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WANK (2020)

Started by chveik, December 02, 2020, 01:01:04 PM

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chveik

it's the new David Fincher film, featuring Gary Oldman!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSfX-nrg-lI

El Unicornio, mang

I generally like David Fincher and films about America of that period a lot so I'm looking forward to watching this. Kermode wasn't that keen, and The Guardian gave it five stars but also said it's terrible https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/19/mank-a-death-wish-of-a-movie-that-could-never-live-up-to-the-legend-of-orson-welles

Bad Ambassador




Butchers Blind

Couldn't even be bothered to film it in colour. 

Hand Solo

Will they explain the significance of 'Rosebud'?[nb]Apparently the 'pet' name Hirst gave to his mistress' clunge[/nb]

chveik

Mankiewicz was 33 in 1930. even by Hollywood standards, it makes no sense to cast Oldman in that role.

Sin Agog

Isn't Oldman some PC-hating reactionary type these days?  Bet we won't see any interviews with him going to bat for Mankiewicz' politics the way he did for Churchill.

Marner and Me

Should have cast Liam Gallagher

El Unicornio, mang

This kind of trundled along without any real feeling of excitement or any major hook (I mean, it's a film about someone writing a script, so...), but it looks great (some nice evocation of films of that period) and some fine performances.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: chveik on December 05, 2020, 02:19:16 AM
Mankiewicz was 33 in 1930. even by Hollywood standards, it makes no sense to cast Oldman in that role.

A bit like Kevin Spacey playing Bobby Darrin in the biopic of the singer, Beyond The Sea (2003). Spacey was about twenty years older than Darrin at the time they were telling his story. Talk about a vanity project.

mjwilson

Oldman's and Amanda Seyfried's characters are the same age.

non capisco

Mankiewicz and his wife Sara, played in this by Tuppence Middleton, were born in the same year as well. I suppose they can get round it by blaming the ravages of alcoholism, like how Mark E Smith started to look about 60 years old from the early 90s onwards. Everyone looks dead old in this though, Charles Dance has that embalmed Prince Phillip look about him. 

This was alright. Kind of like a lavishly staged adaptation of an episode of You Must Remember This.

El Unicornio, mang

I was wondering if they'd used any de-aging, like Fincher did for Benjamin Button, seems like it would be even easier in black and white, didn't really look like it though.


Blue Jam

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on December 05, 2020, 12:37:36 PM...it's a film about someone writing a script, so...

In that regard it's infinitely better than Seven Psychopaths.

Finding this very pretty and an enjoyable enough bit of fluff.

Blue Jam

On second thoughts, I love this. It's a blast.

chveik

wank was a good name for this

a fucking waste of time

Blue Jam

Amanda Seyfried has got such a cool face. Mesmerising.

Also I kept looking at Charles Dance and wondering why the fuck he has never played an officer of The Empire in Star Wars. He's got those Richard E Grant cheekbones.

Enjoyed the shit out of this.

amputeeporn

Yeah, for saying I didn't know about this thing until a day or two ago - it was a lovely treat. Not sure it all truly came together for me, but it was wonderfully well made, gorgeous to look at and a pleasure to spend company with. I've just gone and read an article by a Welles historian decrying it as lies and bullshit, but whevs.

Blue Jam

Quote from: amputeeporn on December 06, 2020, 01:32:00 AM
it was a lovely treat. Not sure it all truly came together for me, but it was wonderfully well made, gorgeous to look at and a pleasure to spend company with.

Yes, all of that. Had heard absolutely nothing about it before tonight, just saw it pop up in my Netflix recommendations and thought "I really feel like watching a film right now, that sounds interesting, I could do with something new, let's give it a go" and I'm very glad I did.

dissolute ocelot

"Why watch Citizen Kane when you can Wank?" Anyhoo, this joins the ranks (geddit?) of:

Bank (2016 Belize-American crime thriller starring someone called Jah who probably isn't XXXTentacion, and several other no-budget films)
Dank (2019 Indian horror)
Hank (Kelsey Grammar 1-season sitcom from 2009)
Pank (Swedish thriller, I think it means Bank, or at least it does in Estonian)
Rank (2006 rodeo documentary from the director of Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning)
Sank (an episode of Laura Linney 2018 series Sink Sank Sunk)
Tank (1984 James Garner/Shirley Jones military comedy that doesn't have a Wikipedia reception section but Roger Ebert called a "cable favorite")
Wank (2008 short from the director of History's Greatest Pervs and several episodes of Canadian property show Love It or List It)
The Yank (2014 comedy in which Fred Willard must become more Irish)
And "jank" is a made-up swear-word in the iCarly universe.

Wet Blanket

Found it very watchable as a film twat, but wonder what anyone would make of it who hasn't seen Citizen Kane or isn't up on their Hollywood folklore. I suppose you could argue that's not who it's aimed at, but for me a really great biopic should work both for the buffs and anyone coming in blind. 

chveik

portraying Welles like a cunt and making it look like Mankiewicz was the real creative force doesn't help. also the fact that the angle they're taking has been proved to be historically inaccurate. I wouldn't have minded if I liked the film though, I'm not that type of film buff.

samadriel



Sin Agog

Quote from: chveik on December 09, 2020, 04:58:36 PM
portraying Welles like a cunt and making it look like Mankiewicz was the real creative force doesn't help. also the fact that the angle they're taking has been proved to be historically inaccurate. I wouldn't have minded if I liked the film though, I'm not that type of film buff.

I really don't like Kane at all, but I am really into some of Welles' later offerings, even a comparative trifle like The Stranger or his excellent Harry Lime BBC radio series.  I always accredited it to Hungry Young Man Syndrome, with Welles trying to cram in all these techniques and post-modern narrative disjunct at the expense of a real heart and flow, but Mank made me think it might be Herm's contribution I liked the least.  It's all scenes and no movie- skipping over all the quiet intakes of breath in order to get straight to the arch and melodrama.  Naw, never liked it one bit, but at least now I can lay that more on the scriptwriter than the jowly wunderkind.  Fincher's movie painted the younger Mankiewicz as a bit of hack, which the to-order studio system kind of necessitated back then, but I get way more out of The Philadelphia Story and All About Eve than anything his brother wrote (I got the impression Herman was more of an ideas man than anything on Wizard of Oz).

SteveDave

I showed my wife Citizen Kane last night after she said she'd never seen, partway through "Wank". Turns out I'd only seen it up until the "Mr Burns" song and then the very last shot. For years I was convinced I'd seen it all. I got quite teary at the end.

touchingcloth

<tag>The Tugs (2020)</tag>