All the ingredients are present in David Fincher’s Mank. It’s an extremely well-crafted film, with beautiful acting performances, directed by one of the best directors working today in an almost orgasmic retro style that will have film nerds pointing at the screen just like that Leonardo DiCaprio meme. Yet (no movie review starts like that without a “yet” or a “however”), the movie still feels distant. It’s a movie I desperately want to love, yet no matter how hard I try, in the end I just wind up admiring it instead. Even now, as I have the movie in my head, attempting to write about it, I love so many aspects of it that it’s really puzzling why I don’t feel as fond toward the sum of its parts.
Mank is the movie David Fincher’s been wanting to make for decades. Originally written by his father, Jack Fincher (who died in 2003), it seems to both serve as David Fincher’s love letter to his father and Jack Fincher’s love letter to screenwriters. And obviously, most notably, Herman Mankiewicz (aka “Mank”). Oh Mank (Gary Oldman, who does seem a bit too old for the role, but, whatever, he’s great), what a scamp! Always getting into some sort of trouble or adventure. And, see, that a thing you should probably know about Mank, it’s much less about Mank attempting to get credit for co-writing Citizen Kane (it’s for sure a part of the film, but not near as much as advertised) and more about Mank just being a drunk guy, wandering from scene to scene, expressing his boisterous opinions. In all honestly, I now know more about Mank’s opinions of the 1934 California gubernatorial election than I do his opinions on Orson Welles.
Look, let’s not beat around the bush: this is a gorgeous movie, especially for film nerds. (Have you ever written a clichéd phrase and thought, “Wait, what does that even mean?” I just looked up where “beat around the bush” came from and apparently its origins were from hunters beating bushes so birds would fly out. Anyway.) And I’d recommend watching (rewatching) Citizen Kane before you watch Mank because a lot of the same filmmaking techniques are at work here and it’s a fun thing to compare. Well, at least at first. Because there’s only so long into a movie a person can continue to go, “Wow, another fadeout?” Or, “Oh, look, another cigarette burn!” (It’s almost as if David Fincher taught the moviegoing public what cigarette burns were in Fight Club so that they’d be appreciated in Mank. Also, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score, as usual, is dynamite. (Fun fact: Trent Reznor also wrote the score for Citizen Kane.)
So, look, I’m not about to wade into the whole “who wrote Citizen Kane” debate, but Mank does take the road that Mank had much more to do with it than Welles. After a serious car accident that leaves Mank in a leg cast, Welles (Tom Burke) hires Mank to write him a new movie and Mank uses this opportunity to settle a grievance with William Randolph Hurst (Charles Dance). The rest of the film is told in flashbacks (hey, just like Citizen Kane) and, boy, we get a lot of these flashes back to Mank’s adventures in Hollywood. He’s kind of the Forrest Gump of ’30s and ‘40s, having a hand in a whole host of situations. The film also explores Mank’s relationship with Marion Davies (played with heavenly gusto by Amanda Seyfried), and her alleged inspiration for the character of Susan Alexander Kane.
We get to hear a lot of Mank’s opinions, often delivered with a bit of an enraged drunken slur. And there’s no doubt he’s an interesting fellow, but, again, I felt a distance from Mank’s day to day adventures. After a while, he starts to feel like the office blowhard – in a, “Look, I kind of agree with this guy, but maybe give it a rest,” kind of way. When I felt the most engaged was when the film directly acknowledges Citizen Kane. The film feels electric anytime Mank and Welles are on screen together (which, again, isn’t much). Which all leads to a climatic confrontation between the two that is … well, short and underwhelming. (So, spoiler alert, I guess? If you’ve seen Citizen Kane, you already know if Mank got his credit or not.) The film builds us up for this final argument between Mank and Welles and it pretty much amounts to Mank saying, “Hey, I want credit.” And Welles responding, “Well, Mank, you’ll get your credit … but I’m going to be mad about it.”
