Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor, 2020

The Contenders:

Anthony Hopkins: The Father (winner)
Min Chadwick Boseman: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Gary Oldman: Mank
Steven Yuen: Minari
Riz Ahmed: Sound of Metal

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director, 2020

The Contenders:

Thomas Vinterberg: Another Round
David Fincher: Mank
Lee Isaac Chung: Minari
Chloe Zhao: Nomadland (winner)
Emerald Fennell: Promising Young Woman

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2020

The Contenders:

The Father
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
Minari
Nomadland (winner)
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7

The Organ Grinder's Monkey

Film: Mank
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on basement television.

Long-time readers of this blog (and let’s be honest—that’s most of you) will know that I’m usually behind the times. Oscar nominations come out in January and I’ve usually seen no more than two and I don’t get them all watched until late September, and sometimes not until the following January. The pandemic, for as terrible as it has been, has changed the way films are released. This gives me the opportunity to watch a few likely contenders early. One of those contenders is Mank, the story of Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), the man who wrote Citizen Kane for Orson Welles. More realistically, it’s the story of how that screenplay came to be. It’s a likely contender for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Gary Oldman, possibly Best Original Screenplay, and it might turn up a nomination for Amanda Seyfried for Best Supporting Actress, and a Best Supporting nod for Arliss Howard.

It will not come as a surprise, or should not at least, that Mank takes its cues from Citizen Kane itself. We’re going to get a series of vignettes that show us the history of the players as well as the story in the film’s present of Mankiewicz actually writing the script while convalescing from a serious car accident. We’re going to go back and forth in time, learning the backstory of the screenplay and then the actual creation.