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Showing posts with the label Bing Crosby

MANK, ORSON and ROSEBUD

I saw two films this weekend:                      ROTTEN TOMATOES                                               Reviewers  Audiences  My Grade Mank                   88               72               B Citizen Kane      100               91              B- Mank , premiered on Netflix Friday, while CK was released just around the time Pearl Harbor was attacked today, 79 years ago.  The two films are similar in various ways.  First, one led to the other.  Second, both are in black and white.  Third, it is entirely possible that, like Orson Welles gaining an Academy nomination for Best Actor, so will Gary Oldman.  It was three years ago that he transformed into Winston Churchill in the Darkest Hou r , and won the Oscar.  Among his past portrayals include Beethoven, Dracula and Lee Harvey Oswald. Mank was as much the life of Herman Mankiewicz as the writing of Citizen Kane .  He got his start in Hollywood in the 1920's after an earlier life with newspapers.  Known to be a functi