Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
According to a pair of cinema historians, Erich von Stroheim directed either 60% or 75% of the final product that got the name, Hello, Sister! Originally titles Walking Down Broadway based on an unpublished play by Dawn Powell, Stroheim finally worked on time during production and within budget, but he ended up producing, reportedly, a… Continue reading Hello, Sister!
#34 in my ranking of Clint Eastwood's films. Not nearly the disaster that some critics made it out to be but also not that good either, Cry Macho was a script that author N. Richard Nash had been trying to get made since the early 1970s. It only took 20 years after Nash's death for… Continue reading Cry Macho
#35 in my ranking of Clint Eastwood's films. The final installment in Clint Eastwood's unofficial "real heroes" trilogy, The 15:17 to Paris is easily the weakest of the three. Choosing to make an entire feature film out of an event that lasted roughly thirty seconds was a tall order to begin with, but he managed… Continue reading The 15:17 to Paris
#31 in my ranking of Clint Eastwood's films. I have a feeling that the appeal of this film to Clint Eastwood wasn't narrative but the evocation of the time of his youth, the music, the people, and the setting. Through movies like Gran Torino and Space Cowboys, it was obvious that Eastwood was looking at… Continue reading Jersey Boys
#37 in my ranking of Clint Eastwood's films. Every law enforcement film Clint Eastwood made that wasn't a Dirty Harry film feels like a reaction to Dirty Harry. Blood Work feels like, "What if Harry Callahan got really old and had heart problems?" I'm actually kind of surprised this isn't an outright entry in the… Continue reading Blood Work
David Vining, Author 