Unfortunately I don’t have Amazon Prime, but if I did, I would be watching this right now. It looks awesome! I also look forward to reading the books it is based on by Michael Connelly. Titus Welliver looks like a great choice for the lead. Look forward to seeing this when it is released on DVD, unless I find a friend with Prime and watch it with them before hand. If you are one of the luck ones seeing it today, what did you think?
Month: February 2015
What to be Watching Right Now: Better Call Saul
Fans of the legendary AMC desert noir series Breaking Bad will be tuning in for Better Call Saul, but is it worth it? I just got done watching the first 2 episodes and found them very good. I will not pass judgement on the series until I see the whole first season, but I think it is worth viewing. The first episode opens in a classic black and white noir style to sets the tone for the neo noir series. Better Call Saul broke the record for most viewers for a new series on cable T.V. and spinning off of Breaking Bad will do that for you. Rolling Stone and Rotten Tomato are calling this a comedy-noir and I agree, it can get really dark and the plot can get very twisted, but we get a laugh now and then to break the darkness. I think the creators did the right thing with this. Originally this was going to be a half hour comedy, but I think a one-hour more serious program fits better and keeps all the Breaking Bad fans as well as gains new ones. Bob Odenkirk is great as Jimmy McGill the sleaze bag lawyer, con-artist that we love to root for. I look forward to seeing more episodes and from the early ratings and reviews around the web it looks like everybody that seen it so far is also excited to see more.
Re-watching the Classics: Laura
What movie does Vincent Price say was his best movie? Laura is the answer. It’s February so it’s Oscar season and TCM is showing a lot of movies that won awards. Laura was nominated for 4 awards and won one award. We have Best Writing for a Screen Play, Best Director for Otto Preminger, Best Supporting Actor for Clifton Webb and a win for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White for Joseph LaShelle. I watched this movie years ago and took another look at it tonight. It defiantly deserved its Best Cinematography Award, I didn’t realize how cool this movie looks, and almost all the scenes are interior shots which makes it more impressive. Clifton Webb had only played a few parts in film before this and was a stage actor at the time. Preminger wanted him in this film and declined the studios choice for the part. This launched a resurgence in Webb’s career and even lead to a couple more nominations. Dana Andrews plays our hardboiled detective assigned to the case. We get his prospective and version of the story through out this movie. Vincent Price shows his great film presence in this movie, I love Price’s voice and way of talking in almost everything he does. He is hard to ignore in any scene he is in. All though all these performances are great,lets face it, the real star is Gene Tierney. Tierney is Laura and the love obsession of just about everybody in this film. This is not hard to believe, she is a beautiful, smart women with the most adorable overbite ever. Even her portrait in this film is one of the all time great film props. It is how our hero falls in love with our femme fatale and it even appears in 2 more movies after this. I will not get into much of the story because telling any of it will ruin the twists in the story. The source material is from a book by Vera Caspary. I have not read the book but it is told in 5 parts, each part is a different character’s version of what happened. The original screenplay told the story from 3 character’s versions of events, this was still to hard to do in a 2 hour film from the 1940’s. So the screenplay was reduced to one character’s version, our police detective played by Andrews. This film is required viewing for any film noir buff. It’s not on my top 10 list of all time, but it is one of the greats.
Review: Sweet Nothing by Richard Lange
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So I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of Sweet Nothing by Richard Lange from Mulholland Books. They asked me to read and review it for them so here goes! So Sweet Nothing is a collection of short stories, and I would say most fall in the noir genre. There is one post-apocalyptic story, but all the other stories are crime, hardboiled and noir stories taking place in and around Los Angels.
We got a man who finds out his Father-in-Law isn’t all he seems.
There is a Grandmother that has to face a drive by shooting that kills a baby in her neighborhood, a neighborhood that she has lived in most of her life.
A prison guard that must protect a child molester, even though he knows the prisoner is guilty.
A gambler that has a bad addiction and knows it, but can’t stop it from destroys most of his relationships.
A man stuck in his job, has an affair and all hell breaks loose.
A man and woman have a drug habit, woman dies, man’s world falls apart.
An ex-convict gets out and turns a new leaf, gets a job as a security guard at a small jewelry shop and finds out there is a plot to rob the shop. What side of the law will our hero fall on?
Our post-apocalyptic tale of lost treasure.
