10 greatest-movies-ever list compiled by Sight & Sound, ending the 50-year run for Welles’”Citizen Kane.”The magazine, published by the British Film Institute, surveys international film critics every decade.

“Citizen Kane” slid to second, making way for Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological drama starring James Stewart and Kim Novak. “Vertigo” edged “Citizen Kane” by 34 votes in the poll, which gathered lists from 846 critics, programmers, academics and distributors.

The list also includes a new addition: Dziga Vertov’s “Man With a Movie Camera,” coming in at eighth place. It’s the first documentary to make the list since it was founded in 1952.

Yasujiro Ozu’s “Tokyo Story”ranked third, followed by Jean Renoir’s “The Rules of the Game,” F.W. Murnau’s “Sunrise,” Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and John Ford’s “The Searchers.” Carl Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc” ranks ninth, followed by Federico Fellini’s “81/2.”

—Associated Press

Beyoncé’s documentary

Beyoncé Knowles has donned many guises in her entertainment career: musical superstar, fashion icon, actress.

Now she’s looking to add a rather different notch: documentary director.

Knowles and her representatives at agency ICM have in recent weeks been shopping a nonfiction film to Hollywood studios about the celebrity’s life and career.

According to a person familiar with the package who was not authorized to talk about it publicly, the movie is a mix of music and personal study, blending concert footage with confessional interview. Knowles not only stars in the project but is directing it and will also serve as a producer. About 20 minutes of footage has been shown to distributors.

—Steven Zeitchik

Anchor moves up medical leave

“Good Morning America”anchor Robin Roberts is taking a little time off, saying she’s feeling the effects of her blood and bone marrow disease.

Roberts said Tuesday that she’s “not feeling too well” and would take some time off “just to get some vacay.”

ABC said Roberts would be taking a few weeks of previously scheduled time off, but it came earlier than her planned medical leave for a bone marrow transplant. Roberts told reporters last week that her medical leave would probably start at the end of August or early September.

Roberts announced last month that she has MDS, a blood and bone marrow disease once known as pre-leukemia.

—Associated Press

Norton Simon to show Van Gogh

Right now, the most famous Van Gogh painting in a California museum happens to be one of his sunniest: The Getty owns an exuberant field of irises that the artist painted in 1889 as a sort of postcard for his arrival at a bucolic asylum in St. Rémy de Provence, France.

But this winter, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, home to seven other Van Gogh paintings, will exhibit a darker work from the same year that is celebrated for different reasons. The intense self-portrait with jarring colors and turbulent violet-blue brushwork in the background seems to speak to the artist’s volatile psychological state.

It was made the year before his death and shortly after the psychotic break in which he cut off part of his left ear with a razor.

For three months starting Dec. 7, the Norton Simon will exhibit this self-portrait, which belongs to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and has never been shown before in California. The showing is under an exchange program that also involves the Frick Collection in New York.

The Norton Simon previously borrowed four masterpieces, works by Vermeer, Ingres, Raphael and Memling, at the pace of roughly one a year.

—Jori Finkel

Lichtenstein work resurfaces

A painting by Roy Lichtenstein that was lost more than 40 years ago has resurfaced and is now the focus of a court order.

Lichtenstein’s “Electrical Cord” went missing in 1970 in New York. The painting, created by the artist in 1962, depicts an electrical cord wound in a tight cylindrical shape.

The painting was reportedly recovered recently in a warehouse on New York’s Upper East Side.

According to reports in the New York Post and the New York Daily News, the painting had been shipped to the warehouse from a gallery in Bogotá, Colombia, apparently for a sale. The foundation later notified the widow of the owner of the painting, who initiated legal action to prevent the artwork’s sale.

A court in New York has ordered a temporary freeze on any sale of “Electric Cord.”

A hearing is set for Monday to determine the painting’s fate.

—David Ng