David Fincher -- c/d?

You know, I did not like "Gone Girl" the book a whole lot, but the trailer for Fincher's film looks tonally totally wrong. The book I found silly. The movie likes like his usual gloom, which is weird:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/fox/gonegirl/

http://media.aintitcool.com/media/uploads/2014/horrorella/Gone%20Girl_large.jpg

Very long interview.

I've written for Playboy and know the editorial MO, to a degree, but that was a crap interview. The only interesting thing was broaching the notion of a subversive "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

We were doing Osama bin Nemo

that would have been cool

this caught my eye in the NYT Gone Girl review:

her characters share the same hard-knock fate: Nick, some kind of magazine writer, lost his New York job, as did Amy, who wrote quizzes for women’s magazines. (Was that a job? A. Yes, B. No, C. I doubt it.)

lol. why is it modern screenwriters seem to have absolutely no concept of what people actually do to earn money? This is especially true in comedies when people are always the owner of a cupcake shop or a record label talent scout or a magazine editor or something else that next to nobody actually makes a living at.

my suspicion is that the goal is not to remind anyone in the audience of their realistic, soul-crushing jobs

(tho Fight Club did, and that sank at the box office)

Dude, it was fucking cool. It was smart and crazy entertaining, with the Nautilus crew fighting every kind of gigantic Ray Harryhausen thing. But it also had this riptide to it. We were doing Osama bin Nemo, a Middle Eastern prince from a wealthy family who has decided that white imperialism is evil and should be resisted.

this isn't some 'subversive' fincher spin on the material, this is pretty much who verne's nemo is. (except he's from india, not the middle east.)

fincher came across in that interview as very fond of himself, not that this should be surprising or really that objectionable i guess

"why is it modern screenwriters seem to have absolutely no concept of what people actually do to earn money?"

To be fair, I believe the character in the novel is basically living off a trust fund so I don't think she did actually really work (and the screenwriter and novelist are same person).

lol. why is it modern screenwriters seem to have absolutely no concept of what people actually do to earn money? This is especially true in comedies when people are always the owner of a cupcake shop or a record label talent scout or a magazine editor or something else that next to nobody actually makes a living at.

they pick jobs that are appropriate to the symbolic order in which the stories they are telling conventionally live

Miriam Bale @mimbale · 1h
GONE GIRL is a sequel to TO THE WONDER

"My brother got me this gift certificate to this company and ah, I got the key out of the mouth of this wooden clown"

I love it when movies make fun of themselves!

well this is great

http://www.cinephiliabeyond.org/david-fincher/

is the name "every frame a painting" ironic? b/c that's what stupid people say when they see a pretty movie.

i guess i liked that video ok, but i hate all the discussion of what is "cinematic" and what isn't, as if anyone knows what that means or as if that matters. "talking isn't cinematic." who says? why not?

As a Gertrud fan, I agree. But still, "cinematic" is like "jazz." You just know.

yeah but as someone who teaches film aesthetics as well as film theory it's one of those words that i try to get students to watch out for (much like them saying something is "boring").

and yeah i was thinking of "gertrud" too. but in general i think the tacit allusion to medium specificity is a bad look.

that said, when people say something is or isn't "cinematic" most of the time they just mean "interesting to look at."

"Interesting" is even harder to define than "cinematic"

i don't doubt it!

If you ain't read, he's doing a 'loose' adap of Strangers on a Train (just like the first one!) with Ben Affleck as an awards-season-addled movie star (no, I'm not kidding). Gillian Flynn writing, no word on the Bruno catalyst character being cast.

TIL Robert Towne is still with us

‘Chinatown’ Prequel Series in Development at Netflix From David Fincher, Robert Towne https://t.co/gQZ7xQXYCG

— Variety (@Variety) November 19, 2019

incidentally I'm finally watching the assembly cut of Alien 3 and it absolutely rules

He had nothing to do with that, right? (After the fact, that is). I saw it once back when, and I also remember enjoying it.

who the hell do you get to play Jake Gittes

Christian Slater

(j/k I have no interest in watching Christian Slater in anything)

thought about making that joke but he's too old now, obviously

avon barksdale

Jonah Hill

omg just noticed the real kicker at the bottom of that article cuz lol why would anyone want to watch this

The streamer is currently prepping the drama series “Ratched” starring Sarah Paulson from executive producer Ryan Murphy. The series will explore the backstory of the infamous Nurse Ratched from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

xpost Duh, they'll just spend millions to de-age Nicholson. And also Faye. And also her sister/daughter will be de-aged into a baby.

gay ppl w/ bad taste xp

Gittes doesn't know Evelyn before the events of the original film (which I remind you had a sequel)

Doesn't mean they won't put them both in the movie! Sillier things (like a sequel to Chinatown) have happened.

Funniest would be if they spent millions on de-aging but for slater

Towne wouldn't do that to his best known creation, can't see Fincher doing it either. Presumably it will be about the original trauma Jake suffered in Chinatown, alluded to but never made explicit in Polanski's film.

xp

Maybe it will take place 200 years before the first movie.

Sillier things (like a sequel to Chinatown)

Towne conceived of it as a trilogy, but The Two Jakes' lack of success (it's not a bad film) torpedoed the third one.

yeah the trilogy thing at least made some thematic sense (water, oil and I forget the third thing...)

fire I think

(they could do that one set in 2019...)

yeah The Two Jakes is actually good, Nicholson is excellent and Keitel is his equal as the other Jake.

Good enough, iirc. But not necessary, and as far as I remember it no one would miss much if they saw Chinatown but not the sequel.

we have Mank teaser. looks good imo

https://youtu.be/J_NqUYwngr0

Looks like "Sin City," was this all green screen?

Really worried this film will fall into Pauline Kael’s “Raising Kane” garbage about Mank being the primary author of the script

we'll see. Fincher not really the sort to skimp on research but who knows what his dad's script is like

xp. it does apparently