The man who is starting over, works at Subway and lives with a 450 lbs man. How is he ever going to get ahead?
The last story covers a Mexican family that is legally living in California, but has a some family members crossing the border. The only problem is a wildfire, a recluse that lives in a trailer in the desert and some vigilantly ex-marines.
Sounds fun! right? I will say Lange can tell a hell of a story in a short 20 to 30 pages. I almost felt like I read 4-5 novels worth of story in these 10 short stories. I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more from Lange, especially Angel Baby.
Sweet Nothing came out in Hardback and E-book yesterday, February 10th and is a good read, check it out.
Review: The Harder They Fall
The Harder They Fall is a great noir with the most common of noir sports-boxing!(horse racing has to be a close second). This is Humphrey Bogart’s last film, he was very sick when he made this movie. To see how great an actor he was, find anywhere in the film where he looks like a sick man. If you love Bogart, you will love him in this. This movie also has Rod Steiger and Jan Sterling.
This movie is based on a book of fiction written by Budd Schulberg that is actually based on the career of pro boxing champ Primo Carnera. This movie and book are so close to true events that Primo sued to get it shelved. Primo was a giant of a man at 6’9″ and 265 lbs, good-looking and Italian, he was a huge draw at the arenas. Primo went a remarkable 76-6 on his way to winning the Heavy Weight Title in Madison Square Garden. He lost the title 3 fights later to Max Baer also at the Garden. Though nobody really knows the whole truth, but the theory is Primo’s fights were fixed by the mob without his knowledge or consent for most of his career. When he got in the ring with Baer, he was severely out matched, but his heart and pride would not let him be knocked out. He was dropped 11 times in 10 rounds and took a hell of a beating. Primo fought 17 more times with a mediocre record. Primo also went on to become a pro wrestling champion and had a great career doing so.
The character based on Primo was played by Mike Lane who physically matched Primo. Lane also had a career in pro wrestling as well as a few more movies. Lane’s character is Toro Moreno and was from Argentina instead of Italy. The Max Bear character was actually played by Max himself and went by Buddy Brannen. We also see boxing great Jersey Joe Walcott in the role of a trainer.
Bogart’s character was also based on a real person by the name of Harold Conrad, who was a colorful writer and promoter.
This movie tells an amazing story and when I found out it is based in reality, it’s even more fascinating. Though I know Requiem for a Heavyweight is not a noir film, I watched it soon after seeing The Harder They Fall and seen some similarities. Though I could not find any information to show this, I have to feel that the writers of Requiem got some inspiration from Primo’s career as well. Requiem is also a great movie worth watching.
It is a shame this movie doesn’t get its due respect, I know Bogart is one of, if not the best actor in film history, and had a lot of great movies, you really don’t hear much about this film. This movie has a great rating of 7.6 on IMDb but only has 4300 votes. It also has 100% Rotten Tomato rating, but only 10 reviews counted. I don’t know how high on the list of Bogart film I would put this, but it is a great movie worthy of your viewing.
Review: Blue Ruin
Blue Ruin is a film made by two friends on a small budget…and it makes it even more gritty and dark because of it. This is a southern neo noir that has a simple story that will twist and turn as you go. Though we only really get to know the main character Dwight played by Macon Blair, an average guy in every sense of the word. Dwight is homeless at the beginning and wants revenge on a man who killed his family. He has no experience dealing with weapons, he’s not an ex-gangster or any kind of bad ass at all. He just needs revenge for his family and has no idea how he’s going to do it, he just knows he has to. This is noir in the best sense, it’s a character put in a situation over his head, now what is he going to do to get out of it. Jeremy Saulnier is a great talent, he wrote and directed this film and is already working on his next movie “Green Room.” I look forward to seeing this when it is available. The one supporting character I loved is Ben Gaffney played by Devin Ratray. Ben is a bad ass! He had some of the greatest lines and had an interesting look. Hard to believe that Devin played Macaulay Culkin mean older brother in Home Alone and Home Alone two. Amy Hargreaves as Sam,Kevin Kolack as Teddy and David W. Thompson as William all stood out in the film. The reason I checked out this film is, it was on a bunch of blog posts by other people into crime, hardboiled and noir movies. This made a lot of their top 10 lists, so I had to see it. Glad I did!
