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
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:
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
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 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?
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?
everythingnoir 