David Vining's Blog, page 24

Some Books!

Been a while since some book thoughts, and I just finished something last night. So, here’s what I’ve been reading!

The Rise of the Dutch Kingdom by Hendrik Willem van Loon.

What is this? Well, about 15 years ago when I first got an eReader, I plunged the depths of Gutenberg.org and pulled every book that remotely looked interesting to me. This was in there. Fast forward to a couple of months ago, I’m scrolling through my collection of old epub files and I see this title....

Teenage Doll

Melodramatic films with dire warnings about the next generation really have fallen out of fashion, huh? I suspect that Corman didn’t mean the earnest warnings here, instead falling into the fad of the time and making something exploitative that he could sell quickly. I mean, this is kind of ridiculously presented with a gaggle of girl toughs who all look like they could be competing for prom queen acting like they’ll cut a bitch. However, there is an attempt at real character, filtered throu...

Here

#8 in my ranking of Robert Zemeckis’ filmography.

Phew…Robert Zemeckis’ final film isn’t Pinocchio. Instead, it’s Here, Terrence Malick by way of Robert Zemeckis: an emotionally driven narrative that uses high-tech special effects (really well, by the way) to tell the story of a singular location through time. I’m gonna be honest, I really got on this film’s wavelength early and rode along on its path of non-linear storytelling. The structure is emotional, not literal or plot-driven, so I...

The Undead

Roger Corman goes gothic horror while also going extremely topical. It’s an interesting mix, for sure. I watched Joe Dante’s little video about the film for Trailers from Hell, and he has a real soft spot for the film. He even describes it as a comedy. I think I could see how Dante would see The Undead as a comedy, but I didn’t see it that way. The comedy seems to arise ironically and unintentionally rather than purposefully, stemming from awkwardness rather than a desire to incite laughter ...

Rock All Night

This might be Corman’s most interesting film. Having just gone through all of Joel Schumacher‘s work, I was reminded of his Amateur Night at the Dixie Bar and Grill along with the obvious Robert Altman influences on Schumacher’s early work, and here’s Corman doing something similar right about the same time Altman was releasing his first documentary. I don’t think it quite works, though. The script by Griffith is mostly undone by a weird structure that feels repetitive and then delayed in we...

Attack of the Crab Monsters

Sometimes, Corman’s films’ propensity for staccato filmmaking on a large, structural level reveals some small gems of entertainment. Attack of the Crab Monsters has something like a three-act structure, but the three acts are all so different from each other they could be considered short films on their own. I make mention of it to begin because the first and third acts are vastly superior to the middle act. They might have even helped contribute to an overall good film, but the silly scienc...

Not of this Earth

Almost rising above the silly and disjointed nature of the script, Roger Corman makes what is probably his best film to date: Not of this Earth, a nonsensical science-fiction/nuclear warning that uses the conventions of a thriller much more effectively than it does science/fiction, a genre that Corman, Griffith, and Hanna were still not really sure what to do with. This, though, represents a step in the right direction.

Paul Johnson (Paul Birch) is an alien on Earth who needs blood. The v...

Naked Paradise

Roger Corman takes his little gang to Hawaii for a vacation and a movie. It’s something of a tradition for filmmakers to do this (Ford with Donovan’s Reef and Hitchcock with To Catch a Thief in Monaco), but usually people are a bit more established before they can pull it off. I watched the little video that Corman made for a retrospective on this film, filmed for Trailers From Hell, and Corman, all smiles and warmth, tells of marketing, production issues (filming in the bay rather than on t...

Oscar Nominations!

Don’t care.

Gunslinger

I think there’s an interesting historical note to be made here that has nothing to do with the film. Corman liked to tell the story of how he worked in Fox’s story department, offering notes on scripts, when he first started, and he quit Fox when he suggested a series of notes, all of which were accepted, for the Gregory Peck film, The Gunfighter. I wonder if Corman thought of the connection between the very similar titles as he rushed through the production on this. Maybe. I dunno.

It’s ...