Again, all the ingredients are here. First, it’s Fincher, a director I admire greatly. But it’s a different Fincher at work here. With Fincher, we kind of expect a sense of urgency in every scene. Mank is a bit more lackadaisical in its storytelling, taking a more Benjamin Button approach, only without the whole aging backwards thing to move the story along. And the acting and cinematography and score are all fantastic. But the story on its whole is hard to embrace. It’s an admirable effort. It’s just a beautiful thing to look at. And the whole endeavor is such a touching tribute from Fincher to his father. But, in the end, I found myself more interested in the behind the scenes shenanigans that led to the creation of, perhaps, the greatest movie of all time, as opposed to Mank the human being. And Mank focuses much more on the latter.
Ariana Grande has released a new album in each of the past three years, with her latest, Positions, arriving last week. It it still very much a new album, but some fans are already wondering when Grande’s next one will arrive. There is a rumor floating around that Grande’s next one will be arriving soon, a rumor that Grande has succinctly shot down.
A fan Twitter account claimed, “Positions was just for the fans , Expect a heavy commercial album for AG7 early 2021**.” Grande kept her response short, sweet, and without room for interpretation, tweeting, “no.”
.@ArianaGrande responds to a stan leak account claiming #AG7 is coming early 2021:
That said, it wouldn’t be unprecedented to see a new Grande album at some point in 2021, given her recent history. Positions dropped over a year-and-a-half after Thank U, Next, while Thank U, Next was a quick follow-up to Sweetener, arriving about half a year after the 2018 album. So, if the wait for Grande’s next album is somewhere in that range, then it would drop at some point between mid-2021 and mid-2022.
Mike Will Made-It and Nicki Minaj rarely miss and once again, they’ve reunited for “What That Speed Bout?!” the electric lead single to the Atlanta producer’s next album. Mike WIll released the track alongside the announcement of his new label deal with Atlantic Records and upcoming album Michael, due in 2021. The track features a typically high-energy beat with rapid-fire verses from Nicki Minaj and guest rapper Youngboy Never Broke Again. In the accompanying sci-fi video, the trio takes over a futuristic factory manufacturing androids with machines that 3D print Nicki’s head.
Mike Will Made-It’s last collab with Nicki was 2019’s “Runnin’” from the Creed II soundtrack, which also featured ASAP Mob members Ferg and Rocky. Mike also released the single “Kill ‘Em With Success” from that project, featuring Schoolboy Q, 2 Chainz, and Eearz. More recently, Mike’s been working with Swae Lee on the Tupelo rap-crooner’s next solo album, fielding over 733 demos from the high energy Rae Sremmurd member.
Being on Jeopardy! was a dream come true for Burt Thakur. After being crowned the champion of Thursday’s episode, and earning $20,400 in the process, the contestant told host Alex Trebek, “I learned English because of you. And so my grandfather, who raised me, I’m gonna get tears right now… I used to sit on his lap and watch you every day. So, it’s a pretty special moment for me, man.” Then came the tears.
Trebek has been hosting Jeopardy! since the 1980s. Maybe conversing with contestants was fun for him then (probably not). But now, after decades of boring human-interest stories about librarians going ice skating in their free time or whatever, Trebek is usually either dunking on folks or sharing Krusty the Clown’s thoughts on talking to the audience (“Oh god, this is always death”). But he looked genuinely touched by Thakur’s story.
“As you heard a little bit, I’m an immigrant and I learned English by watching Jeopardy!, and my oldest memories are with my grandfather watching the show,” he said on the post-show recap. “So, to have it come full circle the way it did, especially during this time of pandemic and everything, to have this opportunity and this gift is, I mean, it’s so emotional and incredible.” You can watch the clip below.
The second season premiere of The Mandalorian dropped a bombshell in the final moments of the episode as Boba Fett was revealed to be alive and fully aware that Pedro Pascal’s Mando is now carting around his iconic armor. While this reveal could have exciting implications for the rest of The Mandalorian‘s second season, the revival of the classic Star Wars bounty hunter may go even further than that. According to Deadline, a Boba Fett spinoff is reportedly in the works, and it could shoot as early as next week. Unlike The Mandalorian, the project will only be a miniseries, but it tracks with Disney’s stated intention to use the second season of its hit bounty hunting series to launch more content for its burgeoning streaming service. However, details are murky, and confusion around a recent casting for The Mandalorian season isn’t helping, but it does seem to suggest that Disney+ has something in the mix. Via Deadline:
Sophie Thatcher (When the Street Lights Go On, Chicago Med) is being rumored to be joining The Mandalorian franchise. Nobody is commenting, and there is conflicting information whether she will be part of The Mandalorian‘s upcoming third season or an offshoot series (or both).
