Mank, Tokyo Girl, and the lifeline that is production photos
A film and a show about fears of being washed up, plus culture notes about the desperation for content
Hello!
On this week’s episode of Criticism Is Dead, we discuss Mank (2020), a film set in 1930s-40s Hollywood, and Tokyo Girl (2016), a series set in modern-day Tokyo.
But first! A request: We’re doing a holiday special episode, and we want your recs for holiday movies (the good, the bad, the cheesy). Reply/email/tweet/DM us!
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2:00 Mank, streaming on Netflix, is David Fincher’s latest movie, made by and for auteurs and film nerds.
(Depending on who you ask, this may be good or bad. But one thing's undeniable: the radiant Amanda Seyfried!)
Film critics are circle jerking because of this movie, which works best if you have a working knowledge of multiple contexts: the classic Citizen Kane, the controversy regarding its screenwriting credits, and the other controversy surrounding that controversy in the 1960s/70s, when there was critic-on-critic beef about the idea of “auteurship.”
If you are a know-nothing rube like me, a lot of this flies over the head, and the film can come across as an impenetrable wall. To me, it felt like being locked in a classroom with homework.
But it was undeniably beautiful, shot in black-and-white and with this incredible sense of California light, producing creamy whites, inky blacks, and a veritable rainbow of grays in between.
Pelin liked this film because of, among other things, the way its themes resonate with issues still going on today: turning points in movie making, magazine writers fleeing to Hollywood, the perceived threat of Upton Sinclair’s “socialism,” the business of money over morals. She recommends a second watch to help make sense of everything going on.
13:31 Tokyo Girl, an older Japanese show available on Amazon Prime Video, is a series of snapshots from the life of a woman trying to have it all in the big city. Aren't we all!
Maybe it’s a little off to randomly talk about a 4-year-old Japanese show, but this one is excellent, and we think it deserves some more love in English-speaking media.
It’s a tale as old as time: young woman moves to the big city after graduating, hoping to find love, a career, and the life of her dreams. But this is a refreshing take on narrative, hitting just the right balance between lighthearted, bittersweetly realistic, and ultimately satisfying. It’s our favorite kind of “coming of age” story, in that (throwback to our Shithouse episode) coming of age never really ends. Priorities and ideals are ever changing, always.
As much as the series is about the main character Aya (played with excellence by Asami Mizukawa), it’s also about Tokyo and how the city is as much a real, breathing presence in the lives of the people who live there. Each episode is named after the neighborhood in which Aya is living at the time, showing how these geographic delineations can say as much about a person’s stages of life as their age.
24:46 Plus, cultures notes about how fans are going batshit seeing sneak peeks from shows and films currently in production.
Fans are eager for a glimpse of their darlings in these weird times, to the point where Don’t Worry, Darling is running into some filming trouble because Harry Styles stans keep crowding the set in a pandemic.
Okay, so that’s a bit extreme (and inadvisable), but we kinda get the impulse: this year has been, among other things, a dry spell of new content, and it seems that people are going ga-ga-er than usual over sneak peeks of upcoming shows and films: Gossip Girl, DWD, Succession, etc.
It’s about the content and the sense of normalcy, etc. etc. whatever just — Succession!!!!!
Bonus links
Matthew McConaughey retire bitch!
Mario Lopez is honestly going to make for an amazing Colonel Sanders (which is to say: still bad).
The year in quarantine content.
Okay bye!
— Jenny
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Some credits:
Music: REEKAH
Artwork and design: Sara Macias and Andrew Liu
Special thanks: Dan Geneen