Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
*note: This is an old one I simply missed to port over.* David Lean's career can easily break down between two major periods. The first is made up of small, relationship based films usually based in Britain and in black and white with a couple of Charles Dickens adaptations thrown in. The second is a series… Continue reading David Lean: A Retrospective
Meh. No cute introduction. Just go to my Top Ten to see why Top Ten's are all wrong. David Lean was a great filmmaker who grew up in the British studio system preceding the outbreak of World War II and became a director, hitched to Noel Coward, during the conflict. After working directly with Coward… Continue reading David Lean: The Definitive Ranking
#9 in my ranking of David Lean's films. David Lean ends his career with a return to form. After a fourteen year hiatus because of the critical drubbing he received from Ryan's Daughter (including a meeting where critics showed the worst of themselves and lorded over Lean like a red-headed stepchild), he returned with an… Continue reading A Passage to India
#14 in my ranking of David Lean's films. The initial negative reaction to Lean's Ryan's Daughter was too harsh, I think, but the reappraisal as a neglected masterpiece is overdone. There's some very good stuff in here, but the weight of the film around that stuff is simply too much, grounding a rather small film… Continue reading Ryan’s Daughter
#15 in my ranking of David Lean's films. The initial critical reaction to David Lean's Russian epic is far different from the reputation that's come up. Instead of the well beloved and sweeping romance that modern audiences seem to see, the first critics found the film fractured and the romance unconvincing. After my second viewing… Continue reading Doctor Zhivago
David Vining, Author 