Bamboo Bill
Footballguy
Huge fan of this combo, plus Atticus Ross.
New movie drops today on Netflix.
MANK
New movie drops today on Netflix.
MANK
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Fincher + Reznor Fan Club | New Movie Out Today - "Mank" (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Bamboo Bill
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Ilov80s
Footballguy
Dan Lambskin
Footballguy
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
Ilov80s
Footballguy
The drunk derelict guy who is supposedly the true creative force behind the script of Citizen Kane. It’s old Hollywood stuff about the making of that movie and the real people it was based on.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
I was going to say the great uncle of the host on TCM but you pretty much summed it up there.
Don Quixote
Footballguy
I’ve been looking forward to this one too. 
Don Quixote
Footballguy
I'm about halfway through it, but my excitement is tempered a bit. For a movie about a screenwriter, I find the script kind of blah. Visually it looks great though. Maybe it will get better, or I just need to be in a different mindset (i.e., need to add some alcohol) to enjoy it.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
I will post what I said in the other thread to 80s. I had a similar initial reaction to this that I did to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but to an even greater extent. This was well written, directed, acted - all that. However, I think the movie requires a fairly good knowledge of the making of Kane, the people involved, and history of film around this time period to really embrace this one. I did not have that, and I struggled a bit with the movie because of it. I think this is only for cinephiles, and on top of that one that dig into history more. Not sure how much of the general public will like this movie.
Vegas Trip
Footballguy
Love them both more than most, not excited about the subject matter though. Trailer didn't draw me in either, guess we'll see.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
I really liked it. Not a masterpiece but really good. It took me 20 mins or so to get drawn in but once it got going, it was really well done. The acting and production value were top notch. It’s a very specific movie though and probably doesn’t appeal to a wide audience. It does require a good amount of knowledge like you said. My biggest complaint is I didn’t think the guy playing Welles really delivered but luckily that was a really small piece of it. I thought it was good but I’ve found myself thinking about it a lot since watching it and wanting to rewatch it so I think it will grow on me every more with time.
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Ilov80s
Footballguy
@KarmaPolice watched it a second time and yeah I liked it even more. I missed so much the first time through. Maybe it was the cocktails or just trying to get a feel for what was going on, who was who, timeline. Really great movie and some fantastic dialogue that I missed. And I take back my comment on Burke, he was solid as Welles.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
Ilov80s
Footballguy
That makes 4 2020 movies I’ve seen now. I need to make a list and start trying to hunt down some of these movies once they all get released. So far I’m at Mank, 5 Bloods and Palm Springs as movies I really liked and Happiest Season was alright.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
@Ilov80s - did you catch my list in the other thread I made from the Big Picture pod's top 5s?
I didn't like Happiest Season much, and I need to get to that list as well. I have them all queued up, just got sucked back into The Americans on my week off.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
i did a good deal of research on Welles' immediate post-Kane life after the remarkable footage he shot for the movie project It's All True was discovered in a vault and first came to light in the late 90s. watching a Brazilian seaside burial ceremony he shot documentarily and then restaged for the film, i began to wonder if he didn't think he'd filmed the Face of God and that's what blew him off his meteoric path. the 20/20 hindsight explains a lot and i thought it would be a solid conceit for a script because his South American adventure (LSS: just as Hearst & RKO were hounding Welles out of Hollywood, Averill Harriman - a big diplomat guy - asked him to go on a goodwill tour of South America to aid the war effort, Orson said he would if he could make a film out of it, RKO was glad to fund him to be rid of him, until he was spending 100grand a wk and sending back nothing but footage of "*racialslur*s jumping up & down" @ Carnival) was both hilarious and compelling.
so i looked fwd to Mank a great deal. I liked it very much except that it appears Oldman is tired of not being a star. though the script was strong, thoughtful, clever, beautifully researched & realized, it suffered from Oldman having to be in every scene. i believe Welles wanted to poke Hollywood and the OldGuard in the eye from the start of his career in electronic media and was more duplicit in the conception (if not scriptually) of Kane than they say, for fear of a Welles impersonator absorbing too much of Mank's spotlight. delightful, otherwise, but could have been Chinatown-better if they'd widened the shot.
