David Fincher -- c/d?

Funny, because that's my least favorite. It has that awful Mamet plot resolution, where it's a double cross! No, it's a triple cross! No, it's a quadruple cross! No, it's... oh, face it, this is ridiculous.

Fight Club is fun until it gets serious. Helena Bonham-Carter's last good role?

I'd like to see Palahniuk's cult-leader novel turned into a movie.

Have you read the new introduction to the book? Oddly enough, the UCI library didn't have a copy of the novel at all, from any printing, and I ended up ordering it for a class that wants it on reserve. I read through the introduction when the book arrived and it was balanced between what I thought was the agreeably casual and the almost-suffused-with-self-importance -- he seemed both bemused and arrogant regarding the cult around book and movie.

x-post I didn't much think of "bitch tits" as a gag. I thought of it as this horribly weak and unfortunate person that this even more weak and far more fortunate person has decided to draw energy from. It's just the damndest dynamic. I couldn't have thought of it.

OTM.

which is cool.

Not so OTM.

Fight Club is great if you watch it as a black comedy and nothing more (It's at least a lot better than the book, which I didn't much like at all). It does sort of fall of apart towards the end but it's still pretty funny.

The Game and Panic Room sucked.

Alien 3 I like, it's certainly no classic but it's not that bad of a movie.

I guess the best thing that can be said about Fincher is that on the visual/technical level he's one of the top Hollyood directors around.

The faux-nihilism schtick he specializes in is a love-it-or-hate-it thing I suppose.

The Game was good for its slickness too.

The others are trash.

I like Fincher well enough. he's not as visually interesting as he is often made out to be but incredibly slick (in a good sense). I enjoyed The Game and Panic Room much more than I did Fight Club or Seven, which were good in parts.

you get to see this in 2 Fincher movies, right? I hope it happens in his next one too.

Fincher slated to direct adaptation of Charles Burns' "The Black Hole". I am excited.

wowwww

http://io9.com/359193/david-fincher-catches-mutant-std-from-charles-burns

book is awesome, Fincher perfectly suited to the material. Gaiman's involvement = uhhhh, but still...

i was so drunk on this thread

yeah, does gaiman get these screenplay gigs by default now because he's worked in comics and film? it's not like any of the movies he's been involved with have been big successes.

Fincher's slated to/actually directing ratio not very encouraging.

(i guess beowulf made $$$, didn't see it)

Wait, what:

We're also interested to see what The Finch does with Rendezvous with Rama, which he's also directing.

morgan freeman, right?

Fincher's slated to/actually directing ratio not very encouraging.

-- Cosmo Vitelli, Thursday, February 21, 2008 8:51 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^

'rendezvous' has been "slated" since honeys was wearin sassoon.

i still remember his idea of a three-hour black-and-white adaptation of 'the black dahlia', which in retrospect makes me depressed.

probably woulda been better than DePalma's lolz

gaiman kinda sucks.

i love that rendezvous w rama (awesome book) is morgan freeman's dream project

When I saw this headline on Empireonline, my initial thought was that he was remaking Disney's The Black Hole, which would've been something.

I've not read Black Hole, but the other Burns stuff I've read suggests the two would be a great marriage.

lolz I thought it was about the Disney movie at first too

(BH is easily Burns' best work btw)

I wonder how this will compare to Liquid Television's DogBoy hahah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL7ISg8_GcQ

"If you've ever suffered from clinical depression, you know the experience is impossible to convey to someone who hasn't also gone through it. It doesn't make sense. It's like trying to describe why you love somebody. How do you explain a lack of feeling, or interest, or pleasure, that is both numbing and excruciatingly painful? How do you account for a disconnection with the past and any conception of a future? It's not "living in the moment" -- it's being stuck in a moment from which you can't imagine any escape -- not just the feeling that this asphyxiating near-deadness will go on forever, but that you can't imagine ever having felt any other way (even though, logically, you know that is not possible). You can remember feeling pleasure -- no, make that "having felt pleasure" -- but you have no memory of what it actually felt like. One of the (many) reasons I probably connect so strongly with David Fincher's "Fight Club" (1999) is that, by capturing clinical depression more accurately than any other movie I've ever seen (though Laurent Cantet's "Time Out" and Eric Steel's "The Bridge" delve mighty deep into that abyss), it helped shake me out of the grips of a depression that was sucking me down at the time. I was the only person in the theater convulsed with laughter from beginning to end, because it was liberating, exhilarating, to see the truth of my own inner experience reflected back at me in its funhouse mirror...."

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2008/07/fight_club_i_am_jacks_manicdep.html

Haha I just read that this morning, Morbius. I've got Emerson's RSS in Google Reader.

alien 3 made him hated by everyone in the world. except me, actually. i didn't mind it. i liked the sound of it. in fact i went back to the theatre and taped the movie with my tape recorder and then played it for weeks on my walkman when i walked to my midnight shift at the supermarket in new milford, connecticut.

!!!

Tip to clinically depressed people: don't play Alien 3 on your walkman.

For the record, I think it's an underrated film too.

Alien 3 was my fav Fincher film until Zodiac came out.

Zodiac pushes him into classic status (prob one of my favorite movies of the decade) and Fight Club is tremendous too...other than that I actively dislike the rest of these movies!

I see there's a new trade pb of essays on FC ... one dealing with the gay subtext (sic) called "The Club That Dare Not Speak Its Name."

http://www.amazon.com/You-Talk-About-Fight-Club/dp/1933771526

i still haven't seen zodiac; fight club is some bullshit. i like the madonna video for express yourself.

i had this

Zodiac puts Fight Club to shame

(which is not hard, since FC is so goddamn silly)

we know your views on this, I think

that should make it harder, it's easier to shame something serious

I really can't think of 5 film comedies better than Fight Club in the last 10 years.

crazy talk

Apatow's two movies are both funnier lolz

FC>Zodiac>Seven>Alien3>The Game>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Panic Room

funnier does not = better tho

the game is great

I am always confused by the Fight Club backlash

too many people think its great

so contrarianism then. thats kind of what i thought.

its nihilism is boring and self-congratulatory and the basic premise is a bunch of nonsensical macho fantasy bullshit

the basic premise is a bunch of nonsensical macho fantasy bullshit

O RLY???

this is going to get into a source material problem again i think. not that i agree w/your summary, but you can hardly blame fincher for that. xpost

hey he made the movie

similar to what i said about tdk & all adaptations: who gives a shit about the source, & why is that in any way relevant to the discussione??

its basic premise IS a bunch of nonsensical macho fantasy bullshit, like, literally - i dont get how thats a valid criticism

Shakes, have you read the Palahniuk? It's more a tap-in to depressive/sadomasochistic issues than "macho bullshit."

who gives a shit about the source, & why is that in any way relevant to the discussion

Because, except for a little wobbling before the climax, it's a fairly faithful adaptation (tho a tad more romantic-comedy) and reading it might help people who are seeing things in the film that ain't there.

