David Fincher -- c/d?

honestly even if he was a shit director, Fincher would be in my good books forever for his persistent trolling of Ben Affleck

proper trailer, more of the same but still looking pretty tite to me

https://youtu.be/aSfX-nrg-lI

On paper, David Fincher’s MANK is a movie I *should* love, but instead just admire. Incredibly well crafted, shot, acted. But the story left me cold. I now know more about Mank’s feelings toward the 1934 California gubernatorial race than I do his feelings toward Orson Welles.

— Mike Ryan (@mikeryan) October 30, 2020

give me those horse genealogies and dental records

tons of reviews kicking around now. seems like ppl who are hung up on the authorship angle are indeed going to be pissed, but also that it's far from the single focus

As in the The Social Network, Fincher is conscious of the explanatory clichés of the biopic and avoids them. Penned by Fincher’s late father, Jack Fincher, Mank is a stubbornly glorious work of inside baseball, with appearances by the likes of Josef von Sternberg (Paul Fox), Ben Hecht (Jeff Harms), Charles MacArthur (John Churchill), David O. Selznick (Toby Leonard Moore), Charles Lederer (Joseph Cross), and Mank’s younger brother, Joseph Mankiewicz (Tom Pelphrey). Though they portray Joseph pitilessly as a politico, the filmmakers tell the audience little about the interrelationships between these and other influential people. One won’t learn of the Algonquin Round Table from Mank, though it’s alluded to, and an amusing pitch meeting involving von Sternberg and Hecht is even funnier if one knows that Hecht previously co-wrote a picture for the director—1927’s Underworld—that’s the sort of genre fare that von Sternberg appears to want to transcend in Mank.

These sorts of barely articulated cross-associations suggest a bygone society driven by an infrastructure of unknowable vastness. And the opportunity to conjure such a labyrinthine and increasingly sinister impression of community is what excites Fincher throughout Mank. Like many of his other films, especially Fight Club, Zodiac, and The Social Network, Mank is a parable on the limits of control, fashioned with rueful self-awareness by one of Hollywood’s most famous contemporary control freaks. As a cartoonist had to live with his inability to crack the riddle of the Zodiac killer, Mank must live with an existence, fashioned in part by his own self-loathing and lack of discipline, in which he’s to ineffectually bear witness to the flexing of American corruption as represented by an intersection between the press, Hollywood, and the government. Such a theme also very consciously aligns Mank with the “fallen, not-quite-great man” themes of Citizen Kane.

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review-david-finchers-mank-is-a-self-aware-parable-on-the-limits-of-control/

The rep theatre in London (Ontario--still open, but probably one color-zone from closing up again) is playing Mank and Citizen Kane back-to-back for a few days next week. Definitely anxious to see this, and the trailer looks good. I do think Mank is a poor title, though I understand its relevancy. It just doesn't sound very good.

This piece is dated yesterday, but it says the list has been circulating for a while, so maybe it's already somewhere on this thread.

https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/david-fincher-favorite-movies-streaming/

Like looking in a mirror for me. (So I'll mention again that, along with the two films of his I love, I dislike both Seven and Fight Club.)

No specific complaints about Mank--well made, performances fine (the guy who plays Welles--knew this from the trailer already--is uncanny)--but the truth is I was a little bored at times. Definitely going to read one of Upton Sinclair's famous novels, though.

Will never be able to read that title without thinking of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33JwhnLP2AM

I think you might have hit on why it sounds so terrible to me. (Also sounds like "rank," and "Ronco.")

Looking forward to the dank Mank memes.

I liked this overall, but couldn't shake the feeling it's the sort of movie that's more fun to read about than watch.

thought the script was lousy

I agree; the script feels a little less than the sum of its parts. I thought this was enjoyable, though. I would have probably like it more if I was an Old Hollywood nerd

But what does Bogdanovich think about it?

i miss Morbs.

I liked most of the dialogue tbh

Burke looks nothing like Welles but the voice was pretty good

This was legitimately not good. Dull, inert, flat. I don’t think I’ve ever used “impressed with itself” as a criticism before, but that’s totally apt here.

^^ this

Loved me some Mank

I really enjoyed it - I went into it tonight half expecting to be bored or unmoved based on what I’d read here. I think within the bounds of what the movie ~is~ it was really successful.
And I say that discounting what it should have been or what it was expected to be etc etc

I mean just as a biopic alone I loved that it didnt do all the usual david copperfieldian born lived died etc, that you get Mank through the lens of Hearst/Kane, figuratively & literally. I was really taken by the way both fed into each other.