While Deadline doesn’t have solid confirmation on the Boba Fett spinoff, it did shoot down recent online rumors about a spinoff series centered on a team-up between Gina Carano‘s Kara Dune and Katee Sackhoff‘s The Clone Wars character Bo-Katan Kryze, who will reportedly appear in the second season of The Mandalorian. “Such a project does not appear to be real, at least for now,” the report said.
At the start of 2020, James Blake kicked off what has turned into a regular flow of cover songs with a rendition of Frank Ocean’s “Godspeed,” a song on which he is credited as a producer and arranger. He wrote at the time, “New decades resolution was to spend more time at my instrument than at a laptop. So here’s a cover I play of a song I helped write – Godspeed by Frank Ocean. I think I messed up a lyric near the beginning but hey, none of these are gonna be perfect.” Now he has brought the journey full-circle with his visit to The Tonight Show yesterday, when he again performed the song.
His original performance of the song was a simple home recording, but he upped the production value for his new Jimmy Fallon rendition. This time, he took to a piano in a lush, naturally lit outdoor space.
Aside from all the covers, Blake is fresh off the release of an unexpected new EP, Before, which he announced in October and released the next day. Ty Dolla Sign also recently revealed that he and Blake have an unreleased project.
Watch Blake perform “Godspeed” on Fallon above.
Ty Dolla Sign is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Offset is jumping from TV to film according to Deadline, which reports he’ll be making his movie debut in American Sole alongside Pete Davidson and O’Shea Jackson Jr. The film revolves around a get-rich-quick scheme gone wrong, as Davidson and Jackson’s characters use money from reselling sneakers to fund an app. Offset will play the computer engineer who is “critical to the storyline.” He’s also curating the soundtrack alongside the film’s director Ian Edelman and STX Music executive Jason Markey, contributing “at least one original song.”
“This is my first feature film as an actor,” Offset said in a press release. “After doing NCIS, I knew I wanted to do more acting. Landing this role in American Sole is dope. Not only do I get to star in the movie, but I get to bring my skills to the table as the curator and executive producer for the soundtrack. I’m bringing my world to the big screen. I hope the world is ready.” As he notes above, he first dipped his toe into acting with a role on NCIS earlier this year.
2020 has been full of firsts for Offset. He detailed his firsthand experience with voter suppression in a PSA ahead of voting in a national election for the first time ever, as well as surprising Atlanta residents with meals as they waited in line to vote.
Whether or not you’ve realize it, there’s a good chance you’ve heard Jim-E Stack before.
He’s not a household name (yet), but he’s worked with a bunch of them: Diplo, Charli XCX, Haim, and Joji, to name a few. Those collaborations and others have led to Ephemera, the producer’s new album that he tells Uproxx mostly originated from sessions for other artists. When those tracks weren’t quite right for one reason or another, he re-worked them for his own purposes and emerged with a brilliant collection that’s packed with guests: Ephemera has features from Bon Iver, Empress Of, Octavian, Kacy Hill, and others.
Before Stack’s contacts list was so fleshed out, he got his musical start on the drums as a San Francisco pre-teen. After joining his high school’s jazz band, surrounded by fellow music enthusiasts, his tastes expanded until he got into hip-hop production, making beats on a friend’s computer after school. After getting a better feel for Ableton, Stack started to lean more towards dance music and progressed to his current ability level. Between then and now, Stack has spent time in New Orleans, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles, released some solo material (like his 2014 album Tell Me I Belong), and built his reputation and list of credits to the point where he’s been a sought-after collaborator for the past few years.
Now, Stack could name-drop better than most people in music, but he’s not about that. While his music isn’t shy or reserved, it comes from a place of understanding that he’s there to help, saying, “When I’m working on a song for an artist and their project, the only kind of mindset I’m in is, ‘Am I supporting this person’s vision and helping them realize it?’”
This time, though, it’s about him, and he’s more than capable of realizing visions of his own. We got on the phone with Stack ahead of the project’s release and chatted about how writing for himself is different than writing for others, finding different sources of inspiration during the pandemic, and his thoughts on NBA rappers.