FC being about nihilism doesn't make it nihilist.

guy seems like a terrible writer from the flip-through I gave it. granted that was years ago.

most of his other books are much worse

FC>Zodiac>Seven>Alien3>The Game>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Panic Room

almost otm though i would switch zodiac and fight club and put a lot more distance between the game and alien 3

i disliked the movie for its 90s-style ahistoricism. ends on a 'revolutionary' note w/o even a hint of real politics leading up to, beyond contempt for ikea and fat women. seemed to reconfirm every stereotype that men of my generation are clueless. bolsheviks, who are they duuuude

how is a conclusion wherein the protagonist kisses his g/f with half his head blown off while buildings explode all around him NOT nihilistic?

(ftr the split-second porn insert is a much-needed bit of levity and I appreciated it)

x-post

ends on a 'revolutionary' note w/o even a hint of real politics leading up to, beyond contempt for ikea and fat women. seemed to reconfirm every stereotype that men of my generation are clueless. bolsheviks, who are they duuuude

yeah this really REALLY bothered me too. movie reduces insurrectionary politics to "lets blow stuff up hurhrurhur - oh wait I R SAD"

the problem is that shakey isnt seeing anything that isnt there hes just being a stubborn dick about it

wtf goole??? xps

One of my best friend's thesis is on Chuck P. He didn't listen to me.

i think you guys are confusing the characters being psycho dicks with the movie endorsing their viewpoint.

shakey & goole = stalin + tolstoy

explain to me how the movie is critical of their viewpoint

or else its OFF TO THE GULAG

oh no, omar otm?

spending time with people who love fight club did more than anything else to make me never want to think about it again

the cult's Iron Johnish myth is just one more sales pitch, the narrator comes to realize

fight club FAILED as a movie because it did not start THE REVOLUTION

xp 2 max who doesnt love fight club other than wannabe commie insurrectionists

i'd say the main plot is a bit of a traditional rom-com...hero learns to grow up and accept love (yawn, right). in fact id even suggest that a certain reading of the movie would say that it's MARLA who really saves the narrator and that Tyler was the last gasp, the nihilistic burst of freedom, needed to set that process of maturation in motion.

as Aldous Huxley said, fascism responds to real human needs, we just need to be grown up enough to resist them, to an extent.

morbius i am consistently otm everywhere i go

'the movie doesn't endorse their viewpoint' is the oldest apologist trick in the book -- viz a viz kubrick fans claiming for thirty years that a clockwork orange doesn't endorse alex despite the fact that he's glamorous and cool and charismatic and everyone else in the movie is portrayed as ugly and square.

"Tyler, I appreciate everything you've done for me, but this is too much." it's right in the dialogue, brahs.

the cult's Iron Johnish myth is just one more sales pitch, the narrator comes to realize

ummm really. is that why he shoots himself in the face.

that said i kinda like fight club, but dirty harry prob dealt with the same issues a lot more coherently.

i have no idea what the book is like, for the record

the movie wanted to have its outlaw character win, so revolution it is, bombs away. but it had the typical hollywood allergy to real politics, so the motivation gets chalked up to male depression and office drone uselessness, not any kind of program. that's just nuts, it's like, you do realize that people have blown up the state and taken over, in the 20th century, a couple times?

if it's not endorsing their view it's at least holding them up as a potentiality to fear, which is pretty congratulatory, in a way -- falling down redux?

deeznuts stfu and learn to read

many xps

I mean come on escaping a destructive cult by an act of self-mutilation, how is that not completely nihilistic

x-post

in fact, i'd say it's pretty touching that the movie suggests that, you know, real human love and connection (the image of them holding hands as the world collapses all around them) is the only salvation in the materialist hell portrayed at the beginning of the film.

frankly a better revolutionary ending would have calm and fair minded public employees figure out what was going on, capture him and lock him up.

^^^^lolz

"it had the typical hollywood allergy to real politics, so the motivation gets chalked up to male depression and office drone uselessness, not any kind of program. that's just nuts"

wtf goole??

xp ok this man is a troll

also, Brad Pitt will never be that motherfucking hot again.

The film and book aren't particularly interested in 'real' politics.

escaping a destructive cult by an act of self-mutilation

Shakey, you know I luv ya, but cmon, that face-shooting bit is totally in la-la land, making it way clear by then that it's likely a symbolic act / fantasy to rid himself of the alterego.

'the movie doesn't endorse their viewpoint' is the oldest apologist trick in the book

it's also pretty much true, not only for this movie but for a lot of movies from the past 100 years or so. some movies have speeches about how bad these shitty characters are, and some just kind of show how shitty they are and expect you to be smart enough to figure that out yourself.

I think i would agree that FC drops the ball on any potential political readings...there is a bit of incoherence on that front. One might say it is nihilistic because it DOES seem to me to recoil from any political statement. maybe that's cowardice, maybe it's saying that there sincere limits to the political.

real human love and connection (the image of them holding hands as the world collapses all around them) is the only salvation in the materialist hell portrayed at the beginning of the film.

except that, you know, the implication is that mass murder and property destruction on a grand scale were required for them to reach that completely banal rom-com conclusion

well, yeah! it's a funny movie.

IT'S ONE MAN'S DERANGED FANTASY

OFTEN MATCHING UP WITH MINE

on another point, i don't think we should use the subsequent popularity of "alex" halloween costumes and the real-life fight clubs as something indicative of anything other than people "not getting it".

that face-shooting bit is totally in la-la land, making it way clear by then that it's likely a symbolic act / fantasy to rid himself of the alterego.

