David Vining's Blog, page 203

Ace in the Hole

This might be the most thoroughly cynical movie I’ve ever seen, and I love it. It’s a vicious look at the sausage making of sensational journalism, and it spares no one. The journalist who orchestrates it all is one of the worst human beings in film.  The wife of the victim is a close second. The local law are so easily bribed that it’s not even a challenge. The contractors so easily coerced by bad logic. The people who gather so easily led that they’re effectively sheep. And, at the center...

Sunset Blvd.

Sunset Blvd. is probably the Billy Wilder movie that Hollywood loves the most because it’s about Hollywood. The problem that Hollywood movies tend to have and occasionally fall completely into is that they are insular without appeal to those not of the business. Sunset Blvd. is definitely full of the kinds of references Hollywood movies are tend to carry, but the central story is as relatable and fascinating from a basic human point of view that really gets the audience involved from beginning to end.

Eve...

Writing Update – 11/6/19

Well, that certainly took forever.

I was just not into this second draft of this screenplay. I guess I just didn’t think it was turning out as good as I wanted, the format is still so unfamiliar, and I’ve been distracted with certain things. But, it’s done nonetheless.

It’s much shorter than I realized, highlighting the difference in how much goes on a formatted hand written page versus how much goes on a formatted typed page. It’s only 72 pages long, which is okay for a very short feature but highlights the fac...

A Foreign Affair

There’s a certain oddness to one of the central relationships in this film that lends itself to a certain reading that the movie never really follows through on, and the ending doesn’t quite feel right. However, the rest of it is the same level of character, easy plotting, and great dialogue we have come to expect from Billy Wilder and his writing partner Charles Brackett.

It’s post-war Berlin. The city is still a ruin. There’s no industry anymore. The few residents left are living a barter existence...

The Emperor Waltz

There’s a knowing self-awareness to this movie’s song and dance numbers that turn them from sappy little ditties into more than amusing set pieces. Combined with the bright and colorful visual palatte and a pair of winning performances from Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine, the numbers create a rather enjoyable musical from Billy Wilder.

Bing Crosby plays Virgil Smith, a traveling salesman trying to break into Vienna by convincing the Emperor Franz-Josef to buy the first phonograph in the country. His...

The Newest Moviegoer

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Nicholas James Vining.

Born November 1, 2019.

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Here is his older brother warning him of his daddy’s insistence that he watch black and white movies where no one ever speaks, but at least the guy in the funny hat and mustache walks funny.

The Lost Weekend

Structure is a very important part of storytelling. I love the example from The Simpsons‘ third Treehouse of Horror special where Homer tries to tell a scary story but he reveals all of the information out of order (like the wife being dead and the husband playing golf all the time) so that the big reveals don’t make a lot of sense. Anyway, I bring it up at the beginning of my review of The Lost Weekend because the film has an unusual structure that I resisted for the longest time. It felt formless, but as...

Double Indemnity

This is such a deeply cynical film. The two main characters never seem to mean anything they ever say, especially to each other. They’re both awful, awful people who kill a man and try to take a big insurance payoff. It also forged an entire genre of film, establishing its tone, archetypes, and visual style that would be mimicked for decades. It’s such an imminently watchable film.

One of the more interesting parts of the film is the fact that the male protagonist, Walter Neff, isn’t a cop, priva...

Five Graves to Cairo

This movie almost lost me in its second act. It seemed to be going in about four different directions at once, but the air raid and the third act began and everything snapped right back together. The almost directionlessness of that second act makes this, Billy Wilder’s sophomore effort, feel more like a freshman effort than The Major and the Minor. Though it does all come together in the end, producing an overall recommendable final product, I think this represents a slight step down for Wilder.

In the...

A Quick Thought about Rotten Tomatoes

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Looking at the disparity between critics and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes seems to be a favorite pass time and way to create a punching back of critics. It’s usually brought up with really big movies that critics hate or love while the audience does the opposite. Star Wars: The Last Jedi got hit with this a lot. The critic score is 91% and the audience score is 44%. That’s a wide disparity.

I’ve never really taken much in the argument in general because I thi...