This looks like an amazing country noir from my home state of Montana. We got Liam Hemsworth and Teresa Palmer as our leads but also everything noir favorites Billy Bob Thornton, Bruce Dern , John Malkovich and Oliver Platt. It is written by Roberto Patino who has worked on Sons of Anarchy so we should have a far amount of grit and grim in this movie. The trailer has me excited and can’t wait to see it, how about you?
Month: February 2015
In Memory of Lizabeth Scott, Review of Pitfall
Today the noir world has learned the passing of film-noir legend Lizabeth Scott. Read the LA Times report here:
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-lizabeth-scott-20150206-story.html
Lizabeth was in many film-noir movies and stared with all the big names. We will be looking at more of her movies on this blog soon. When I saw the news I checked my DVR for a classic movie with Lizabeth in it to review tonight in her honor.
Pitfall came up, so here is my review.
Scott starts as our femme fatale alongside Dick Powell in this film from 1948. Right away I can’t believe how much Scott’s voice sounds like Lauren Bacall. According to the LA Times, Scott was often compared to Bacall because of their similar look and voice. This movie has a great little plot and kind of ends where most films of this time would have started. I don’t want to spoil the story so I will stop there. I watched this on TCM and Robert Osborne had a very interesting story about how this movie was almost not released. According to the movie code at the time a bad guy can be an adulterer, but a good guy could not be one. This movie has that situation and director André De Toth used some sneaky tactics with the executives of the studio to show their hypocrisy. This film is based on a book by Jay Dratler, an author that looks to have much success as a screenwriter. I looked this book up on Goodreads and nobody has read it on there! I took a quick look and Barns and Nobel had no copy available. Has anyone out there read this book? The other high spot of this movie is Raymond Burr as a ex-cop, private investigator. He really has some presence in this part and you can see his star rising in this movie.
R.I.P. Lizabeth Scott, I look forward to watching more of her work, hope you do the same.
Big Day in History for Noir Fans!
This day in history The Big Sleep from Raymond Chandler was released. Read all about it at Today in Literature.
http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=02%2F06%2F2015
Some day we will take a look at this amazing book and the movies that are made from it.
Review: John Wick
John Wick is a neo-noir with a lot of action! This has a simple plot and not a very original one. We’ve seen this in various versions throughout the years. An innocent man, well maybe not totally innocent man is wronged by some bad guys. Things that come to mind are Point Blank and Payback(we will look at these two movies based on the Parker books later), as well as maybe a little Death Wish. The list can go on and on….but is that a bad thing? This isn’t some mind twisting plot with a commentary on society that will make you re-think your life. Revenge and vengeance are common themes in film and it makes for a fun movie. I loved John Wick, yeah we know how it’s going to end almost before it begins, in fact the opening scene also happens to be a scene from the end of the movie. Chad Stahelski and David Leitch made a great film on their first attempt. The action is amazing, but I really love the way it was shot. You can tell they have been around the movie industry and know how to make interesting scenes and sets. A lot of the scenes reminded me of classic noir films in bright color instead of black and white. I purposely didn’t look into this movie much before I watched it. All I knew is people liked it and it has Keanu Reeves in it. I’m glad that’s all I knew, there are some great cameos in this film I didn’t know where coming and liked them. My three favorites are Willem Dafoe, Kevin Nash and Lance Reddick. I will not give you anymore so you can be surprised and enjoy the film like I did. If you want a fun movie with some great scenes and an amazing look, look no further, check out John Wick.
Christa Faust’s Angel Dare series
Christa Faust is not only a great noir author, she loves noir. If you’re not following her on Facebook you are missing out. She posts lots of great pin ups from the past, news about old film-noir movies playing in theaters, and tons of other information on books and films. You should check out her Blog as well at:
http://christafaust.net/?cat=1
Now on to the books. This series is modern pulp gold. If you think you can’t judge a book by its cover, your wrong. These covers are pulp art and if you like them, you will love the stories inside. Christa takes some classic noir themes and modernizes them. Our main character is not your average noir type character, no private detective or mafia member here, she’s a female porn star! Sure we have had femme fatales we fall in love with that are shady, but beautiful, and it always helps when they are a successful business women of some kind, but how about a porn star that owns their own adult entertainment company?!?! Why has nobody thought of this before? I admit it, I love Angel Dare, she is a strong female that has worked her way up the food chain in the porn industry. A business that is a grey area, it is legal but has some shady people working in it. She looks out for her girls because she has been there and knows what it’s like. She gets in a jam with some bad dudes and does what she needs to, to get herself out. It’s a fun ride that is more original then you would think. So how does she stand up in the second novel? The second book takes a common theme in noir, professional fighting and modernizes it. Instead of using Boxing like many noir stories have in the past, lets use Mixed Martial Arts? Why not, it really works and Angel gets into more crazy trouble but in the world of MMA instead of Porn this time, not that we don’t revisit that world a little in this tale too. If you’re looking for something dark and gritty you should check out Angel Dare. Now the question is, Christa, are we getting a new Angel Dare book? If so, when?
A new John Wick movie in the works!