I guess - pretty nihilistic symbolism going on there nonetheless (not to mention lovingly shot and made as grotesque as possible)

there are sincere lols to be had! i love the cop banging on the door when marla threatens suicide. "you have every reason to live!"

some movies have speeches about how bad these shitty characters are, and some just kind of show how shitty they are and expect you to be smart enough to figure that out yourself.

so is 'scarface' meant to be taken as a sober cautionary story about how you shouldn't be violent and snort coke?

"limits to the political" is some terrible stuff, btw -- there are things we can do about the credit card companies, you know, short of dynamiting their buildings. grow up!

i wonder why parents ever worried about their kids playing 'mortal kombat' -- it's really about how shitty it would be if all you had to do was fight all day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnBJBaHbwak&feature=related

guys if you think about it really deeply, zodiac & se7en kind of encourage serial killing by glamorizing it

"No, I'm fine" (gluglug, choking back blood)

I'm sure you all like The Godfather for different reasons than the Sopranos did. Or not!

no i just mean that sometimes there is not a political solution to the "perils of existence." why i quoted huxley. life kinda sucks and the best "political" solutions often fail to deliver on their utopian promises.

"some just kind of show how shitty they are and expect you to be smart enough to figure that out yourself"

Right-o.

"guys if you think about it really deeply, zodiac & se7en kind of encourage serial killing by glamorizing it"

You don't have to think deeply at all.

yeah fair enough, ryan

it's all good. fun movie to argue about.

You don't have to think deeply at all.

-- Alex in SF

zactly

okay I can now no longer parse who's being ironic and who's not on this thread

I'm not being ironic. It's not hard to imagine serial killer movies serving as templates for serial killers.

ok, serious q shakey - do you have a problem with zodiac & se7en for glamorizing serial killing?

SERIOUS Q

Um there are differences between those two movies ya know.

please stop responding to deeznuts

I mean Zodiac has a couple of flaws, but comparing it to a piece of hackwork garbage like Seven (fuck putting the 7 in the middle) does it a grave disservice.

I have a problem with se7en being a boring serial killer movie. Zodiac is a completely different animal, and has waaaaaay more going on in it. Although for the record I don't think the serial killer is particularly "glamorized" in Zodiac (certainly not the way Spacey is in se7en; search ILE thread I started about "stupid superhuman serial killer movies")

but in general I agree with Alex on this point

many xposts - No mass murder involved - the buildings they blow up are staffed by Fight Club janitors and evacuated, right?

I don't think the critics are giving Fight Club enough credit for criticizing itself and offering up a complicated POV. Tyler's ideology is sold extremely well (and has some merit from a modern progressive view - "to let that which does not truly matter slide" etc.), and has to be balanced with the fact it becomes a fascist death cult. By turning the anti-commercial/culture jam deal into a violent terrorist cell, does the movie (or book) repudiate all the ideas from the first third? That lack of a coherent political argument is basically the point, no?

in fact, i'd say it's pretty touching that the movie suggests that, you know, real human love and connection (the image of them holding hands as the world collapses all around them) is the only salvation in the materialist hell portrayed at the beginning of the film.

Zodiac made for a nice five-hour nap.

yeah, he's not glamorized, he's a fat balding piece of shit who works in a hardware store & lives in a trailer

im not sure how many copycats weve seen since the release of se7en but im guessing the answer is zero

max, stfu

xps

zodiac was totally fantastic, seven is pretty boring and stupid. i'm pretty glad andrew kevin walker dropped off the map after awhile.

i got weirdly obsessed with zodiac and probably watched in 5 days in a row. so i may be overrating it. but, for me anyway, there is some incredibly moving and profound stuff poking around under the surface of that (gorgeous) movie.

in fact i kind of agree with the notion that the only 2 good movies DF has made were fight club and zodiac, though there are certainly good things about seven and A3 despite them both being kind of retarded.

still haven't seen zodiac, but everyone either loved it or said it was murky and up its own ass, so it should be right up my alley

zodiac was kind of his first 'serious' movie, maybe a precursor to benjamin button

but the things i remember most strongly from zodiac, & what appeals most to me in benjamin button (based on the trailer) are the cinematic set-pieces & images - like the end of fight club - & i think that & not character development is finchers strength & always has been, tho i salute him for branching out

if youre looking for movies to make your political points for you youre an idiot

thinking about the politics of a movie is not "looking for a movie to make political points for you"

ok, but realistically, the supposed politics of a movie dont mean jack shit

do you have any sympathy for glenn beck et al when they mock pixar movies like happy feet (!!!!!!) & wall-e for pursuing a liberal agenda??

its political paranoia, basically

happy feet is not a pixar movie

i have to imagine of the political incoherence has to be due to studio pressure. tyler has break eggs to make an omelet attitude most of the time, but then takes care to make sure no one is in those buildings....or maybe that is in the book?

ok, but realistically, the supposed politics of a movie dont mean jack shit

don't take this the wrong way but what the fuck could you possibly mean by this

i don't have any sympathy for glen beck et al but they are seeing something that's there. not that it's hard, i heard the environmentalism of happy feet was pretty overt.

thinking about politics in movies is not a matter of strict messaging, "omg how will film x make people believe about issue y?!" it's about how ideas & conflicts resident out there in society are used both dramatically and politically.

nice backtrack tho

guys you have to realize we are all now engaging with deeznuts

j0hn d do you seriously think, like, dirty harry, or pulp fiction, or fight club truly had a massive effect on the american consciousness?

how about farenheit 9/11, which was 100% intended to do so? how about the west wing? whatd that do for democratic politics? what did 'wall street' do for democrats?

people go to movies for fun, recognize that they were made for their pleasure; when movies come across as didactic theyre dismissed as propoganda

I think the political incoherence was a choice by Palahniuk - there's no real change from the book (which I haven't read since 1999, so maybe I'm misremembering) on that count. And at each step, the cult tries to avoid deaths (its own, or of others) in their actions, not just the finale.

