citizen

12 May

Citizen Penn

Max SchindlerMovie reviewscitizen

Citizen Penn ​chronicles the moment Sean Penn and his team of volunteers landed in Haiti, just days after the earthquake struck, and the ten years since. The film offers viewers a look into the triumphs and challenges of those who decided to do something. For Penn, Haiti changed his life. He went there for what he thought was a two-week aid mission to drop off supplies, help doctors provide immediate medical care, and then get out and get back to his normal life. Instead, he stayed and created an organization called J/P HRO (now CORE) that took over management duties…

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15 Mar

Every Star Citizen Controversy So Far

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When Star Citizen was publicly revealed via Kickstarter in 2012, it felt like a dream come true for many gamers. Led by Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts, Star Citizen’s record-breaking crowdfunding campaign seemingly left it in an ideal position to fulfill some ambitious promises by becoming not just the ultimate sci-fi gaming experience but a title funded and developed outside what was seen as the traditional studio systems.  Years later, though, Star Citizen‘s journey has practically become defined by its controversies. As the debate rages on regarding nearly every aspect of this title, it becomes increasingly clear that the quality…

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05 Dec

What the Mank Ending Leaves Out About Orson Welles and Citizen Kane

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This article contains Mank spoilers. You can read our review here. It’s like the climax of a Western. Two men stare across from each other in a showdown of ego and calculation. And Gary Oldman’s Herman J. Mankiewicz (or “Mank”) has just told Orson Welles (Tom Burke) he wants writing credit for the Citizen Kane screenplay. This is not going to end well. Before this moment, Welles had been conciliatory to Mank, feigning concern for his health and offering to take sole rewriting duties on the gargantuan script. He’s even providing $10,000 from RKO Pictures as a consolation. It’s of…

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04 Dec

Mank and Amanda Seyfried’s Quest to Save Marion Davies from Citizen Kane

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Amanda Seyfried is a fan of old school movies and classic Hollywood. Considering the Mank star has been acting since she was a teenager, this isn’t a surprise. In her mind it’s a prerequisite, something that comes with the territory: each young actor is obligated to “study film on the job” when starting out. So she’s seen Citizen Kane, of course, and knew the stories of Orson Welles’ masterpiece taking on newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst. And yet, even she was barely aware of Marion Davies, the once popular movie star from a century ago whose image Kane left like…

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21 Oct

David Fincher’s Mank Reframes Citizen Kane Origin Story as Mankiewicz’s Brilliance

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It holds the lofty perch of being the greatest cinematic achievement of all-time. The American Film Institute picked it as the best movie ever made. Twice. François Truffaut filmed himself daydreaming of Orson Welles in Day for Night (1973). Liev Schreiber starred as Welles in an HBO movie about the film’s making. Citizen Kane is like the white whale for moviemakers who want to make movies about other moviemakers. And now David Fincher is giving it a singular, and possibly revisionist, angle in Mank, a new Netflix film starring Gary Oldman as Herman J. Mankiewicz. Herman’s name is arguably not…

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30 Jul

Star Citizen Fans Are Starting to Wonder Why The Game Isn’t Being Updated

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Star Citizen fans are beginning to suspect that something’s not quite right as they’ve started asking developer Cloud Imperium Games for more updates regarding the controversial game’s progress. This particular round of “We need to talk about Star Citizen” was prompted by the release of a Star Citizen development roadmap in March. Hilariously (depending on how much money you’ve spent on the game so far), the roadmap largely consisted of this statement which explained why there would be no traditional roadmap: “When we first embarked on this Roadmap journey two years ago, our goal was to make communication more transparent,…

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18 Nov

Citizen K

Max SchindlerMovie reviewscitizen

Citizen K is an intimate yet sweeping look at post-Soviet Russia from the perspective of the enigmatic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch turned political dissident. Benefitting from the chaos that followed the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., Khodorkovsky was able to amass a fortune in financing and oil production and became the richest man in Russia. However, when he accused the new Putin regime of corruption, Khodorkovsky was arrested, his assets seized and following a series of show trials, sentenced to more than ten years in prison. Today, as an exile living in London, he continues to speak out against Putin’s…

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06 Jul

The Citizen

Max SchindlerMovie reviewscitizen

Wilson, a black man in his late fifties, has been living as a refugee in Hungary for years. He works as a security guard in Budapest and his main desire is to acquire Hungarian citizenship, but he keeps failing the exams that are required for his application. In preparing for the next exam, he is helped by Mari, a Hungarian woman of roughly the same age who is a history teacher. Unexpectedly the teacher and her pupil start to develop deep affection towards each other.Rated: Not RatedRelease Date: Jul 06, 2018

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