so i looked fwd to Mank a great deal. I liked it very much except that it appears Oldman is tired of not being a star. though the script was strong, thoughtful, clever, beautifully researched & realized, it suffered from Oldman having to be in every scene. i believe Welles wanted to poke Hollywood and the OldGuard in the eye from the start of his career in electronic media and was more duplicit in the conception (if not scriptually) of Kane than they say, for fear of a Welles impersonator absorbing too much of Mank's spotlight. delightful, otherwise, but could have been Chinatown-better if they'd widened the shot.
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Ilov80s
Footballguy
Ilov80s
Footballguy
I did and need to catch up on those and many more. Just so many of the top movies aren’t really out yet. I liked Happiest Season except Stewart’s GF was an awful person and had no chemistry with Stewart. I thought the movie was going to better and was going to make the gutsy switcheroo on us. The movie would have worked a lot better if Stewart and Plaza had gotten together in the end. There could have been a swerve there and still a way to find a happy ending for everything. Not that most of the family deserved one.
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KarmaPolice
Footballguy
Agree 100% on these.
Also, I am sure there are families and situations like this, but I think concept in general didn't land with me and how close minded the parents were.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
he got the voice and the "every word a seduction" thang right, but my point was we never got to really see him. the thing that's in so many contemporary letters about Welles is his "bull in a china shop" physicality. did you see season 4 of Fargo? the brother from Italy would be a good comp if one subsituted genius for rage. people careened off him like cartoon characters backinaday. this is a guy who hired ambulances to get from gig to gig in Manhattan cuz taxis didnt have sirens. NObody has captured that in any onscreen impersonation i've seen.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Yeah it’s only a few moments. Like you said, he would distract from the story Jack and David Fincher were trying to tell because he’s such a big personality. It would be like trying to cover the story of prime George Foreman. You have to be very judicious about how much Ali you put in there because when Ali is around, everything is about Ali. Welles is cautiously sprinkled in and looms from a distance more than anything which is probably the right move for this particular story.
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wikkidpissah
Footballguy
yeah - there would have been an aura of shrapnel around Mank when Orson broke #### up there. he might still have wrote it up during, but that's how we obstreperous genii are
Bracie Smathers
Footballguy
Caught it the other night and it will require another watching because it was ambitious with the entire cast of characters with dense adult dialogue. Felt the B&W thing didn't work for me. With so many things going on, so many characters, such rich deep dialogue color helps to distinguish between characters. Black and white flattens out shots/scenes. Would have helped a lot and I can see where casual viewers would get lost on the woods and not have a clue and give up on this one.
I'm sure most here are/were aware of, Hearst/Davies/Wells and the whole San Simeon 'Algonquin-eske round table' power broker discussions and that is the 'meat' of the movie IMHO. Loved it and missed a ton because the screen writer tore it up and didn't allow for the audience to catch up. I like that sort of challenge and the movie was indeed made for cinephiles.
Great seeing Charles Dance as Hearst and a really good casting decision.
I'm sure most here are/were aware of, Hearst/Davies/Wells and the whole San Simeon 'Algonquin-eske round table' power broker discussions and that is the 'meat' of the movie IMHO. Loved it and missed a ton because the screen writer tore it up and didn't allow for the audience to catch up. I like that sort of challenge and the movie was indeed made for cinephiles.
Great seeing Charles Dance as Hearst and a really good casting decision.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Vegas Trip
Footballguy
Suggestions for homework I should do before viewing that will help understand / enjoy Mank? Isn't there a documentary covering Citizen Kane? RKO 281?
Don Quixote
Footballguy
I think reading can give you more background. You can read Pauline Kael's New Yorker essay here. Peter Bogdanovich has debunked that though. If you have an Esquire subscription, you can read that here (I don't). You can read a recent interview with Bogdanovich here.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
PBS' The Battle Over Citizen Kane deals with as much after-Kane nonsense as making-of-Kane stuff, but you get to understand, even meet some of the principals