I guess you could read it as a fantasy terrorist outfit that accomplishes its goals without the cost of life (having your cake and eating it too), but then it/Tyler/Jack are all insane at the end.

i think one problem is in the current climate, it almost doesn't matter if a movie is overt or not. i wonder what some right wing talking head would have to say now about blade runner or, shit, waterworld!

you're right milo. thanks.

j0hn d do you seriously think, like, dirty harry, or pulp fiction, or fight club truly had a massive effect on the american consciousness?

how about farenheit 9/11, which was 100% intended to do so?

Do you seriously think that popular culture cannot have an effect on the American consciousness (alternately, that it doesn't reflect what's happening)?

There's also a difference in a political message found in popular entertainment (seen by people of all stripes, seen as innocuous) and F911, which was seen almost entirely by people who already agreed with the message of the movie.

Are deeznuts and burt stanton the same person?

thinking about politics in movies is not a matter of strict messaging, "omg how will film x make people believe about issue y?!" it's about how ideas & conflicts resident out there in society are used both dramatically and politically.

'seeing something thats there & loudly criticizing it' vs 'seeing something thats there but realizing that its goal is not to brainwash us, like every fucking one else is'

xp

what are you even trying to say?

I guess you could read it as a fantasy terrorist outfit that accomplishes its goals without the cost of life (having your cake and eating it too), but then it/Tyler/Jack are all insane at the end.

I find this kind of incoherence and pretzel-logic justification of stupid shit ("let's blow stuff up!") irritating

So does Palahniuk. That's why it's presented as a fantasy terrorist outfit run by a guy with multiple personalities, whose minions try to cut off his balls.

goole & shakey do you guys seriously think buildings being blow up to the pixies is meant to be some kind of grandiose political statement

jesus

hmmm actually yes I kinda do. certainly there are politics embedded in that imagery.

or have you not noticed that sometimes buildings blow up in real life.

There are "politics embedded" in all imagery. Do you believe that all presentation amounts to endorsement?

holy shit dude im sorry for forgetting 9/11

are you fucking serious xp

I hear Mohammad Atta was rocking Surfer Rosa on his first-generation iPod.

"endorsement" doesn't matter and is a red herring anyway, if you play with any imagery there is a responsibility that goes along with it, because what else is it supposed to invoke? was ripley falling into a blast furnace with her arms stretched out meant to be value-neutral?

why isnt fincher in jail yet, btw?

There are "politics embedded" in all imagery.

my point exactly.

Do you believe that all presentation amounts to endorsement?

no, of course not.

that's a very tough image to read (uh, pre-911 since it came out in 99 or so)...

that's tyler's moment i think. it's the credit card companies, right? he's setting the clock back to zero, complete freedom from our modern fetters (credit cards i guess). how are we to feel about that image, pre 911?

xxxp - Responsibility for/to what?

that being said, in this particular case making out with g/f while buildings blow up to rapturous strains of popular angst-rock is clearly meant to be a moment of redemption/catharsis and I think that that particular image is total adolescent nihilism wish-fulfillment and as such is stupid and not particularly deep or interesting.

(x-post!)

to not complain when ppl read your text and say "wtf are you doing, no thanks" basically

my point exactly.

Shakey, the redemption is in defeating his (evil) alter-ego (right at the moment of Tyler's triumph) and finding love. The survivor was trying to stop the explosions.

shakey movies are about adolescent nihilism wish-fulfillment deal with it

Yeah you better start learning to like it!

Then it's a meaningless statement. There are politics embedded in all imagery, not just falling buildings - so what actually counts is the way the 'politics' are both intended and read.

right, I agree. deeznuts seemed to be taking the tack that there are no politics and its all just a bunch of projection etc.

great revolutionary movies: antonia's line, topsy turvy

lolz I am not 16 anymore and you won't be 16 forever, deeznuts. learn to live with it.

no, my tack is that there are politics but its when people (or directors) start emphasizing these politics that movies go wrong

good one shakey, very original

sorry, Shakey, I guess I was misreading your argument (not paying attention to deeznuts)

Fight Club's climax ("buildings being blow up to the pixies") is certainly meant to be SOME kind of grandiose statement. And the statement isn't entirely apolitical. Fincher seems more concerned with cinematic/emotional impact than with rhetorical/intellectual coherence, but that doesn't mean that the film isn't communicating a message and a point of view.

Fight Club rails hard against the emptiness of modern life, condemns (while coflictedly celebrating) the masculine cult of the asshole self, and ultimately seems to embrace a revolutionary nihilism as the only escape. But I think it's a mistake to take the film too literally. Those concluding scenes speak more personally than politically, and the apocalyptic destruction has more symbolic than literal significance. It's a love story, at heart. The buildings falling down stand in, half jokingly, for the fireworks we might expect to see behind such an embrace.

By destroying Tyler (and the world), our hero is really just destroying that his own emotional defenses, finally accepting himself as he is and in the process, succumbing to "true love". Cheezy, yeah, but I think that's what's really going on. And the touchy/feely core tends to negate whatever narrowly political read we might try to graft onto the film. It has political aspects, but if you read it as a tract, you're missing most of the point.

do you guys politically analyze james bond films to the same degree you do this one? do you guys think fincher was aiming for great cinema or a starting a new oct 1917? i mean wtf xp

I worked on 'The Game', thought it shallow and annoying even when it was still just the script and generally think Fincher is talented when it comes to cinematography but usually films scripts that somehow lack any real 'heft' to them and isn't very deft with his actors.

(not paying attention to deeznuts)

words to live by

contenderizer, that is exactly right, and you stated it better than i was going to manage.

it doesn't take any heavy analysis to see "politics" coming out of a movie, least of all james bond, christ. are you paying attention to what is happening on the screen? do you read a newspaper? that's all it takes, enjoy.

problem is people like you & goole seem to sincerely think the message of the climactic scene of fight club is 'viewers, blow up buildings like terrists did/will' & not 'damn this shit looks awesome when set to 'where is my mind' xp

"do you guys politically analyze james bond films to the same degree you do this one?"

Of course we do. Don't you?

that isn't at all what i've said, hope you've had fun

Eva Green is the EU
James Bond is the resistant Commonwealth...

no, i dont, thank god xp to alex

Bond wasn't the best thing to reach for here, DN.