This movie got big praise at Cannes as well as a lot of smaller film festivals throughout the world and nominated for some Independent Film awards. It is definitely worth a look, I hope you enjoy it.
Film Noir Foundation’s look at Lizabeth Scott
Here is some great posters and videos of Lizabeth Scott at Film Noir Foundation. It’s worth a look at some of the great art posters and the beautiful Lizabeth Scott.
http://filmnoirfoundation.tumblr.com/post/110310409857/the-filmnoirfoundation-has-always-had-a-keen
Review ‘G’ Men
G Men stars noir bad ass James Cagney in the role of “Brick”. A new lawyer and new recruit for the F.B.I., Brick must go through training to become a Special Agent. This film was not liked by J. Edgar Hoover at first, because Brick was insubordinate in part of the film. He finally approved the script and was very happy with its huge success. G Men made over a million dollars at the box office, a huge return back in 1935. This film also portrays two incidents that where true in F.B.I.’s early history and where both pivotal in the formation and popularity of them. The first is the “Kansas City Massacre” where the F.B.I. were unable to have guns and one agent died along with 3 police and Frank “Jelly” Nash, who they were transporting. The second indecent was the famous shot out at the lodge against John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson and their gang. The lodge shooting was a big scene also in the more true telling of the story, Public Enemies in 2009. The other interesting thing about this movie is that the good guys, the F.B.I. Agents could use Tommy guns and other automatic weapons while the gangsters used revolvers and lever-action rifles. This was due to censorship at the time. This also starred Margaret Lindsay as the sister of Brick’s boss as well as Brick’s love interest. Ann Dvorak plays the wife of one of the gangsters, but helps the G Men catch them. Robert Armstrong plays his usual hard nose character and boss to Brick. This is a fun film noir with some historic events portrayed, and lets face it, Cagney is great. This was also re-released in 1948 with a new intro, here is the trailer for that with most of that new intro:
Review: The Girl with the Clock for a Heart by Peter Swanson
I’ve seen some reviews and blurbs that compare this to Gone Girl, and there are some similarities. They both have flashbacks to a different time where our couple is happier. We have an untrustworthy female lead, and they both have Girl in the title. Beyond that there are not much alike, but if that gives readers a reason to check out this book, that’s a good thing. This book has a femme fatale that is much darker than in Gone Girl, and a male lead that is a more trustworthy narrator. This is very modern Hitchcockian tail to me. Our lead tells us his story from two timelines,20 years apart and they are both very interesting. He is put in a bad spot in both timelines by his first love and in many senses his only love. He knows he can’t trust her, but he really wants to. This is Peter Swanson’s first book and I look forward to reading more from him. He is a great storyteller and I think he will just get better with time. This book and his new book The Kind Worth Killing have both been optioned for movies already. I look forward to reading The Kind Worth Killing in the near future and can see where The Girl with the Clock for a Heart could be an outstanding film. Currently this book is available on Nook and Kindle for $1.99 so it is a good time to pick it up and give it a read.
Review: The Asphalt Jungle
The Asphalt Jungle is one of the most famous film-noir movies of all time. There are a few reasons for this, the biggest historically would be this is the film that brought Marilyn Monroe to fame. She plays a small part and her name wasn’t even on the first posters, that soon changed as most poster for the film in years to come feature Marilyn prominently. Before Marilyn became the biggest thing in Hollywood, this movie got by on its own merits. For the 1951 Academy Awards, Asphalt Jungle was nominated for 4 awards. This film was also directed by one of the biggest directors of the era, John Huston. Huston’s eye is excellent and really gave this a great feel and look. He also helped with the screenplay, based on noir author W.R. Burnett’s book of the same name. This had other big names in the film like Sterling Hayden, as our anti-hero, Louis Calhern as our godfather type lawyer, Jean Hagen as our anti-hero’s girl. I also liked Sam Jaffe in his role as Doc, the mastermind of the crime. This film and story was later turned into a T.V. series. The series isn’t available on Netflix and I’m not sure if it is available on DVD or not. I would like to see some of the T.V. series to see if it made the transition well, I’m thinking it wouldn’t. This film was also re-made 3 times in different versions, one a western, one overseas, and one a blaxpotation movie. I have not seen any of these films but looking at their ratings on IMDb they had no where the success or are anywhere as good as the original. This movie is pretty much required viewing if you are a film-noir fan and if you haven’t seen it yet, enjoy!
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