David Vining's Blog, page 207

Pale Rider

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There are two stories that happen to take pace in the same geological location in this film, and they undercut each other. It’s a rather frustrating experience.

In a hidden corner of California, a small mining community is desperately clinging to their foothold of ground, convinced that they’re about to strike gold at any point, but the neighboring large scale miner wants them off. He was a writ that would give him ownership of the land if it were abandoned. There being virtually no law with...

Writing Update – 9/29/19

Finished the transcription of the 3rd draft for Colonial Nightmare. I could have finished it Thursday, but I grew weary of it. And then I proceeded to do nothing with it Friday or Saturday.

Watching the A’s toss away the final, meaningless, game of the regular season allowed me the chance to finish, though.

Now, I start the second draft of the screenplay. Tomorrow…

Mission: Impossible III

For most of this movie’s runtime, it’s quite an enjoyable high tech spy thriller, but I absolutely hate it’s last twenty minutes.

I’ve only seen this twice: once upon its initial theatrical run and just recently on Amazon Prime. I remember feeling largely the same reaction then as I did this time, and the epicenter of that visceral reaction is actually the opening few minutes of the film.

You see, the opening sequence is actually a scene from late in the film, pushed forward, and it’s a comp...

Mary Poppins Returns

This was…frustrating. Emily Blunt is quite wonderful as the titular character, but there’s just so much that doesn’t really fit together around it, dragging the movie down until the end. I wanted to like this so much more than I did.

There are two main sources of my frustration with this film. The first are the numbers. The music is just simply not that good, delivered in muddled accents, with lyrics that don’t catch. There’s a level of complexity to the music that doesn’t lend itself to bei...

High Tension

Once in a while a foreign film comes and makes waves in the American markets. It’s usually something genre based and latches onto some pre-existing popular movement. Think The Brotherhood of the Wolf that sort of fit into the fold with The Matrix (at least it could be sold that way). High Tension was the French version of grungy horror that would later form into torture porn like Hostel. It’s also kind of terrible.

This movie seems to be most well known for a late plot twist that defies any...

Life of Pi

Let’s get this out of the way: This movie is beautiful to look at. That’s not nothing, but it’s far from the movie’s sole strength. Performances from human and animated creature alike are very good, but it’s the interplay of the central story and the framing device that engages me the most.

A novelist visits a middle-aged Indian-Canadian at the advice of the Indian’s uncle. Pi, a nickname stemming from his full name of Piscine, the French word for swimming pool, lives a small and quiet life...

Finally – Writing Update 9/23/19

I expected to be done with the third draft of my George Washington book by the 5th. Here I am almost three weeks later and I’ve finally finished it. I was just not into it. I didn’t want to do it. I’m kinda feeling a bit creatively burned out, but the work wasn’t creative in nature. It’s minor improvements, slight fixes, over tens of thousands of words.

One thing’s for sure, though. I’m definitely changing my process on transcribing the second draft. It was so chock full of typos as to embar...

War and Peace (1966)

The first thing that struck me about the Soviet adaptation of Tolstoy’s work was that the writer and director, Sergei Bondarchuk, understood the book. Two things happen in the opening minutes that screamed to me that he knew exactly what Tolstoy was trying to do. Our first shots are of microscopic things, and he dissolves into views of plants, dissolving again and again pulling further back until we’re seeing things from a camera strapped to what seems to be the back of an airplane that is i...

The MCU Phases 1-3 Ranked: The Definitive Ranking

A top 22? That’s just crazy! At least it’s not a Top 10. Those are crap.

So, I binged all of Marvel from Iron Man to Endgame, and to appease the listicle gods, I have produced a list! It’s definitive as well!

Click the links to see my full reviews.

Thor: The Dark World

“This makes me kind of sad. Thor was one of the bright spots of Phase 1, and Thor: The Dark World is probably the worst movie of the franchise.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp

“You get three movies in one with this, and not a singl...

Avengers: Endgame

#3 in my Ranking of The MCU Phases 1-3.

This is more built like a traditional movie with a recognizable three act structure than Avengers: Infinity War was. I quite like it overall, but that traditionalism requires an antagonist that isn’t really needed, I don’t think.

The three acts are pretty distinct. The first is almost purely character driven. Our massive roster of heroes has been culled to almost exclusively the original six (Cap, Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye) with a...