It's okay I knew that already. Enjoy your life!

cold war vintage spy movies, are there POLITICS in there? lol u guys are paranoid!!

yeah guys there's no politics in James Bond roflz

when the fuck did i say there werent politics in JB movies

goole are you seriously some kind of soviet spy sent here from the past

you are either a moron or running an argumentative shell game to waste my afternoon

Got it, there are politics in JB movies, but deeznuts doesn't think about or want to talk about them!

wait so something's only political if it accomplishes something? this is a very novel definition of "political"

by "novel" I mean "wrong"

keep the lolz coming guys

i hate this thread because it is making me remember my 3 semesters of intro to lit crit back when i was a lol english major

I mean this is what you said:

ok, but realistically, the supposed politics of a movie dont mean jack shit

...unless you're discussing the politics of a movie

"but they won't change anything!" who fucking cares?

like those terrible moments where someone would raise their hands and make the trenchant point that a communist analysis couldn't be right for this text because communism wasn't even INVENTED yet, DO YOU SEE?

if you're a sociopath tho you can just eye the person making that point and know that they're an easy mark

3 semesters??

"but wait, joseph conrad went to africa so theres no way he could possibly be racist!"

Got it, there are politics in JB movies, but deeznuts doesn't think about or want to talk about them!

-- Alex in SF, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 10:26 PM (39 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

wait so something's only political if it accomplishes something? this is a very novel definition of "political"

by "novel" I mean "wrong"

-- J0hn D.

thank you, thank you

this is my point exactly: why the fuck does the 'SERIOUS BUSINESS/(politics)' of it matter if it DOESNT ACTUALLY MEAN SHIT

oh yes Carleton college was v v into the lit crit at that point. i should correct to say 3 trimesters, because we were still on some nutjob olde masters version of what a proper college should do. assholes. xpost

why would you discuss the meaningless politics of a movie guy xp

how could you not watch a movie about young men exiting life, becoming violent, and blowing shit up, and not be reminded of a thing or two out there in real life. seriously this takes no heavy lifting at all.

yes. it strikes me that it would take more effort to maintain a "this has no resonance to real life whatsoever" stance than the reverse!

Why would you discuss the meaninglessness of discussing the meaninglessness of the politics of a movie?

we're through the looking glass here people

alex/goole: where did fight club influence jack shit, other than a few dumbasses on this planet starting fight clubs, & were is your evidence for this

goole et al where is the evidence that fight club influenced mcveigh/osama/atta etc & if it isnt around then wtf are you talking about except some bizzarro hypothetical bullshit that doesnt actually exist

WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT INFLUENCE

or at least i'm not. and since i can read, i don't think anyone else is either.

"Why would you discuss the meaninglessness of discussing the meaninglessness of the politics of a movie?"

if youre not talking about influence than why do you give a fuck about anything other than how exciting the visuals/sounds etc are, or do you not get that thats sorta the idea with fincher at his best

this is my point exactly: why the fuck does the 'SERIOUS BUSINESS/(politics)' of it matter if it DOESNT ACTUALLY MEAN SHIT

no, it's not your point exactly. meaning is not construed by, nor reliant upon, nor really concerned at all with results. it's meaning. it's a separate sphere. I don't know why I'm bothering to explain this to you. yet here I am. "it's not going to accomplish anything" doesn't mean the same thing has "it doesn't mean anything," nor is it an 1) interesting or b) insightful criticism of anything. At all.

or to put it another way, ABORTION TIME.

"if youre not talking about influence than why do you give a fuck about anything other than how exciting the visuals/sounds etc are, or do you not get that thats sorta the idea with fincher at his best"

Mind-boggling stupidity here^^^

yeah & 'meaning', whatever the fuck that ultimately means, in cinema & literature & music, takes a serious backseat to the means of its expression, which is what the debate should be centered about xp

hating on directors/novelists/rock stars/rappers/actors/poets because of their perceived politics is stupid

You have a degree in point-missing, don't you?

state frankly for my retarded ass what your point is, then

deez, what about, say, social realism? are we to ignore the politics of the grapes of wrath? (just curious how far you're willing to take this)

hating on directors/novelists/rock stars/rappers/actors/poets because of their perceived politics is stupid

I tried real hard to spell out just how wrong this is but it blew up the spreadsheet

"he's not going to actually negatively impact the world! so, you can't complain about his odious politics!" wtf facepalm

Why bother? Seriously you haven't shown the faintest ability to comprehend even the simplest sentences posted above (many of which have been dumbed down CONSIDERABLY in the hopes that you would somehow get it).

Posted by others btw. I have contributed nothing of value on this thread.

where is kitten imagebomb

i thought grapes or wrath was boring as fuck & i imagine most people do - as literature its dry, as politics its been done better, fuck the grapes of wrath its a fucking joke

dude j0hn i listen to & love your music, would you appreciate it if people took some kind of political razor to your songs? when you write do you have this in mind in any way whatsoever? im asking sincerely.

"he's not going to actually negatively impact the world! so, you can't complain about his odious politics!" wtf facepalm

-- J0hn D

hahaha wow, u can not be serious here

do u hate like rimbaud, for example?

alex i love you & all but the simplest statements in this thread often seem to be pretty stupid ones to me

I think you're confusing politics with ideology, deeznuts. If by "politics" we mean "commentary on the state of the world," then how the fuck COULDN'T you argue that discussing it is irrelevant?

er, COULD

but arent the "politics" of something part of it's aesthetic effect, even by your standards? light and noise are moved into coherent patterns that take part in the semiotic systems around us....

on the other hand, you could read Poe's "Philosophy of Composition"

xp That sentence broke my brain.

Hah okay COULD makes a lot more sense.

"no one's politics matter unless they're politicians. 'matter' is here defined by having an immediate and measurable impact on history. people should therefore never worry a whit about anything expressed in art, nor even respond to the political implications of an artwork, even an explicitly political one. form is all; content is nil. perhaps many prominent thinkers have disagreed with this assessment, many of them having spent entire careers mulling this very question, but who're you gonna believe: them, or deeznuts?"

xpost I don't like to call ppl stupid but you really aren't getting it - I didn't say anything about liking/disliking an artist, that's not the issue, don't be stupid. one generally doesn't discount an artist owing to his politics exclusively, unless said politics pollute the work so severely as to render it unpleasant (this probably isn't a problem if you hold the "nothing matters" position you're advancing here). that one doesn't do so doesn't take one to the mindbogglingly moronic stage of "well, the politics don't matter," which you really have to be an idiotic reader to take up. "do you hate (name of artist)" is an extremely stupid question in this discussion but I probably shouldn't have expected better.

