The Furniture: "Mank", Crusader Against Tackiness

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on images for magnified detail)

Opulence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes things that are expensive are worse. This is the message of Mank.

Or, rather, a message. But much of the film’s impact does spring from an acknowledgement that it would be cost-prohibitive to replicate the colossal excesses of the real Hearst Castle. Production designer Donald Graham Burt is pretty clear about that in this short video feature about his work. So, rather than trying and failing, they did something different...

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Between Anachronism and Pastiche: The Look of "Mank"

by Cláudio Alves

After months of great anticipation and even greater expectations, David Fincher's Mank is here. For some, the picture's a rousing success, a politicized look at Old Hollywood's insidiousness through the eyes of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. For others, it's a disappointment, history and fantasy mushed together with pretension and aggrandizement. I find myself in the middle of these reactions, though my immediate feelings were probably more inclined to the latter than the former.

Still, a good way to consider a film's power is to see how it lasts in one's memory. For me, Mank has aged oddly in the last week. It's not that my perspective is warmer but that I can't shake it off. As the days go by I find myself ruminating on David Fincher's formal conception of this manky flick, its weirdness and intrinsic contradictions…

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Podcast: All about "Mank" plus the Best Director Oscar race

with Nathaniel R & Murtada Elfadl

We're back!

Index (63 minutes)
00:01 Mank: The stars, the story, and rewatching Citizen Kane
24:00 MVPs of the ensemble. Plus those Norma Shearer asides
32:00 How will Oscar react overall? David Fincher's career acclaim
38:00 Everybody in the (wildly open) Best Director race. Plus female directors rising!
55:30 Mank in male acting categories: Gary Oldman? Charles Dance?

Related Reading:
• Best Actor Chart
• Best Director Oscar Chart

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

MANK

Link Bonanza

• The Guardian interviews Anya Taylor-Joy on her passion for acting, Emma, and The Queens Gambit
• AV Club Oscar Isaac to play Solid Snake in the film adaptation of video game Metal Gear Solid
• Atlantic a wonderful interview with David Fincher about grievances with Hollywood, the death of midbudget movies, and Mank

After the jump our streaming future, Catherine O'Hara, rising Egyptian cinema, MTV Movie Awards, new Christmas albums, and more...

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Links

• IndieWire offers up a guide to explaining various characters and events in Mank
• FilmSchoolRejects 20 movies to watch if you loved Mank
• Instagram Elliot Page (Juno, The Umbrella Academy, Inception) has come out as trans
• HuffPost Ariana DeBose is making her (movie) name with the musical resurgence: Hamilton Live, The Prom, and West Side Story

More after the jump including ranking the films of David Fincher, EW's Entertainers of the Year, an imaginary Ratatouille musical, new Emmy rulings, and more...

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