In recent years, you’ve worked with a lot of other artists on their songs, but you do the opposite on this new album where you have them join you on your tracks. Do you have a different mindset when you’re working on a song that has your name on it as opposed to one with somebody else’?
It is, but that mindset doesn’t really set in until a bit later in the process. With a lot of these songs — not all of them, but I would say half of them — they actually came out of working on stuff for that artist. So, the Bon Iver one, for example, that was just one of 20 songs we made in August of 2017, working on stuff for him. ‘Jamie’ was just one that didn’t really make sense for his album but that we always really loved, and I especially loved, so I just kind of kept fucking with it. It got to a point where it felt more like a Jim-E Stack song and production than it did just a Bon Iver song.
When I’m working on my own music, it’s completely self-indulgent and I’m just making stuff I want to listen to. Whether I’m just listening to it off of my phone or it’s out on Apple Music and Spotify for everyone to hear, it’s just for me. When I’m working on a song for an artist and their project, the only kind of mindset I’m in is, “Am I supporting this person’s vision and helping them realize it?” I’m just there in a supportive role, kind of like the opposite of a self-indulgent role.
As you said, most of these songs originated in various environments, so is there a sort of overarching theme or aesthetic to them or do they all feel more like their own thing to you?
Generally speaking on the album, I would say it feels just a little more uplifting and emotive. It just feels like more kind of positive music. Everything is… not everything, but most everything is in a major key. And I think that wasn’t a conscious decision while I’m making the music nor was it necessarily a conscious decision in selecting the songs for an album. But I think all these songs, all these little ideas that had been laying around, I think they all resonated with me because they had a kind of more uplifting tone to them.
I think that’s just kind of reflective of the past two or three years of my life, which is when they all came from, which has just been one of just getting a little older and just growing into myself a little more and just kind of experiencing a little more kind of gratitude for the life and everything I have, rather than a yearning for what I don’t have.
Speaking of how you’ve been feeling, I was reading an interview that you did recently and you said that during the pandemic, you’ve been feeling kind of up and down creatively. What sort of impact has this whole thing had on you getting this album done and making music in general?
There’s the issue of just not being able to collaborate with people as freely. I think it’s definitely been something I’ve had to find my way to work around, because it’s not like people don’t want to work together now, but it’s not as free-flowing and it’s a bit more hesitant. A lot of my music is born out of like pretty informal circumstances, not super planned out, like, ‘I’m going to meet this person and we’re going to work at this studio on this.’ It just naturally is a bit harder with social distancing concerns.
In the last couple of months, I’m good. My mood went a little more stable, but the toughest thing for me is… I don’t have many like recent life experiences to draw upon for inspiration, you know? It’s not like everything I do is a literal translation of how I was feeling on this day on this day. It’s more stuff like, there was some kind of mood in the bar. I was out with friends last weekend and then in the Uber home, I heard this song, and those are the kinds of feelings that I would put into a song.
I don’t know what that is now. Like, “Oh, wow: I had a great walk and watched a documentary,” you know what I mean? You’d like to just do something that feels like it’s like reflective of a life lived or something when you’re not really living life. You’re just kind of like getting through each day, but I guess I’ve just gotten a bit more used to it. I don’t know, it’s not easy.
I was going to ask how you’d handle working on a full album with an artist like Aaron Dessner did with Taylor Swift, but then I realized that you basically did that with Kacy Hill on her album, as you co-wrote and/or co-produced most of those tracks. How does being a full partner like that compare to working on a track or two for an artist or a project?
That’s the only album where I’ve done that, and I think you just develop a certain kind of relationship to the music. As a whole, I think there’s something really fun about that. You’re just invested in it as a whole. I worked on all of that with my really good friend BJ Burton, who is amazing in his own right.
The really cool thing about that and working on that as a group was being able to give input on stuff or help shape stuff, even when it’s not the track you’re producing. The group effort thing is cool to me, being able to contribute to a song without having to like take ownership of producing a song like that. The environment is like a fun one. It’s not like super task-oriented and that’s often the way that like producing one song for someone can be.
We worked on a lot of that in Minneapolis, and it was just waking up at our hotel, going to BJ’s studio and just basically fucking around and making music and working on this until we got bored with it, then pivoting to another song and then grilling burgers and hot dogs in the backyard and then, you know, whatever. It’s just very free. The group effort is just a really fun thing to be a part of. I think it’s something very special that cannot in any capacity be replicated when you’re doing just one song for someone.