In my youth I used to be all Oscar Wilde about aesthetic detachment until I realized that the detachment was a pose.

i thought grapes or wrath was boring as fuck & i imagine most people do - as literature its dry, as politics its been done better, fuck the grapes of wrath its a fucking joke

winner of the point-missing contest here

deeznuts theory of criticism: if I like it then it has no politics esp. if it is pretty. If I don't like it then its politics have been done better. Also discussing politics is stupid anyway.

everything 'has politics', but common sense should dictate how much we actually give a shit about these perceived politics

it really depends on the distinctions one wants to draw. it's quite simple to reduce everything, even politics and ethics, to aesthetics. to say that a particular political ideology is "really" just a pose.

one could also, just as easily, do the reverse, and imply that all aesthetic decisions are in fact, at bottom, motivated by whatever political agenda one might have.

This is simple stuff.

no one who wants to avoid being a nihilist or ideologue or absolutist wants to really occupy either of these positions permanently, because they cannot hold water ultimately.

thus we are forced to move back and forth between them, negotiating our way as seems appropriate. like on most of this thread!

^^realness

meaning ... in cinema & literature & music, takes a serious backseat to the means of its expression, which is what the debate should be centered about

On that point: NO. Meaning, philosophy, politics, conceptual content, and the world of ideas do not and should not always take a backseat to art's purely formal content. The insistence that they should be so subordinated seeks to enforce a kind of intellectual myopia, a blindness to what are often art's most interesting aspects. Arguments of the sort DN puts forth usually seem predicated on the assumption that "ordinary people" and even the artists themselves aren't engaged with such concerns, so why be all egghead about it? But I won't grant that assumption, and why should I let other people's limitations define my thoughts and perceptions, anyway?

everything 'has politics', but common sense should dictate how much we actually give a shit about these perceived politics

yes. common sense tells you you should care according to the gravity of the matter under discussion, not the effectiveness of the art in affecting same. (Marxist theory differs, as I understand it.) common sense does not tell you "this won't change anything, so there's no reason to care about its politics."

i thought grapes or wrath was boring as fuck & i imagine most people do - as literature its dry, as politics its been done better, fuck the grapes of wrath its a fucking joke

winner of the point-missing contest here

-- J0hn D.

youre right, the grapes of wrath was intentionally boring & dry as fuck, just like fight club was intentionally funny & fun as fuck xps

in the end, theyre the same thing

Again why would anyone waste a serious sentence on you?

i've deleted three or four halves already...

pearls before swine

common sense does not tell you "this won't change anything, so there's no reason to care about its politics."

Everything contains and can generate interesting ideas about almost any subject, so long as you have enough thinking power to make the connections. Sure, that says more about the human mind than about the nature of the world, but so what? Who's keeping score?

people are, contederizer

ring me when hardt & negri mean jack shit anywhere

deezus christ...

Bejamain Button typeset and PDFed up for anyone who wants to read it before watching the movie:

http://nevermindthatnow.com/index.php?/archives/tag/the+curious+case+of+benjamin+button

deeznuts sees a movie

deeznuts: That was awesome. Especially when the lights flashed and shit. Great stuff.

deeznuts' unfortunate friend: Yeah it looked great, but I thought there were some weird politics to the whole thing. I mean all those goosestepping stormtroopers kind of made me uneasy. Plus Hitler ya know. That guy's not cool.

deeznuts: SHUT UP! It's just a movie. It's not like it matters so just shut the fuck up and enjoy the pretty lights.

Godwin's Law lock thread

*crosses fingers*

hahahaha

so im nazi tool leni riefenstal because i rep for fight club

God you can't even read that right. Jesus you are fucking moron.

Seriously maybe you should like try actually thinking once or twice as your read or watch something. It might be great practice (for something.)

its really not my fault based on yr previous posts here that i didnt know you were talking about the last crusade & not triumph of the will

Haha I WAS talking about Triumph of the Will.

shhhh quiet deeznuts is about to speak

-- some dude, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 5:43 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link

what is up?

http://sundbergassociates.com/newscorp/images/futurama_prof.jpg

tyler has break eggs to make an omelet attitude most of the time, but then takes care to make sure no one is in those buildings

Most of the US radical '60s folks w/ bombs, like the Weathermen, claim they tried to take similar precautions.

I'm amazed you guys have avoided the SEXUAL politics of Fight Club, as "I don't think another woman is what we need" is an oft-quoted line. A chief sociopolitical theme, perhaps moreso than anticorporatism, is probably "masculinity issues," in a Susan Faludi Backlash kinda way. And that the novel was written by a gay man and employs blatantly homoerotic imagery and language (Tyler has a gun in N's mouth for pretty much the whole book; Tyler is naked when N first meets him) complements this.

megalolz at most of this thread, A++++ would laff at again

eh I went into the film's mysogyny/homoeroticism on some other thread. had no idea Palahniuk was gay though.

Marla is much fuller than in the book thx to HBC and the script.

btw Morbz didja know there are no sexual politics its all just a bunch of pretty pictures of half-naked, sweaty guys deal with it

im sad this thread does not contain more talk about zodiac.

why does he bother having gay characters, it's not like they're gonna turn anybody gay

there's a thread for Zodiac - its long and I ramble a bit

oh yeah. i think i was rambling on it too!

had no idea Palahniuk was gay though.

a total queen. My buddy writing his thesis on his work took a picture of him and Palahniuk in feather boas (my buddy's straight).

o_0+2-2=0_o

who could have imagined that an author whose themes often concern themselves with masculinity might be gay?

well I can't say I'm surprised (based on my viewing of FC), but I'm not in the habit of investigating the sexual proclivities of authors I don't read

I've seen him read, he's a pretty rugged queen.

also, his guidebook to Portland OR is nice.

jfc

deeznuts the problem you ran into on this thread is that your argument ultimately leads to less thinking, writing and connection-making about how movies relate to their audience and to the world; as thinkers, writers and connection-makers the people on this thread took it personally!