Anyway, yay Mank

also i howled when Poor Sue gives that line to Mank about how it’s been a long time since she saw a horse’s face LMAO BURN

Liked Oldman and Charles Dance and the guy who played Ben Heck but much of it felt like Old Hollywood cosplay and the incessant namedropping "Ah, there's Irving Thalberg! / Oh, play the piano Charlie (Chaplin)/ Look, here's Norma Shearer!" took me back to the dreaded (for me) "Midnight In Paris" and its phony parade of Jazz Age celebs at every corner.

Plus it didn't help that I've never bought this "Mankiewicz wrote all of it " story one bit

also i howled when Poor Sue gives that line to Mank

Tuppence Middleton was good. In general I appreciated the (seemingly deliberate) avoidance of recognizable stars.

i quite liked this. i rewatched ed wood a week ago and i was struck by how they're both movies about movies that copy the aesthetic of the movies they're about

also i was watching with headphones and i maybe i'm crazy but it sounded like the dialogue had an effect on it to make it sound like you're watching a movie in a theater - a very slight echo/reverb

I never realized until last night that John Houseman the producer that babysat Mank was the very same John Houseman the actor of 3 Days of The Condor, Paper Chase etc.

what a career! crazy.

admittedly there is some execrable dialogue in this in short bursts, but more often than not it is pretty sharp. I'm only half way through - but enjoying it. Even Gary Old-man is pretty good value.

"Mank" is not an interesting enough personage, but David Fincher does this sort of t hing well.

It's meh.

(xpost) Here is a dime, Mr. Hart--call your mother and tell her there's seeeeriiiiouuus doubt about you becoming a lawyer.

welles scholar joseph mcbride has a pretty comprehensive response to the film’s historical claims here:

https://www.wellesnet.com/mank-welles-mcbride/

Saw that

it’s funny (well, not funny funny but yknow, funny) that the subject still gets discussed by Wellesheads & Mankheads at the teetering-on -pistols-at-dawn level of discourse even now

has mcbride ever heard this do you think

https://genius.com/Orson-welles-frozen-peas-annotated

in honor of Morbs I am never going to watch this

Ha! Well done.

he knew i had terrible taste
i have no regrets

but i miss him like crazy

this was so dull I turned it off after 20 minutes

"has mcbride ever heard this do you think"

this makes me want to see a Mank where Danny McBride plays Mank and yeah I guess Jody Hill or David Gordon Green directs too

This is a fascinating interview w Ren Klyce the sound designer on Mank (who’s worked on most/almost all of Fincher’s major movies)

The minutaie layed out here is incredible - and lol at how much of the story is Fincher asking for the moon & then getting annoyed at how long it takes to achieve his wild asks

https://theplaylist.net/mank-sound-design-ren-kylce-interview-20201207/

While never dull, Mank mistakenly gets too ambitious; it's the most unwieldy picture of Fincher's career. I'd have wanted a movie about his support for Upton Sinclair.

Good details about the fact/fiction of that here, by Greg Mitchell who wrote “Campaign of The Century” about Sinclair’s run

The Mank connection to Sinclair is heavily fictionalized it seems, but the studio involvement in scuttling Sinclair’s win was pretty true, if not watered down

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/movies/mank-upton-sinclair.html?smid=tw-share

I think Fincher maybe tried to have it be about ~too much~ and Mank the character gets a little foggy between timelines

But I think Mank’s change of heart in wanting credit is the heart of the movie, and the movie writer in The System is where the richness is

I’ve watched it a couple of times now & don’t believe Fincher is waging any kind of war against Welles the way wellesians make it seem. I think the thought exercise of viewing Welles & Kane through Mank’s gimlet eye makes it hard not to seem like jabs are being intentionally thrown. as Mank says in the movie (paraphrasing) he *is* capable of being serious ... about things that are funny.

The movie is telling this creative undertaking through Mank’s experience of it and trying to underline that whatever Mank wrote, once it was written, was something he was proud of, and willing to stand for, which is something he had never really done, and what a seachange that is for a man who never held his own work in much high regard at all.
I don’t think it’s trying to challenge any accepted facts or say that Welles did less or whatever. imo.

Mank sank by script that's rank

I would have probably like it more if I was an Old Hollywood nerd

lol all the old hollywood nerds I know HATE this movie

A leaden mess. Stick with a topic and develop it: the '34 gubernatorial race, carousing with Perelman, Hecht, et. al, the writing of CK.

The film can't take a "side" because it's an overloaded buffet.

I would have much preferred another season of Mindhunter. Maybe watching this with low expectations helped and despite some of awful dialogue I found it quite enjoyable as far as Netflix productions go!

I'd rank his films thusly.

i feel like you nailed the best two; i'd switch around a bunch of stuff below them, mostly bc i'm the only huge fan of panic room and i actually really love the way he adapted gone girl