What sounds like it may have been a dissimilar process to that was the work you did on Charlie XCX’s quarantine album [How I’m Feeling Now]. She went about that process in a pretty transparent, fast, and real-time sort of way that was pretty much unheard of before. What was it like to work on something that way? Do you have any takeaways from that experience that could inform how you work going forward?
Coincidentally, BJ was working on the project stuff with Charlie, and he was the one who was just kind of like pulling stuff together as a whole. Everything being done in this super remote fashion, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think like for me personally, you’re just like a little more detached, you know? That’s not something I would ever opt for. I like being in the same space and hanging out. That to me is what’s really amazing about making music together and collaborating. So not having that be able to be a part of working on her stuff was definitely a little different for me. But by no means do I think her work suffered as a result of that, because she’s just so good. She has such a strong vision for what she wants to do.
You got your start in production by making hip-hop beats in high school. You’ve mostly worked with singers, but over the past a year or so, you’ve had tracks that people like Octavian and Joji and Dominic Fike. Do you have any interest to get more into working with rappers and making hip-hop?
I do, but I think like at the same time, I know my strengths and weaknesses with that. There isn’t a part of me that wants to specialize in programming, like making the best, most banging, bounciest drums like Murda Beatz or someone like that. I’m not trying to get into hip-hop trying to emulate what some of these incredible producers already do. I think I am very much interested in doing more rap and hip-hop stuff, but it needs to be right. Like, if Drake or someone likes what I do, but wants a super hip-hop beat out of me, there’s no way it’s going to be as good as Murda Beatz or whatever.
I’d have to cross paths with the artist where they want to do something that’s outside of that box, or else it’s like, “You don’t need to come to me. There’s a million other producers who are better than me at like making more straightforward rap stuff.” I’d be better like working on something like Tyler The Creator’s Igor that [Travis Scott’s] Astroworld, you know?
I saw a video of you recently opening up some packs of basketball cards. Of all the NBA players who rap, who is your favorite and/or which one would you most like to work with?
Probably Damian Lillard, because he’s from the Bay Area and he’s just fucking sick. He’s one of my favorite players.
BelovedToday co-host and weather anchor Al Roker is battling prostate cancer, and he discussed his prognosis on Friday morning’s edition of the NBC morning show. As seen in the above clip, Roker announced that he’ll be taking some time away from work to treat the cancer, and the 66-year-old icon is wasting no time, given that he’s scheduled next week for surgery to remove his prostate. As far as his health outlook is concerned, Roker didn’t hold back on the positive or negative front.
“It’s a good news-bad news kind of thing,” Roker explained. “Good news is we caught it early. Not great news is that it’s a little aggressive, so I’m going to be taking some time off to take care of this.” He does remain optimistic that “hopefully in about two weeks,” he might be able to return to America’s TV screens. Roker also pushed back at the notion of anyone feeling sorry for him and definitely doesn’t “want people thinking, ‘Oh, poor Al’ because I’m gonna be OK.”
While breaking the news of his own diagnosis, however, Roker wished to shine light on how Black men are at increased risk for prostate cancer, given that 1 in 7 Black men will receive a similar diagnosis to his news. “The problem for African American men is that any number of reasons from genetics to access to health care,” he declared. “So we want to make it available and let people know they got to get checked.”
All well wishes are going out to Al Roker for a full recovery, along with a speedy return to our living rooms.
With Wilco’s Summerteeth reissue coming later this month to (belatedly) celebrate its twentieth anniversary, Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen are looking back to 1999. While it might not have necessarily been a more innocent time, it was certainly a simpler time where teen pop and nu-metal ruled the radio waves and alternative rock was starting to become plain old indie rock.
In the new episode of Indiecast Hyden and Cohen revisited their five favorite albums from the era to determine what still holds up today. While Hyden’s top five albums walks that line between alt-rock and indie rock with albums like Summerteeth and Nine Inch Nails’ The Fragile, Cohen was more focused on the emo rock scene, remembering albums from Jimmy Eat World and American Football.
New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 15 below and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts here. Stay up to date and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.
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