And I think it's likely that you took people's harshness about FC - and specifically its arguably juvenile take on politics and insurrection - personally.

Anyway I agree with Michael White on this thread. Fincher has this knack for taking an interesting or shocking premise and somehow not quite making it pay off. Panic Room could have been incredible. The Game is just the kind of scam-within-a-scam-within-a-scam movie that I eat up. But they both just sort of sucked. And - this is just a personal dislike - I really can't stand the look of his movies. They ALL look like the "Express Yourself" video except when they're trying really hard not to (like with Zodiac).

dude Zodiac looks amazing

I really don't get the Zodiac love. It looked good, in the way that car commercials look good. Acting was okey. Mildly gripping procedural snooze-thrillz. Nicely ambigious ending. Nothing to hate, but not much to care about one way or the other.

i honestly didnt realize how great it was until my third viewing or so. granted, you have to WANT to see it that many times...

I loved "Panic Room".

His cinematography really is predictable in a way; the logical outcome of a certain slick 80's video/commercial style that carried over to film. Unfortunately, it's pretty much all he does.

fc was pretty influential w/ its 'look'

So was that Paula Abdul video.

"Opposites Attract"?

"The Promise of a New Day"

which, somehow, was my boys Catholic school's graduation theme.

ok waht

hooray $10 copy of Zodiac for me!

ok waht

yes I know, and I was the only closet fag in my class.

haha are you sure about that?

he checked at the reunion.

The Game is coming out as a Criterion release! Do I really need to see it again? bcz this revisionist take seems highly dubious to me:

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/17/the_game_david_finchers_lost_classic/

It's entertaining but it's not that great.

it's central gimmick gets a bit tiresome

It's not so much a Fincher movie as it is a Michael Douglas yuppie-crisis film.

one of my favorites movies ever

ok, I didn't think so

The mike D'Angelo take in the onion inspired me to watch it again recently. It falls apart under the weight of its concept, but it has a lot going for it.

Fincher is one of those technical geniuses,.like Kubrick and Anderson, who sometimes seems to make whole films for the sake of r&d. Like panic room.

Panic Room > The Game

Panic room is beyond solid. Grown up home alone ftw. Dwight yoakam is totally evil.

The mike D'Angelo take in the onion inspired me to watch it again recently. It falls apart under the weight of its concept, but it has a lot going for it.

for real. Zodiac's still the best thing he did but this one has a lot to recommend it, and it doesn't really have the self-seriousness that makes Panic Room (and Seven for that matter) such slogs

Josh, which Anderson do you mean?

Paul Thomas. I like all his movies, but sometimes it feels like he's working something out to get to the next something. "Punch Drunk Love" perhaps being the most glaring case in point.

people on here were always really hard on panic room for some reason. i enjoy it a lot

Zodiac's still the best thing he did

correct answer

never saw panic room, somehow i always lumped it in with that run of BRING ME BACK MY DAUGHTER movies

- even tho obv. her daughter is right there because they are locked in the PANIC ROOM

Panic Room is a tight little thriller, probably the most compact thing Fincher has ever done. Gets about its business quickly, doesn't fart around, good performances, ends when it needs to. And if you don't like Jared Leto, you'll love it.

Interesting that his go-to DP is the son of Blade Runner's DP:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cronenweth

Panic Room is a tight little thriller, probably the most compact thing Fincher has ever done. Gets about its business quickly, doesn't fart around, good performances, ends when it needs to. And if you don't like Jared Leto, you'll love it.

― a shark with a rippling six pack (Phil D.), Wednesday, September 19, 2012 2:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree with this except it's still maybe 15-20 minutes too long. but it's not "self-serious" as described above, the bad guys deliver some laughs and beyond that it's just a good contained thriller.

Fincher's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea remake dead

With two major blockbuster flops in two years (“John Carter,” “The Lone Ranger”), the conventional wisdom follows that Disney is probably not green-lighting any major, untested would-be franchises anytime soon (even the the trio behind “The Pirates of The Caribbean” films, Bruckheimer, Depp and Verbinski proved nothing’s a sure thing). And so eyes immediately turned to David Fincher’s ambitious $200 million-plus, 3D tentpole adaptation of “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.” Given the recent announcement that Fincher would be directing the thriller “Gone Girl” with Ben Affleck this fall, we assumed the Jules Verne project had been scrapped, for the simple reason that Disney is not going to bankroll a potentially risky project.

However, after doing some digging, sources close to the project and the Fincher camp tell us “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” has been dead, at least from the Fincher side of things, for months. That report in April about the film receiving its funding down under was apparently a desperate bid by the Aussie government to entice the filmmakers and producers into continuing with this project that would bring millions of dollars in jobs to their movie industry. But as “Gone Girl” suggests, Fincher has moved on and had done so months ago. Not that he didn’t try to make 'Leagues' happen

Girl Gone cast...Affleck, Tyler Perry, Neil Patrick Harris, and the blonde model from the Blurred Lines video:

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt2267998/fullcredits/cast

Quite a ways out, but creating an HBO series:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/13/5408012/hbo-lands-david-fincher-and-gillian-flynns-utopia-series

cool. been wondering why this hasn't run in the US anywhere yet.

i love this skot story at the top of the thread

um, alien 3 made him hated by everyone in the world. except me, actually. i didn't mind it. i liked the sound of it. in fact i went back to the theatre and taped the movie with my tape recorder and then played it for weeks on my walkman when i walked to my midnight shift at the supermarket in new milford, connecticut. then i contemplated suicide. seven was gross and rainy, but okay for a laff.

partly cuz i read the last sentence as a sinatraesque summary of being seven and imagined skot as a jaded 7-year-old slaving at the new milford supermarket listening to alien 3

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

supposedly that was the case with versions of the script that circulated in the 90s, although who knows if its changed over the years

A screen card informs viewers that “Herman Mankiewicz died in 1953. Today Citizen Kane is widely regarded as the best movie ever made. Virtually everyone thinks that Orson Welles wrote it.”

