Mank Trailer: Fincher Is Back With A Tumultuous Ode To Classic Hollywood

Netflix has revealed the full-length trailer and incredible poster for David Fincher’s new film Mank, arriving in theaters and on Netflix later this fall. The 1930s Hollywood era re-evaluated through the eyes of scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane for Orson Welles.

Starring Gary Oldman as Herman J. Mankiewicz, with a stellar cast including Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies, Lily Collins as Rita Alexander, Arliss Howard as Louis B. Mayer, Tom Pelphrey, Sam Troughton, Ferdinand Kingsley, Tuppence Middleton, Joseph Cross, Jamie McShane, Toby Leonard Moore, Monika Grossman, Charles Dance, and Tom Burke as Orson Welles. The film looks absolutely beautiful with luminous black and white cinematography, golden age Hollywood production design, and Fincher’s trademark control of all the moving parts.

Check out the full trailer for Mank below:

The Goon Lives! Tim Miller’s Adaptation Appears to be Back on Track

Back before Tim Miller was directing his record-breaking smash hit Deadpool, he was one of the guiding forces behind developing the animated adaptation of Eric Powell’s comic series The Goon.

David Fincher signed on to produce the film in 2008 , working off a script from Powell himself, and recruited Miller to co-direct the project along with Jeff Fowler. The effort eventually culminated with a trailer length release of some test footage in 2012, not unlike the video that gained a large enough viral following to get Deadpool off the ground. However, unlike what happened with Deadpool, that was the last anyone heard about the project.

David Fincher, Stanley Kubrick, and Alan Smithee: Directors Disowning Films

Ever watch a movie and see the name Alan Smithee pop-up as the director, or maybe the writer in the credits? Wonder how this one person could possibly write and/or direct so many varied films, and they all…well, happen to not be very good? You may find my questions coy as most of you already know that Alan Smithee is an alias usually regulated to a filmmaker who wishes to have their name removed from a project. This name-change is usually the result of a long, strenuous battle between filmmaker and studio, or when cuts and edits are made to a director’s film against their wishes. Whatever the case, here at Grizzly Bomb it got our gears moving on a new list, this one focusing on the many films in which a director disowned their own film, sometimes using the Smithee alias, storming off set, or staying silent about the film altogether. Some even had the clout (either at the time or later on) to lock the film up away from the public altogether.

Steven Soderbergh Recut Raiders Of The Lost Ark As A Silent Movie

To show the importance of staging in filmmaking, director Steven Soderbergh reworks Steven Spielberg’s classic adventure Raiders of the Lost Ark into a moodily, affective black and white silent film. The film is essentially stripped of many surface elements to highlight the deeper ones (at least for Soderbergh). No more color or witty banter from Harrison Ford, and we lose John Williams iconic score. Soderbergh replaces all of the soundtrack with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score from The Social Network, not to draw comparisons between the two films but rather to provide audible accents to the staging.

Gone Girl: Fincher’s Dark Take on Domestic Bliss

David Fincher can do anything he wants in my opinion. If he wants to do Star Wars, let him do Star Wars. If he wants to tackle a full season of HBO television like True Detective, by all means do it. Fincher has this beautiful, yet blunt ability to dig deeper into a story and draw out every wonderful or excruciating detail and throw a spotlight on it. Okay, maybe more excruciating than anything, but his ability to present several angles fleshes out all this stories and makes them memorable at the very least. Gone Girl is no exception. This movie resonated with me for hours after I left the theater. This dark portrait on a marriage, first impressions and snap judgements in a media dominated society enthralled me for the two hours plus in the theater. While it may not ever hit that final gear in gripping the audience, you will walk out of the theater eager to discuss with your fellow moviegoers.

Is Netflix’s ‘House of Cards’ a Game-Changer?

There was a time when people sat around and listened to shows on the radio. There was a time when silent films became “talkies”. There was a time when cable came around and all of a sudden you had hundreds of channels at your disposal. There was a time when The Sopranos premiered on HBO and changed the way premium cable was regarded. Netflix is hoping that someday the statement “there was a time where people didn’t watch ‘television’ shows on the internet” will find it’s way onto that list.  The upcoming Arrested Development may be getting all the news, and Lilyhammer may have been the first, but House of Cards is no shrinking violet by any means.