I still have not seen John Wick and hope to see it tomorrow night. I’m looking forward to this movie that just came out on Blu-Ray yesterday, and it sounds like fans are already getting some good news.
http://www.movies.com/movie-news/john-wick-sequel/17849
Any fans of this movie out there? Are you excited for a sequel or should this be a one and done?
Review: Mulholland Falls
Mulholland Falls has one of the greatest casts from the 90’s, and all neo-noir favorites. We got Nick Nolte at the height of his cool, Melanie Griffith as the clueless wife, Jennifer Connelly who just looks like she was made to play the femme fatale in the 1950’s, Chazz Palminteri who fits in the 1950’s just as well as anybody, and what kind of neo-noir film made in the 1990’s would be complete without Michael Madsen. The stars go on and on including John Malkovich playing the focus of our heroes investigation and Andrew McCarthy as the openly gay photographer that may have more on his film then he wanted. The story comes from Peter Dexter who has written some well received crime novels and has one the National Book Award. This movie goes back to one of the greatest noir stomping grounds ever,1950’s Los Angles. We get gangsters, a murder mystery, adult movies(back when they where highly illegal) and powerful men that think they can get away with anything. This movie definitely got it’s inspiration from the “Hat Squad,” a team of detectives that were given free rein to do what they needed to keep the Mafia out of L.A.. We see the “Hat Squad” again, in 2013’s Gangster Squad and TNT’s Mob City. Maybe it was a little bit of a let down, with a cast like this we were expecting something similar to what we got the next year with L.A. Confidential(we will definitely be looking at this amazing film in a future post) but it’s not fair to compare these two films. Roger Ebert gave it a 3.5 stars out of 4, so he saw this as a good film that could have been great. This is a fun neo-noir to watch if you haven’t seen it yet or would like to give it another chance I would like to here your opinion.
Review: Night Film by Marisha Pessl
Night Film is a book that falls into a bunch of different categories, some may call it a horror book, some a mystery book others may put it on their contemporary fiction or literature shelf. I think because of all these elements it makes for a great noir read. I’ll tell you right now, this is one of my favorite books. It’s a very unique book with an interactive internet element, I read it as a straight novel and didn’t check out any of the extras on the web. I may re-read this and check out the web extra as I go.
This book’s main character is Scott McGrath, an investigative journalist that has his career ruined by a mysterious director by the name of Stanislas Cordova. When a new investigation starts involving Cordova, Scott has to find out what is going on, no matter what the consequences. Cordova is the interesting character that drives the plot, we just get snippets of him as the story progresses and we as readers and our hero Scott has to find what is real and what is legend or myth. Cordova is a fictional character that seems real and real interesting. Cordova is part Stanley Kubrick, half Roman Polanski, a bit of David Lynch and maybe a dash of Alfred Hitchcock thrown in for good measure.
Here is a great trailer for the book, and it definitely gives you a feel for what you’re in for:
This isn’t a short book at over 600 pages it takes a bit of time and effort to read, but it’s worth every minute and every page. When you get done you are wowed and wish it had another 100 to 200 pages. The writing is great and keeps you up late at night reading “just one more chapter.” Let’s face it this hits all my hotspots, it’s a great written book, it’s dark and it’s about movies to boot.
I would love to see this turned into a mini series for HBO, Showtime or even an FX or AMC. I think this would be the best way to give credit to the lengthy story. Marisha Pessl has a movie deal already for this book and Rupert Wyatt is set to direct. Let’s hope this is as good as this book deserves and I will be at the theater opening night when it comes out!
Review: The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell
This is a short book written by Daniel Woodrell, someone I’ve been wanting to read for a while. I learned of Woodrell because of the movie Winter’s Bone a great southern noir staring Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes(I will re watch this and review it at a later time). I really enjoyed this gritty real looking movie and was very interested in reading the book(still am). I picked this book up on my Nook because it was on sale for $2.99. Though this is a short book it was really dense with great language. The story was good, flashing to different times in the characters lives, made for a puzzle that all came together in the end. This is one of those books that may be even better on a second read so you can pick up on all the little clues through out. I hope to check out more of Woodrell’s books, especially Winter’s Bone, Tomato Red and the Bayou Trilogy.
Review: Grand Central Murder
Grand Central Murder is a film-noir from 1942. This movie is based on a Sue MacVeigh book and though I’ve never read it, I think this story has more in common with Sherlock Holmes then Phillip Marlowe. Though this seems to not be a true noir in story the filming is very noir. The opening scenes visual is one of the coolest in noir. The rest of the movie uses shadows in a very artistic way. S. Sylvan Simon is the director and looked to me like he showed some promise in the genre but he directed 34 films and it looks like almost all of them except for this one, was comedy and family films. To bad I would love to see his style in more dark films like this.
Our P.I. detective is played by Van Heflin and is pretty entertaining in this part. Patricia Dane is the beautiful gold digger that is in the center of the investigation. There is a long cast of characters that at times are a little hard to keep track of. This movie has not been rated much in IMDb and is currently at a 6.6, with only 453 people rating it. I caught this on Turner Classic Movies and it may be hard to find on DVD, but it is available. It may be worth the effort to find if you are a hard-core noir fan.
everythingnoir 