They both got an Oscar for writing it. I don’t know why this is such a bone of contention for some people. Ridiculous. Welles revised the hell out of it, and completely deserves co-authorship credit of the script

and now Fincher's dad will get an Oscar for writing this. symmetry!

This is an amazing time to be a Welles fan, given how we now have The Other Side of the Wind, Too Much Johnson, Welles/Hopper,
a fresh Quixote restoration attempt, beautiful Blu-Rays of his films. But in spite of all of this newfound reevaluation and wealth of fresh insights into his creative gifts, we're being getting "Pauline Kael's Raising Kane: The Motion Picture".

I just want it to be good tbh, it's not like Welles ever let the facts get in the way of a good yarn

supposedly that was the case with versions of the script that circulated in the 90s, although who knows if its changed over the years

― turn the jawhatthefuckever on (One Eye Open), Thursday, October 8, 2020 10:25 AM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

well finche's dad has been dead since the early 00s so unless finches has substantially revised the plot of his dead dad's script...

my autocorrect does not like the name fincher

he's a notorious control freak so anything's possible

full disclosure i've never thought highly of fincher and would not be totally surprised if he'd fallen for the 'raising kane' line. its one of those bogus things like the shakespeare authorship debate where it makes some people feel smart to feel like they're challenging the conventional wisdom, 'everything you know is wrong', etc.

my current Finchy rankings

god tier:

Zodiac
Gone Girl
Social Network
(Mindhunter)

solid-to-OK tier:

Panic Room
Fight Club
Seven
Benjamin Button
Alien 3
The Game

fuck off:

Dragon Tattoo
(House of Cards)

full disclosure i've never thought highly of fincher and would not be totally surprised if he'd fallen for the 'raising kane' line. its one of those bogus things like the shakespeare authorship debate where it makes some people feel smart to feel like they're challenging the conventional wisdom, 'everything you know is wrong', etc.

also to a frustrated screenwriter like Fincher's dad...

guys no one has seen the movie yet

I was afraid Ben Mankiewicz would get into this crap with Peter Bogdanovich on the TCM podcast, but he largely avoided it (and instead took us to other stupid segues and avoiding half of Bogdanovich’s oeuvre)

But so much of the fun in filmgoing nowadays is speculation!

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

I remember panic room being a lot of fun

it’s so fun

I found the cast unattractive but it's been so long.

Gone Girl and Zodiac are basically tied for me lol

the social network is very good

i probably need to see gone girl again but i had read the book before i saw the movie and didn't really feel like the movie added much that wasn't already in the book. i remember it being a fine adaptation but not a special movie beyond that. i'd be curious to hear more from fans of the movie about what it is that appeals to them about it as a movie. this is not a challenge, again i haven't seen the movie since it first came out.

I found it obvious and cloddish. No surprises except when Tyler Perry was onscreen. I wish Verhoeven had directed.

i read the book first too! i thought the movie basically removed everything i found annoying about the book

i'm not sure how to counter "obvious and cloddish" but i found it visually awesome and appropriately creepy and cold

also idk the book has a binary structure right? and fincher had to make that more like an unfolding narrative and i think he did a great job of threading everything together

Not having to read Gillian Flynn’s sentences makes the film an immediate improvement

lol essentially yes

the only thing I'd want excised is the Scott McNairy character/scene

also, v good Fincher commentary track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIJXB1jfB2o

Maybe the novel (I've only read Sharp Objects) offered interior monologues or a narrator who made Pike's character less...transparent? She practically twirled a mustche. idk this played like a movie whose developments were obvious and took a long time time getting to the denouement.

idk maybe knowing the twist inoculated me against noticing any mustache-twirling, pike seemed to nail the "presents a cool surface beneath which roil the thoughts of a high-key sociopath" 2 me

the book alternates the two main characters as (unreliable) narrators iirc

That's helpful. Maybe Fincher, trying to compensate, emphasized Pike's villainy as a way of reflecting the explicitness of the text.

well this was a crock of absolute shit

Be crueler.

Wouldn't go that far but this was too unfocused. Script needed a lot of work. I like pretty much everything Fincher's done but couldn't get into this one

Gary Oldman's vocal tics started to grate on me too

the performance grated for me. my main issue was that I was constantly thinking "why am I watching this?" throughout the film, which is always a bad sign. I am favourably inclined towards fincher, and the film looks fine, but I think the script just sinks this thing.

Bill Nye as Upton Sinclair was a nice surprise. Would watch that biopic.

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 noticed this too! It was fairly disorienting thru my terrible tv speakers.

_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 noticed this too! It was fairly disorienting thru my terrible tv speakers.

well this was a crock of absolute shit

Was that not fairly obvious for most people?

I would imagine so. Mostly just reminded me how much better it would've been at a theater.

my main issue was that I was constantly thinking "why am I watching this?" throughout the film

yeah, I kinda enjoyed it while watching but have thought of it 0 times since

very confused at the casting of 62-year-old gary oldman to play someone who was in their 30s and early 40s during the majority of the story, especially when you also have to make him look like shit.

beyond that, what everyone else said--it's a bad script.

have you seen photos of the real mank

he looked like he was 80 when he was 30
oldman was a good choice!

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5faeed169475b2442b5d2950/master/pass/Brody-Mank1a.jpg

if anything oldman looks too young lol

i feel like if this movie were internally consistent mank would have written his hitpiece script about louis b mayer

a bad pun ignored develops into a long, slurring ad hom attack, digging up stuff from the past. Mank is an ilxor.

Anyway, guess who finally saw a certain film thirty years after the fact. I had thoughts:

https://www.tumblr.com/nedraggett/774520708122427392/se7en-se7en-is

welcome to the club
i assume you are now familiar w the works of “Marquis de Sha-day” :D

I absolutely loved that part. A joke that will always work!

To give a sense of how time warps things, when Somerset is all confidently saying that the first note is a Milton quote I was all "Sure, he just Googled that...uh wait."

i was SO obsessed with the list of books … and with the idea that the FBI flags books

I caught it with a friend at the Alamo yesterday. Darius Khondji was really on one.

I already knew about the twist when I first saw it, and my experience was of extreme dread (which is saying something for a film already full of it).

I saw it completely cold on release and it blew my mind. I think I forgot to blink for the first thirty minutes.